“What’s the Difference?” Women’s Wheelchair Basketball, Reverse Integration, and the Question(ing) of Disability

Abstract

The inclusion of able-bodied athletes within disability sport, a phenomenon known as reverse integration, has sparked significant debate within adapted physical activity. Although researchers and practitioners have taken up positions for or against reverse integration, there is a lack of supporting research on the experiences of athletes who already play in such settings. In this study, we explore how competitive female athletes who have a disability experience reverse integration in Canadian wheelchair basketball. Athletic identity was used as the initial conceptual framework to guide semistructured interviews with nine participants. The results suggest that participation in this context contributed to positive athletic identities. Interviews also pointed to the unexpected theme of “what’s the difference?” that this sporting context provided a space for the questioning and creative negotiation of the categories of disability and able-bodiedness. Methodologically, this paper also explores the possibilities and challenges of inter- worldview and insider-outsider research collaboration.

Say What You Mean: Rethinking Disability Language in Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly

“…Classifiable should not be assumed to equate to disabled (or unclassifiable to able-bodied). Some classifiable athletes may not have a diagnosis or disability identity (e.g.. Paralympic athletes eligible because of minor knee injuries); many medically diagnosed athletes are not classifiable (e.g., a person with vision impairment alone could not play wheelchair rugby); athletes have been shown to use terms such as disabled and AB in complex, contextual, and shifting ways that do not always match our definitions (Spencer-Cavaliere & Peers, 2011) and-as we have discussed at length-disability, in many theoretical models, cannot directly be equated to bodily difference. If selecting participants by eligibility status in sport alone, it may be more precise to articulate participants in the language of the community (e.g., classifiable athletes or Paralympic Bocce athletes rather than athletes with disabilities).…”

“…If selecting participants by eligibility status in sport alone, it may be more precise to articulate participants in the language of the community (e.g., classifiable athletes or Paralympic Bocce athletes rather than athletes with disabilities). It follows from this argument that the term disability sport can also sometimes be erroneous and has been explicitly rejected by some athletes in defining the sports they play (Spencer-Cavaliere & Peers, 2011). Alternative terms depend on the sports to which one collectively refers, but some include wheelchair sport, parasport; adapted sport, and whenever possible, simply sport (or the sport's name).…”

“…The recognition of multiple disability understandings and terminologies outside of the policy, for example, is evidenced by authors who explicitly articulate their rationale for their chosen disability terminology, even when it fits within APAQ's current language policy (e.g., Grenier, Wright, Collins, & Kearns, in press). These limitations are also evidenced by a handful of published APAQ articles that include language that lies outside of the official policy, including, for example: "persons experiencing disability" (Goodwin & Rossow-Kimball, 2012); "living with a disability" (Bredahl, 2013); "adults with mobility impairments" (Morphy & Goodwin, 2012); "wheelchair dependent participants" (Goosey-Tolfrey & Crosland, 2010); "classifi able athletes" (Spencer-Cavaliere & Peers, 2011); and "deaf children" (Hartman, Houwen, & Visscher, 2011). It is worth noting that not all of these deviations from APAQ's language policy are ones that we believe should be supported.…”

Considering values in the sport experiences of wheelchair basketball players

“…As a peripheral value, sport enhanced the players' selfperception in various social roles, such as an employee, a friend, or a participant in social occasions. only few respondents found sport central to their axiological systems, enhancing their self-perception as players and weakening their self-perception in other social roles, for example, of a student, a friend, or an employee [1,8,10,12,15,19].…”

“…they focus intensely on perfecting their psycho-physical condition and technical skills, with other values -family, education, jobs, etc. -thoroughly subordinated to the former goal [19]. in turn, sport as a peripheral value neither significantly influences one's functioning nor clusters around itself other values which could have such an impact.…”