The Experiences of Disabled People in Physical Education

Bringing together a set of first-person accounts of physical education from the perspectives of disabled children and adults, this book puts disabled people's voices in the foreground.
The book provides a rich set of case study material that deepens our understanding of the experiences of disabled people and challenges students, researchers, and practitioners to reflect critically upon their own positionality. The first part of the book discusses the ways in which disability has been conceptualized, how the voices of disabled people have sometimes been marginalized, and how nondisability power has historically framed the narratives of disabled people in physical education literature. It also discusses the innovative methods used in this book-such as storytelling through recorded conversations and drawings in addition to more traditional chapter writing-to empower disabled children and adults to act as authors of their own stories. Then the book presents the stories themselves in a variety of written, narrative, and alternative formats, a series of authentic accounts of the lived experiences of disabled people in physical education. Finally, the book concludes with the editors' final thoughts and reflections about this collection of stories that can be used in the classroom to foster dialogue and encourage critical thinking. Importantly, these prompts have been co-constructed between the editors and the disabled people themselves.
This book is essential reading for any course in adapted physical education, physical education, or disability, for any pre- or in-service teacher, instructor, or coach working with disabled people, and for people who experience disability or their families with an interest in education, physical activity, or methods for elevating the voices of disabled people.

Wesley J. Wilson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA. Wilson's research interests focus on the storytelling of the lived experiences of physical education professionals and the disabled youth who receive such services. He has served as the director of Project ISAACC and codirector of Project REACH-SLP, two adapted physical education and speech-language pathology training grants. Wilson is also a codirector of Project CAPER and trains adapted physical activity doctoral scholars through an interuniversity partnership.
Justin A. Haegele is the Colgate Darden Endowed Professor as well as the Director of the Center for Movement, Health, and Disability in the Department of Human Movement Studies and Special Education at Old Dominion University, USA. Contextualized within the interdisciplinary field of adapted physical activity, his primary research interests center on exploring how disabled individuals experience physical activity participation, including within school-based physical education contexts. Haegele is the Director of Project CAPER and a codirector of the MAMC, two adapted physical activity training collaboratives. He is also the immediate past president of the North American Federation of Adapted Physical Activity and the editor-in-chief for the peer-reviewed publication Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly.