Author: Sharon Stoll

How Attitudes and Resources Affect PE for Students with Physical Disabilities

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Research is clear, students with physical disabilities are excluded from physical education (Jespersen & McNamee, 2009; Martin, 2018). Thus, the purpose of this article is threefold: 1) to share a story of the best possibilities of attitudes and resources for students with physical disabilities, 2) to highlight the reality of what is happening in the schools, and 3) to provide a possible solution of perspective-taking for physical educators.

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The Best Possible World
Let us start with a story. My name is Dr. Aubrey Shaw and when I was six months old my family and I were in a horrible car accident in Wyoming. From the collision with a double semi-truck, our car was smashed from both sides.  Thankfully, no one lost their life that day, but I was surely close to losing mine. I was rushed to the hospital where they found a two-inch tear in my left temporal lobe. I was then airlifted to Denver Children’s Hospital where I underwent brain surgery and two months of a very long recovery. The doctors told my parents I would never walk or talk and was later diagnosed with semi-hemi paralysis due to a traumatic brain injury. After two months in the hospital, my family brought me home to be in a loving environment and daily intense therapy.  I beat the doctors’ diagnoses. Moreover, when I turned five years old I was walking and talking and ready to go to preschool. I then began a nineteen-year journey with special services, therapy, and special education. My parents had the attitude and resources to help me be successful.

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COVID-19: Isolated Without Sport

As a sport ethicist, I am often asked to comment on current issues in sport.  With COVID 19, there are a variety of challenges facing sport.  Most of us have lived our sporting lives on the court, on the field, in the pool, in the pitch, or in the gym, I will limit my remarks to the experience most affected by COVID 19 as it relates to sport – we cannot physically play.

I was driving past our city park when COVID-19 first began and littered around all the children’s beautiful playground equipment was yellow plastic caution tape, barricading the area.  A sign prominently said, “OFF LIMITS.”  However, scattered about the park were children running and playing with their parents, present.   A few days later, I was in a meeting and made a comment about the barricaded playground equipment and then errored when I asked, “When is play off limits?”  I was lectured by others for not understanding the ramifications of children playing together and taking their germs home to their grandparents.  Interestingly, I continued to hit a sore spot on this issue of children getting the chance to play.  I asked several other people in the community about the yellow caution tape barrier around the playgrounds, and all of them agreed this was an essential action by the city council.  I wonder, is this action essential and is it an ethical issue for this COVID 19 time we are living in?

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Participation in Sport: Is it Fair, Good, and True for Everyone?

Limited opportunities exist for athletes with physical disabilities to participate in sport (Martin, 2018), specifically, no foundation presently exists for creating generations of athletes with physical disabilities (Shaw & Stoll, 2018).  Many students and children with physical disabilities are excluded from institutional sport, recreation, and physical education where they can learn the fundamentals of a healthy active lifestyle.

A concomitant problem arises, as this population of youth is growing up without the fundamental knowledge of how to be active. However, what if there was a better way to provide individuals with physical disabilities the knowledge and skills for a healthy active lifestyle?  The purpose of this paper examines an argument to include students and athletes with physical disabilities in sport, recreation, and physical education beyond the minimum requirements by law.

Historical Background
The problem of inclusion is not historically modern since people with physical disabilities were excluded from every aspect of life. They were left to die on the streets, were killed at birth, or were hidden away (Rimmerman, 2013). Often the brutish societal behavior was collaborated through early laws.  From the inception of the law, i.e., Mosaic Law, Roman law, Hammurabi’s code, and Hebraic rule, individual rights were seldom addressed. Instead, what was good for the masses ruled, and thus the minority, that is people with disabilities, were excluded or eliminated.

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Ethics and the Educator: Conquering the Myths of Ethical Practice

As educators, we think we know what is right.  We think we are ethical. Unfortunately, quantitative data suggests that we are not ethical, we do not know what is right, and we cannot apply basic ethical principles to the majority of ethical dilemmas we confront daily.

Having served as a coach and a teacher at all levels of public and university education, I have been an educator for over 50 years.  I hold a baccalaureate from a liberal arts college, and a master’s and doctorate in physical education in which I read religion, history, and philosophy.  I have been researching moral reasoning in competitive populations for over 35 years.  Throughout my research and extensive work with educators (i.e. teachers, coaches), I will offer five myths[1] that work against an educators’ understanding of ethics and offer an argument that more education is necessary if we are to overcome the myths of ethical practice.

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A Tale of Two Contrasts: Being a Coach and Being Coached

I have been coached and I have coached. And the differences between these two experiences is a tale to be told.

 

I am an athlete, maybe a little on the grey side, but still an athlete. I skate weekly and I was at one time a high level skater. But I was also an athlete in team sports. I played softball both slow and fast pitch. I was pretty good and pretty bad at the same time. As Frank Deford (2014) would say – I played real sport, the ultimate where one individual goes directly against another, mano-a-mano – where you must not only compete, but also compete against your rival’s attempts to stop you.

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