Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sports Act. Living

Sec. Sport, Leisure, Tourism, and Events

Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2025.1582648

This article is part of the Research TopicAmplifying the Voices of Individuals with Visual Impairments and Deaf-blindness in the Context of SportsView all 9 articles

"Actually, it's pretty much like normal PE": Reconstructing social hierarchies from the perspective of visually impaired students and their teachers in segregated PE

Provisionally accepted
  • 1University of Education Upper Austria, Linz, Austria
  • 2University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany
  • 3University of Marburg, Marburg, Hesse, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Purpose: Blind and visually impaired (BVI) students frequently report negative experiences in inclusive Physical Education (PE), often facing social exclusion. Many transfer to special schools, however, research on social inclusion and exclusion dynamics in segregated PE remains scarce. This study examines how BVI students and their sighted PE teachers navigate ability-related social hierarchies in a segregated school in Austria. The investigation is grounded in the concept of ableism and an intersubjective understanding of inclusion. Materials and Methods: Following Clark's Mosaic Approach (2013), participant-led school tours were conducted along with semi-structured guideline interviews with 19 BVI secondary school students and three sighted PE teachers. Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2012). Results and Conclusion: The analysis identified three key social hierarchies in segregated PE: (1) the differentiation between sighted students and BVI students, reinforcing the perceived necessity and benefits of segregated PE from both student and teacher perspectives; (2) the differentiation between visually impaired and blind students based on their level of vision, which is embedded in teaching practices and internalized by students; and (3) the differentiation between students' developmental stages as perceived by teachers versus students' own self-perception, leading to tensions between necessary instructional adaptations and the risk of infantilization. The results illustrate that while feelings of inclusion can be fostered for BVI students in segregated PE by critically dismantling ableist norms of visual abilities, ableist notions can still persist in nuanced, subtle and implicit ways.

Keywords: Ableism, visual impairment, Physical Education, social hierarchies, inclusion

Received: 24 Feb 2025; Accepted: 16 Oct 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Höger, Meier and Giese. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Brigitta Höger, brigitta.hoeger@univie.ac.at

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.