1st Edition

Reflexivity and Change in Adaptive Physical Activity Overcoming Hubris

Edited By Donna Goodwin, Maureen Connolly Copyright 2023
    266 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This provocative and challenging book argues for the vital importance of critical self-reflexion in the field of adaptive physical activity (APA).

    It makes a powerful case for embracing discussions of the harm caused by ableist assumptions of the ideal body, maximizing capabilities and perfecting normative-based movement that dominate contemporary discourse in APA, and calls for more critical introspection about what APA is, how it is performed, and what might be needed to bring a collaborative relational ethic to this field. The book focuses on two key themes.  Firstly, how ableism as a foundational belief system of APA is present in the undergraduate curriculum, professional preparation, professional practice, and organizational policies. Secondly, how to make the comfortable uncomfortable by openly debating the harm that results from non-reflexive (nondisabled) hubris in APA. The goal is to spark an exchange of ideas among scholars, practitioners, and organizational leaders and therefore to shift the paradigm from one of professional expertism to one that centres disability wisdom holders, bringing a fundamental change to how we perform adaptive physical activity.

    This book is important, progressive reading for anybody with an interest in adaptive physical activity, adapted physical education, disability sport, inclusive education, the philosophy and ethics of disability and sport, or disability in wider society.

    Ableism Hiding in Plain Sight: An Introduction in Four Acts

    MAUREEN CONNOLLY

    PART I

    Making the Comfortable Uncomfortable

    1 Disrupting Ableism in Adaptive Physical Activity through Anti-ableist Research and Practice

    KAREN P. DEPAUW

    2 10 Things I Hate about ‘Inclusion’ in Physical Education

    JUSTIN A. HAEGELE AND WESLEY J. WILSON

    3 Disablism, Ableism, and Enlightened Ableism in Contemporary Adapted Physical Activity Textbooks: Practising What We Preach?

    DANIELLE PEERS, LINDSAY EALES, AND DONNA GOODWIN

    4 The Ethics of Wilful Ignorance: “Someone Needs to Tell Those Parents There Is Something Wrong with Their Kid”

    DONNA GOODWIN

    PART II

    Ableism in Adaptive Physical Activity: The Taken-for-Granted

    5 Adaptive Physical Activity Practices That Can Perpetuate or Perpetrate Trauma and Mental Distress: More Harm Than Good?

    LINDSAY EALES

    6 Counterstories of Community Service Learning: “We Are Not an Eight-Hour Dumping Ground”

    KYOUNG JUNE YI

    7 Emulating Disability: Disrupting a Taken-for-granted Practice

    JENNIFER LEO

    PART III

    Social Justice and Critical Pedagogy

    8 Critical Self-Reflexivity in the Education of Adaptive Physical Activity Practitioners: Disputing the Severely Able-bodied Student

    ØYVIND FØRLAND STANDAL

    9 Towards a Critical Discourse of Physical Literacy in Adapted Physical Activity

    KYLE PUSHKARENKO

    10 Intersectionality, Disability, Justice, and Critical Pedagogy

    SAMUEL R. HODGE, ROSS D. JORDAN, AND KIMBERLY J. SMITH

    11 Engaging in Reflexive Writing in Adaptive Physical Activity

    BRENDA ROSSOW KIMBALL

    PART IV

    Organizational Spaces that Exclude

    12 Ableism within Adapted/Physical Education Teacher Education: Implications for Practice

    MICHELLE GRENIER AND MARTIN GIESE

    13 Divergent Professionalism in Inclusive Physical Education:

    Neglecting Collaboration in Preparation, Professional Development, and Practice

    HAYLEY J. MORRISON

    14 Dis/ability Sport for “All”: The Ultimate Dream

    CARLA FILOMENA SILVA AND P. DAVID HOWE

    PART V

    Reflexivity: A Moral Imperative for Change and Optimism

    15 Reflections on Sport, Disability, and the Need for Adaptive Physical Activity to Evolve: Growing Up

    HEATHER R. KUTTAI

    16 Critical Service-Learning and Reflection on Power and Assumptive Thinking

    JIHOUN AN

    17 Inspiration Porn and Disability Sport

    JEFFREY J. MARTIN

    18 How Critical Engagement with Embodiment, Agency, and Hope Contributes to Authentic Pedagogy in Adaptive Physical Activity

    MAUREEN CONNOLLY

    Conclusion: An Emerging Era for Adaptive Physical Activity

    DONNA GOODWIN

    Biography

    Donna Goodwin is Professor Emerita in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her research focuses on bringing to light the literal and metaphorical lives of disabled people as they negotiate the social and cultural impediments to engagement in physical activity and community life. She grounds her teaching philosophy in the need for crucial self-reflexion on taken-for granted pedagogical practices in teacher education and professional service delivery.

    Maureen Connolly is Professor of Physical Education and Kinesiology in the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences at Brock University, Canada. Maureen works with qualitative arts-based inquiry, narrative, poetic, and bodily expressive modalities and how these function across scholarly, pedagogic, and other creative outlets. She is a YWCA Woman of Distinction, a university teaching award winner and 3M National Teaching Fellow (2003), and a 2009 Erasmus Mundus scholar. Her teaching and research interests include curriculum, stressed embodiment, dance, and movement education.