Learning objectives

By engaging with the text in this chapter, students will be able to:

• identify and describe some of the many diversity issues that teachers might experience in physical education

• generate and develop inclusionary instructional planning and practices to address these issues

• recognise that diversity enriches everybody and that everybody has strengths and weaknesses

• develop strategies to provide a safe and comfortable learning environment for all students by appreciating and demonstrating that effective learning results from the collaboration of all class members.

Yvonne has received her first appointment to a school in Perth as a Year 3 teacher. Yvonne will also be the physical education and health teacher for two days a week. The school is in a lower socioeconomic area which borders on a new housing estate. Due to recent vandalism, the school is surrounded by a fence and the grounds are off-limits to students out of hours. On the first staff training day, Yvonne receives her class list and notices that her students represent a variety of nationalities, with many identified as speaking English as a second language. She also notes that one child in her class has autism and will be supported by a teacher’s assistant; another child is in a wheelchair. This child will share the teacher assistant’s time with the child with autism. There is a high Indigenous population in the school.

At Yvonne’s first staff meeting, she asks the other teachers to provide her with an overview of their class structures so that she can plan for physical education and health. She asks teachers to list any attributes that the children in their classes might have that would help her to work out what issues she needs to be aware of.

Yvonne discovers that the students in the school are from at least 30 different nationalities, there are children with physical disabilities in five classes and there are many different religions represented in the school population. The school nurse also provides a student profile to Yvonne. She is alarmed to discover that during recent screening, more that 50 per cent of the students were identified as overweight, with 7 per cent identified as obese.