From Dystopia to Utopia: Attempting to Reimagine Physical Education for Disabled Students

Purpose : The purpose of this study was to explore how adapted physical education (PE) professionals would reimagine PE for disabled students if they were not required to follow the district/school-established curriculum and practices for nondisabled students. Methods : Eight adapted PE professionals completed one-to-one interviews to participate in this poststructuralist research. Data were subjected to thematic analysis to identify patterns of meaning. Findings : Based on the participants’ narratives, two cascading themes were constructed. The first theme offers the participants critique of current educational systems as well as the possibilities to move past those systems. The second theme describes participants’ ideas on how PE spaces and pedagogies can be reconstructed to better support disabled students. Discussion/Conclusion : Our findings suggest autonomy-supportive practices and the adoption of community-based instruction to enhance PE for disabled students and refute ideals that PE for disabled students is valuable only to the degree that nondisabled students are present.