Conference Agenda

In England, increasing numbers of pupils are being identified with a severe learning difficulty (SLD). However, limited research has been undertaken to examine these pupils’ perspectives of education broadly and, more specifically, within the context of special school physical education (PE). While current international policy recognises the right of pupils to have a say in matters that affect them, the challenges of facilitating ‘voice’ for pupils with SLDs – particularly those who are non-verbal – can make this difficult to achieve. Key adults within a special school context (e.g. teachers, carers, support workers) play a central role in supporting pupils with SLDs’ engagement and participation in education, yet limited research has focused on the mechanisms by which they facilitate pupil voice. This study highlights the specific contribution that these practitioners can make in facilitating and amplifying the voices of pupils with SLDs. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with adults (n = 7) who support educational provision for pupils with SLDs. Findings illustrate that pedagogies exist to empower these pupils, but they are often deemed to be tokenistic. Moreover, specialist education is required for practitioners, alongside a more person-centred approach that removes pressures of time and the sole use of physical ‘voice’ to communicate. In summary, this research demonstrates that practitioners working with pupils with SLDs are crucial to them voicing their experiences and informing practice within PE.

This study examines the participatory development process of a digital sound ball designed to enhance inclusive experiences and participation opportunities for blind and visually impaired (BVI) students in Physical Education (PE). As a growing body of international research indicates, BVI students experience significant barriers to participation in educational settings, particularly in PE. These barriers manifest not only socially, e.g. through bullying, indifference or unwillingness to adapt instruction and assigning tokenistic roles to BVI students (e.g., Ball et al., 2022; Haegele et al, 2021), but also in material-discursive arrangements such as dominant visual norms inscribed in PE equipment and specific forms of movement games (Meier et al., 2023).

Digital assistive technologies (DATs) are frequently considered promising tools to reduce participation barriers and promote participation for disabled people, as well as specifically for BVI students in PE. However, in reality, they are far from neutral or unambiguously beneficial. Users must adapt to altered forms of feedback and undergo a “drastic sensory reorientation” in order to make sense of their movements and surroundings through new modalities (Sparkes et al., 2018). Importantly, the perspectives of BVI people, including the material, social, and embodied dimensions of their subjective experiences in relation to DATs are often marginalised (Asare et al., 2023), constituting what Fricker (2007) conceptualises as a form of epistemic injustice. In this regard, able-bodied individuals’ testimonies have been given undue credibility regarding the development of DATs despite lacking lived and embodied experiences of disability. As a consequence, inadequate and biased collective understandings of disability and DATs are perpetuated.

To address this tension, we adopt an ableism-critical perspective combined with a cultural understanding of disability (Campbell, 2009; Wolbring, 2008), which has recently gained prominence in international sports pedagogical research. Through this, we conceptualize DATs as inextricably entangled with cultural meanings of disability that both shape and are shaped by how disability is framed within society (Wolbring, 2024). Hence, DATs and their development must be considered highly ambivalent. Specifically, the analytical figure of the “techno-supercrip” (ibid.) exemplifies this ambivalence: while technological augmentations are often framed as empowering or even heroic, such narratives frequently reproduce medicalised and deficit-oriented understandings of disability and evaluate disabled bodies against able-bodied standards of performance and productivity (Haraway, 1998). However, by centralising the situated and embodied knowledges of disabled people, hegemonic epistemic arrangements and power hierarchies in research and technological design can be challenged and destabilized, opening possibilities for more inclusive, participatory, and empowering research practices and technological advancements (Fitzgerald et al., 2021; Höger & Meier, 2025). Against this background, the common underlying principles of participatory research and design methodologies, such as Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR; Cammarota & Fine, 2008), Inclusive Participatory Action Research (IPAR; Wickenden & Lopez Franco, 2022) and Participatory Design (PD, Simonsen & Robertson, 2013), offer fruitful avenues to respond to this epistemic injustice by investigating the nexus of disability and technology in the field of sports and PE in a way that challenges hegemonic modes of knowledge production.Rather than positioning participants as mere informants and end-users, YPAR/IPAR recognizes their specific competences and capacities to actively contribute to and shape all stages of the research process. Equivalently, PD seeks to enable their genuine participation as acknowledged contributors in iterative design processes through mutual learning and the collaborative exploration of needs, possibilities and constraints.

In Norway, the changing room in physical education (PE) has been referred to as a “black box”, reflecting its lack of transparency (Moen et al., 2018). This is evident in several ways: few studies have been conducted on the changing room (O’Donovan et al., 2015), there are no national guidelines for how teachers should manage it and teachers are rarely present in the changing room (Moen et al., 2018).

While research on the changing room has primarily focused on the student perspective, some studies have examined it from the perspective of teachers. These studies suggest a trend toward the sexualization of teacher behavior, where actions intended as caring may instead be interpreted by students as inappropriate or even sexually harassing (Öhman, 2017; Garratt et al., 2013). Teachers express an escalating fear of accusations tied to sexual harassment, fueled by moral panic and media coverage (Piper et al., 2013). This fear seems to be more prominent among the male teachers (Öhman, 2017). While this affects PE more broadly, in the context of the changing room and the growing fear of accusations, it becomes particularly challenging for teachers to be present in these spaces, and enforce rules, routines and secure a safe environment for the students (Garratt et al., 2013; Öhman, 2017). This is exemplified by a quote from a teacher in Öhman’s (2017) study: “Even if [the girls] were killing each other in the changing room, I would never go in there” (p. 308).

The reluctance to engage with the changing room seems to intersect with the body-related challenges reported by students (Frydendahl & Thing, 2018; Fisette, 2011). Bakken et al. (2021) found that these challenges are exacerbated by the increased role of smartphones and social media, which further amplify body-related pressures. In Norway, 94% of all children between 9-11 years old own smartphones (Medietilsynet, 2024). Considering these developments, it is unlikely that handling the changing room has become easier for teachers. At the same time as students clearly do not want teachers to be present in the changing room, many parents, principals and researchers expect the teacher to be present in the changing room, making sure students are safe (Dølgaard et al., 2025). Thus, teachers find themselves in a twofold powerlessness between polarizing expectations. This paper seeks to answer the following research question: How do teachers experience the changing room and how teachers can navigate this space in everyday school life?

To discuss our findings, we draw upon central concepts from Foucault, mainly focusing on discourse and power. In a Foucauldian (1972) perspective, discourses encompass perceptions and knowledge, including both what is said and unsaid. Individuals engage in discourses, often unknowingly, which shape social practices and either produce new insights or reinforce existing knowledge (Foucault, 1972). The discourses surrounding bodies appear to contribute to teachers’ reluctance to engage with the changing room, resulting in a shift in power. Where teachers once held a natural position of authority in this space, it now seems that power has changed, with students taking a more dominant role, leading to the absence of the teacher. From a Foucauldian perspective, power should not be understood as students explicitly taking control or authority in the changing room (1995). Instead, power functions most effectively when it is invisible and diffuse, shaping behaviors and interactions without being directly observed (Foucault, 1995). We argue that this invisible and pervasive form of power significantly contributes to teachers’ reluctance to engage with or remain present in the changing room.

EU policy states: ‘Physical activity is important for all children regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or social background. Everyone should be able to participate in the activities proposed, including less active and less skilled children, in order to prevent negative experiences resulting from inadequate practice environments and approaches’ (EU Workplan 2014-2017, 10). While inclusion is a common aspiration of primary physical education across Europe, the realities of practice too often privilege some children and leave others feeling discounted or excluded to varying degrees (Qvortrup & Qvortrup, 2018). Approaches that promote a more inclusive physical education where all learners can belong and be successful are needed to ensure that all children can build a life-enriching relationship with physical activity. Focusing on the quality of all children’s experiences within physical education provides one avenue to more inclusive physical education. The democratic and reflective pedagogical principles of Meaningful physical education (PE) seem to offer the personalisation and individualisation needed for all children to be comprehensively included (Fletecher and Ní Chróinín, 2022). This research explored the potential of Meaningful PE as an overall framework for teaching and learning decisions in physical education to promote inclusive physical education approaches that account for the diversity of the student population. The overall research question was: What are teachers’ experiences of using Meaningful PE to promote inclusion and account for diversity?