Abstract

This article explores the importance of critical discourse in physical education (PE) that focuses on how understandings of ability are defined, practised, and potentially altered. Research continues to indicate that physical educators continue to draw on narrow notions of ability which are influenced by the presence of a pervasive performative culture. Traditional understandings of ability often fail to reflect the wider aims of PE such as developing young people's physical literacy. The theoretical concepts of Bourdieu have been used to explain processes that serve to reinforce ‘legitimate’ notions of ability. The significance of the field of PE has been highlighted where habitus and capital inform understandings of ability in PE, and reinforce practices that privilege certain students. The data for this article are based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with six PE teachers who were part of a yearlong study on young people's experiences of ability in secondary PE in England. Within interviews PE teachers defined ability in broad terms and differentiated between the purpose of PE and sport. In practice, teachers placed a distinct emphasis on defining ability in terms which privileged students who either had a reputation for sporting excellence or who demonstrated desired forms of sport-related physical capital in lessons. These discourses and practices were reinforced through individual habitus and through a sense of shared ‘mastery of the common code’ among the teachers. The findings have implications for understanding the tensions within the field of PE that have evolved from previous, and continuing, debates on the distinction between PE and sport and understandings of the purpose of PE. In addition, they highlight the challenges that teachers can experience in aligning their wider views of ability with their ‘legitimate’ ability-based practices and working towards supporting more equitable and inclusive PE experiences.

Highlights

  • The purpose of this paper is to contribute towards critical discourse and practice within the context of physical education (PE) by exploring how notions of ability are conceptualised and potentially altered

  • This paper explores teachers’ understandings of ability in PE and highlights the challenges that stakeholders face in widening dominant notions of ability, to incorporate ideals such as those associated with physical literacy and a more participatory and inclusive agenda

  • This research illustrates how teachers’ ability-based practices were interlinked with traditional performative cultures associated with sporting success, despite their articulation of more holistic definitions of ability and their differentiation of PE and sport. Teachers in this school perceived that they had a shared, implicit understanding of ability that was primarily informed by their experience. Within this school teachers placed a distinct emphasis on defining ability in terms of physicality reifying commonsense notions of ‘legitimate bodies’ which privileged students who either had a reputation for sporting excellence or who demonstrated desired forms of sport-related physical capital in lessons

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Summary

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to contribute towards critical discourse and practice within the context of physical education (PE) by exploring how notions of ability are conceptualised and potentially altered. Widening ‘legitimate’ understandings of ability 619 related research and the social, political and educational agendas of equity and inclusion. Various authors have explored how notions of ability are socially constructed and understood in PE (Evans, 2004; Hay & lisahunter, 2006; Hay & Macdonald, 2010a, 2010b; Wright & Burrows, 2006) They have illustrated how the field serves to reproduce narrow ‘legitimate’ notions of ability that continue to focus on particular forms of physicality that hold value (capital) and privilege certain students over others (Hay & lisahunter, 2006; Hay & Macdonald, 2010a, 2010b). This paper explores teachers’ understandings of ability in PE and highlights the challenges that stakeholders face in widening dominant notions of ability, to incorporate ideals such as those associated with physical literacy and a more participatory and inclusive agenda

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