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In this article, Hayley Fitzgerald, Anne Jobling and David Kirk consider the physical education and sporting experiences of a group of students with severe learning difficulties. Their study is thought provoking, not only because of the important and somewhat neglected subject matter, but equally for the research approach adopted. The way in which the study engaged with the students and the insights gained from that engagement will be of particular interest to practitioner researchers.

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This article focuses on young people with disabilities and mainstream physical education in England. Within this context there have been unprecedented levels of funding and resources directed towards physical education in order to support more inclusive physical education experiences for all young people, including those with disabilities. Physical education holds a unique place within the school curriculum; it is a subject area where the physicality of students is publicly exposed to others (including teachers, classmates, and support staff). There are likely to be some tensions around physical education and its relationship with students with disabilities. In particular, it is claimed that physical education was conceived of, and continues to be practiced, in a normative way. By drawing on interview data from three young people with disabilities, non-fictional narratives are used to re-present their identities at the intersections of schooling, physical education and disability. These narratives offer insights about how physical education impacts on various aspects of social life including home, family, friends and other school subjects.

It has long been recognised that family is an important arena in which sporting tastes and interests are nurtured. Indeed, for many young people the family introduces them to and then provides ongoing support for engaging in sport. Research has also indicated that the family has a significant position in the lives of young disabled people. In this paper we explore the interrelationships between sport, family and disability. Like a number of writers within disability studies we see the benefits of moving beyond a structure/agency dichotomy that currently limits social and medical model understandings of disability. In particular, we draw on the work of Marcel Mauss and Pierre Bourdieu both of whom argued that social life can be better understood by considering the embodiment of individuals through their habitus. We draw on data generated in an interview-based study with 10 young disabled people to explore the ways in which family contributes to, and mediates, sporting tastes and interests. We consider two key questions: How do young disabled people negotiate relations within the family and in what ways do these relations influence sporting tastes and interests? To what extent are young disabled people able to use sport to generate and convert (valued) capital within the family and other related arenas?