ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses student diversity, schools, and the implications for teacher preparation. Teaching diverse learners in diverse contexts requires that educators develop social-cultural competency. Essential to this development is the understanding that student diversity comprises numerous socially constructed variables such as the differences associated with ethnicity, race, gender, culture, sexuality and sexual orientation, and ability/disability status. The chapter also discusses the social construction of diversity and physical education teachers' sociocultural competencies. The Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services has prioritized the training of personnel, including adapted physical education teachers, to address the specialized needs of high-need children and adolescents with disabilities. The chapter focuses on teaching a diversity of learners with disabilities through social justice pedagogies and presents recommendations for the culturally responsive education of students with and without disabilities. To effectively implement social justice pedagogies and to demonstrate cultural competence, teachers must progress from ethnocentric perspectives stemming from a dominant social hegemony to a place of cultural awareness.
