Internationally, within PE inclusion has become a central concern of legislation and policy. Slee (2004) argues that is it important to consider how society comes to know and understand disability. Indeed, the process of schooling provides a significant context in which young people begin to formulate understandings of themselves and others. This presentation aims to explore non-disabled young people’s understandings of elite athletes with disabilities. The differential value(s) of athletes with disabilities can be considered by deploying the conceptual tools offered by Bourdieu (1977, 1984, 1990). Of particular relevance to this research are the concepts of habitus and capital.
Method:
Data were generated in one high school in England through a series of focus group discussions with 20 non-disabled young people. Visual images were used to trigger and stimulate conversations. Each of the focus group discussions was recorded and transcribed. Transcripts were coded and key themes developed.
Analysis/Results:
The main themes emerging from these data include: different, impaired bodies; legitimising and valuing disability sports; and experiencing (un)valued disability sports. These data provide evidence that a paradigm of normativity prevails in sport and many of the focus group participants reproduce these normative conceptions through their understandings of the athletes and disability sports. The sporting habitus serves to affirm this normative presence and is embodied through conceptions that recognise and value certain competencies and bodies more than others. In Slee’s (2004) terms, what these young people know about disability is expressed through a deficit medical model. Whilst internationally the social model of disability has increasingly been advocated in education and sport policy, it is clear this view have not been transmitted through the thinking of the majority of the young people in this study.
Conclusions:
The focus group discussions raise key questions about what kind of role schools and sport currently, or should, play in promoting understandings of disability that move beyond restrictive medicalised conceptions. PE is positioned as a key site in which experiences and understandings of a (dis)abled physicality are embodied. This context of participation also offers the possibilities for disrupting deficit conceptions of disability. For this to be achieved, restricted views of ‘ability’ and ‘performance’ will need to be extended by teachers, coaches and the young people they support in ways that move beyond current, narrowly defined conceptions.