Colombian pre-service physical education teachers’ conceptualizations of disability when teaching disabled students: a story completion approach

The ways in which people understand disability can influence how disabled people are treated and taught. As such, and grounded in critical disability theory, the purpose of this study was to explore Colombian pre-service physical education (PE) teachers’ conceptualizations of disability when teaching disabled students in integrated PE. This study used a story completion method and participants were 29 pre-service teachers (12 females; 17 males) from a public university in central Colombia. Pre-service teachers were randomly presented with one of two versions of a hypothetical story stem representing the presence of a disabled child in an integrated PE class and asked to complete the rest of the story. All data collected were subjected to thematic analysis which informed the construction of three themes: (a) understandings of disability based on deficit, (b) disabled students as inspirational role models, and (c) pedagogical practice informed by the individuality of disabled students. This study contributes to further understand cultural conceptualizations of disability within South American PE, and how these conceptualizations and understandings contribute, or not, to the wellbeing of disabled students in the Global South.