ABSTRACT
The inclusion of young disabled people within mainstream (physical) education has been at the forefront of international policy and programming for a number of years (Smith and Thomas 2005). However, in these new times some would suggest such developments have not changed practices in school subjects such as physical education, which continue to disadvantage many young people, including young disabled people (see Kirk 2005). Others have argued to the contrary that inclusion is morally unfair and disadvantages many young people (Barrow 2001). Both these positions expose a rather uncomfortable truth about physical education as it is currently practiced, which is that neither position, inclusion nor segregation, greatly assists young disabled people. Along with Bourdieu, we suggest that ‘what is problematic is the fact that the established order is not problematic’ (Bourdieu 1998: 56).
