Inclusive Physical Education Around the World

Origins, Cultures, Practices

Sandra Heck, Martin E. Block, Sandra Heck, Martin E. Block

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367134082
• eBook ISBN: 9780429649233
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Physical Education

Inclusive Physical Education Around the World is the first book to survey inclusive physical education worldwide, to examine the history of inclusive physical education across different regions, and to compare their policy, practice and educational cultures.

Featuring the work of leading researchers from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, North America and South America, the book provides a unique interdisciplinary contribution to the fields of physical education, history and pedagogy. It provides readers with information on the origins and historical development of inclusion in schools and teaches them about different ways that inclusive physical education has grown and is implemented in different countries.

This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in physical education, disability sport, adapted physical activity, special educational needs (SEN) teaching or social justice in education. It is a vital resource for postgraduates, researchers and academics who are interested in studies on inclusion and heterogeneity, as well as sport and cultural historians, physical education teachers and students.

Part I

Origins

Chapter 1

History of inclusive physical education in North America

Martin E. Block, Iva Obrusnikova and Meghann Lloyd

Introduction

The history of special education and adapted physical education in North America began with no educational services for children with disabilities, a move to segregated placements, and then finally transitioned to more inclusive placements. Children with disabilities were initially excluded from public schools and rejected by society in both the United States (US) and Canada (Brown & Andrews, 2014). Families were told, and believed, that those with disabilities could have better lives if they were put into institutions. Unfortunately, institutionalized individuals with disabilities (including children) often only received care for basic needs rather than education and rehabilitation, and in many cases even basic care was lacking in institutional settings (Lemay, 2009; US Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, 2010).

By the mid-1800s and well into the early 1900s, most US states and Canadian provinces had residential facilities for those with developmental delay, blindness or deafness (all educated separately) (Bledsoe, 1993; Reid, 2003; Trent, 2017; Winzer, 1993). Early physical education in these facilities most likely followed the model created by Edward Seguin and known as “physiological education” that included muscular/physical training, education of senses, and oral treatment (Seguin, 1866; Sherrill, 2004). Seguin, Gridley Howe and Hervey Wilbur, who called themselves “mind doctors”, were the first professionals to advocate for the education of individuals with disabilities (Noll & Trent, 2004). Seguin’s physiological education consisted of three objectives: muscular education (i.e., employing gymnastics equipment, weights, ropes, swings and balance equipment), sense education (i.e., using touch as the conduit to the other senses) and moral treatment (Seguin, 1866; Trent, 2017). This pedagogy also utilized imitation, music, oral communication with deaf students, oral-motor exercises, “eye training” and instruction in daily living skills. Seguin strongly believed that the definitive goal of education was independence (i.e., the freedom to associate with other human beings) (Trent, 2017). Therefore, Seguin’s methodology was the foundation for what we now call community-based instruction and the integration of people with disabilities into the greater society (Danforth, Taff & Ferguson, 2006).

This methodology, however, lost its momentum after the Civil War. With the triumph of free labour and the growth of industrialization and immigration, isolation shifted from the means to the end of education for people with disabilities (Noll & Trent, 2004). Noll and Trent (2004) suggested that by the end of the 19th century, institutions that had once educated people with disabilities to return to their communities were now increasingly segregating them for lifelong care. People with disabilities became “burdens”, preventing families from participating in the nation’s free-wage-labour market. As a result, medical superintendents like Pennsylvania’s Martin Barr (1902) were calling for the total institutionalization of all people with disabilities into reservations where they would find protection from the duties and evils of the world. These institutions warehoused rather than educated their clients, and this most likely meant that most of these facilities did not offer physical education (Reid, 2003). However, at the time there were some who advocated regular physical activity for those with disabilities, most notably R. Tait McKenzie, a Canadian physician and physical educator who later worked in the US. In 1909 McKenzie published Exercise in Education and Medicine, in which he advocated for physical activity for everyone including those who were deaf, blind or had intellectual disabilities.

Even though rehabilitation appeared during and after World War I with the recovery of injured soldiers, it was not until World War II that rehabilitation became a central dimension of the disability movement. Returning veterans with injuries needed physical rehabilitation, which led to an increased interest in physical and occupational therapy (Shaik & Shemiaz, 2014). One of the responses to the need for rehabilitation was the opening of the Spinal Injuries Centre in 1944 at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, England, the birthplace of the sports movement for people with disabilities (Scruton, 1979). It was headed by the visionary Dr. Ludwig Guttmann, who quickly gained a reputation for using innovative practices in physical rehabilitation of people with spinal cord injuries and for the introduction of sport into the life of people with paralysis (Schültke, 2001). As a result, a majority of Dr. Guttmann’s patients came to like sport and to recognize its physical and social advantages (Scruton, 1979). Dr. Guttmann launched the first Stoke Mandeville Games for the Paralyzed at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in 1948. These athletes became “banner-bearers” of sport for individuals with other types of disabilities (Scruton, 1998). It was not long (in 1952) before the idea of sports for individuals with disabilities took on an international character (Schültke, 2001). In 1960, the first Paralympic Games were held in Rome (Bailey, 2008; Schültke, 2001). Not only were the same facilities used as for the Olympic Games, but also the media coverage and a special reception in the Vatican for all participants of the Games put an emphasis on the similarity in spirit between both the Olympic Games and the Paralympics, rather than on differences (Bailey, 2008).

In the 1960s, many parents in the US and Canada advocated for community school participation. For the first time, special education wings and classrooms appeared in public schools. In the US, Dr. Julian Stein wrote several articles on motor performance of individuals with intellectual disabilities. Toward the end of the 1960s, Stein became the Director of AAHPER’s “Project on Recreation and Fitness for the Mentally Retarded”, which was later expanded into the Office of Programs for the Handicapped (Sherrill, 2004). In Canada, Dr. Patricia Austin at the University of Alberta was advocating for more physical activity programmes for children with disabilities with a focus on adapting the curriculum to meet their unique needs, and she established the first APE teacher education programme in Canada (Sherrill, 2004; Wall, 2003). This was also the time when the Special Olympics was created with the first international games held in Chicago, IL, in the US in 1968 with a total of 1,000 athletes from the US and Canada. Inspired by the research of Canadian Dr. Frank Hayden from the University of Toronto (Special Olympics Canada, 2019), Mrs. Shriver founded the Special Olympics movement that continues today. Mrs. Shriver was a strong advocate for physical activity for children and adults with intellectual disabilities and her advocacy led in large part to the inclusion of physical education in the definition of special education in subsequent US federal special education laws.

Still, it is important to note that as of 1970, US schools educated only one in five children with disabilities, and many states had laws excluding certain students from public schools, including children who were deaf or blind or had an emotional or intellectual impairment (US Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, 2010). The situation was no better in Canada. Special education decisions in Canada, in the first part of the 20th century, were prejudiced by the use of required intelligence testing which resulted in the prevention of many students with disabilities from moving into the regular education system (Brown & Andrews, 2014). Even into the 1960s many children with disabilities in Canada were excluded from public education and placed in special schools. Lazure and Roberts (1970) published One Million Children, a report calling for Canadian society to stop isolating and segregating children with disabilities from their peers and families. The authors argued that a successful education system required teacher training and a supportive remedial service for both teachers and children with disabilities.

Federal legislation in the United States

As a result of years of activism and legal action focusing on improving the lives of children with disabilities, in 1975, the US Congress passed Public Law (PL) 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (EHA), which for the first time in US history guaranteed a free appropriate public education to each child with a disability. This law was reauthorized as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 (IDEA, 1990) and later as the Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act of 2004 (US Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, 2010). As noted earlier and thanks to advocacy by Mrs. Shriver and others, physical education is included in the definition of special education and as such is recognized as a direct service that should be provided to all students with disabilities.

EHA had a dramatic, positive impact on millions of children with disabilities in every state and each local community across the country. The main focus of the law was to ensure access to education for children with disabilities through systematic efforts to (a) improve how children with disabilities were identified and educated, (b) evaluate the success of these efforts, and (c) provide due process protections for children and families. In addition, the law authorized financial incentives to enable states and localities to comply with P.L. 94-142 (US Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, 2010). The law paid particular attention to the more than one million children with disabilities who, prior to the law, had been systematically excluded from receiving any form of education. The law also supported children with more mild disabilities who had had only limited access to the public schools and general education classrooms and were therefore denied an appropriate education. This latter group encompassed more than half of all children with disabilities in the US in the early 1970s.

One of the key components of the law was the concept of Least Restrictive Environment (LRE). The LRE mandate was written as follows:

to the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities, including children in public or private institutions or other care facilities, are educated with children who are not disabled, and special classes, separate schooling, or other removal of children with disabilities from the regular educational environment occurs only when the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that education in the regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily.

(20 U.S.C. 1412(a)(5)(A))

Applying this to physical education, the preferred placement for physical education for children with disabilities was the general physical education (GPE) setting. Removal from GPE was permitted; however, school districts were required to provide evidence and justify that a child with a disability placed in a separate setting for APE services could not be educated in GPE even after making provisions for supplementary aids and services (such as a teacher assistant, adapted equipment and modifying instruction) (Obrusnikova & Block, 2016).

The principle of the LRE was a stark contrast to special education placements. During the 60s and 70s most children with disabilities (if they received education at all) received their education in segregated settings, often in special schools, far away from their peers without disabilities (Taylor, 1988; Zigmond, Kloo & Volonino, 2009). The typical practice of placing children with disabilities in separate programmes based on a label or pre-placement evaluation violated the LRE mandate (Bateman & Chard, 1995; Maloney, 1994; Osborne & Russo, 2014).

Legislation in Canada

The situation in Canada was different from that of the US. According to Canada’s constitution, the federal government has no authority to create or enforce laws regarding primary or secondary school education. Rather, provinces and territories govern all aspects of education including special education (Bunch, 2015; Towle, 2015). Bunch noted,

Provinces and Territories develop policies for education independently of each other. Though there is a degree of collaborative discussion among Provinces and Territories, the arrangement is loose and does not mandate change to educational policy or practice across jurisdictions.

(p. 3)

However, provinces and territories have used the 1992 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which became part of the Canada Constitution in 1982 and mentions disability in section 15 under equality of rights, when creating special education legislation (McPherson, Wheeler & Foster, 2003). From the 1950s to 1990s, there was a progressive movement in special education across Canadian provinces from segregation to integration. A somewhat universal belief developed across all provinces and territories that children with disabilities often needed something more than what their peers without disabilities received. Yet, their educational needs could be met through differentiated instructional methods within the regular education system (Brown & Andrews, 2014). However, there were no national rules or regulations in Canada similar to the least restrictive environment mandate in EHA to systematically facilitate appropriate placement of students with disabilities into general or special placements, and there was no mention in any national laws in Canada regarding what was appropriate physical education services for students with disabilities.

Mainstreaming

In the 1970s and 80s school districts in both the US and Canada struggled to integrate students with disabilities. In the US, school districts tried to implement the new LRE mandate, but found teachers and administrators unprepared, or unwilling, to truly make an integrated placement wo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: Why read another book on inclusive physical education?
• Part I Origins
• Part II Cultures and practices
• Index