Inclusion in Physical Education: A primary teacher’s actions features an interview with Catherine McBride a generalist primary teacher with a keen interest in Physical Education and Susan Marron a lecturer of Physical Education at the Institute of Education, Dublin City University (DCU) Ireland. 

Catherine describes her teaching journey to date and her research that led her to strengthen the teaching strategies she used in physical education lessons. This research informed her development of meaningful Physical Education learning experiences for all her pupils. She had a particular focus on Ben, a child in her class who is a wheelchair user. Inspired by Catherine’s work, the design of this interview resource, including recording the interview, was undertaken by Susan with the support of her colleague Frances Murphy. They had jointly supervised Catherine’s research as part of her Masters in Teaching at DCU. 

As part of her research study, Catherine developed a series of lesson plans designed to support her pupils’ participation in PE lessons with a particular focus on adapting learning outcomes for Ben. You can download these lesson plan resources using the link below.

DOWNLOAD: Inclusion in Physical Education a Primary Teacher’s Actions Lesson Plans

Watch the full video interview below. You can find the full transcript under the video. At the end of this post is a list of references and resources related to this project.

Video Sub sections

• 1:22 Planning to include and the research journey
• 5:45 Planning the environment
• 6:15 Collaborations and strategies
• 8:34 The physical education lessons
• 11:45 How did Ben run, jump and throw
• 15:58 Resources and the TREE model
• 17:18 Social Personal and Health lessons
• 19:22 Implications of research for physical education going forward

Transcript

Interviewer: Susan Marron

 Participant: Catherine McBride (Primary School Teacher)

 Subject: Inclusion in Physical Education

 Duration of Interview: 25 Minutes and 11 Seconds

 

Interviewer: Welcome Catherine and thank you for agreeing to make this video with us today. As a generalist primary school teacher in Dublin we invited you to chat today following the recent completion of your MTeach studies at ‘DCU’ through the process of action research.

The focus of your research was actually on inclusive physical education and it was the engagement of a child called Ben in your class whom you teach who is a wheelchair user. 

Question 1: But before we get into the detail of your studies, could you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Participant: I am a mainstream primary school teacher. I’m from Donegal in the northwest of Ireland. I have been teaching since 2013. I did my undergrad in St. Pats and after that I started teaching locally in an all-boys primary school. So, I’ve kind of gained experience in junior and senior infants and in second and third class more recently.

Interviewer: Then when you said locally?

Participant: I’m in north Dublin city.

Interviewer: In Dublin city, great.

Question 2: So, now can you tell me a little bit about the pathway your professional career took you following your undergraduate degree and that led you now to take your Masters?

Participant: St. Pats campus in ‘DCU’ were quite close by and I thought it was a good time to enrol in the ‘Master of Teaching’. The Master of Teaching, I completed it part time over two years while I was working full time. It is…, in the first year there are about six modules that are about 5,000 words per each assignment. We had a variety of modules on, ‘where is the workplace’, ‘the learning community’, ‘research methods’, ‘curriculum’ and ‘pedagogy’ etc., and then in the second year we had one module on ‘research methods’ and in the second we choose our thesis topic and for me, I did mine in ‘physical education’, as specifically in the inclusion of one child with ‘SEN’ in the mainstream classroom.

Interviewer:

Question 3: And is there a certain methodology that underpins the MTeach as such?

Participant: Yeah.

Interviewer: Could you tell us a little about that?

Participant: I would have learned a lot through action research which is a process of self-reflective enquiry and basically looking at a specific setting and looking at one thing within that setting. So, I would have been looking to improve my own practice. 

So, in first year I did a little bit of action research in regard to ‘literacy’ and a few things like that.

In the second year it was due to the fact that a child was coming to the school. He was coming from a special school where he was maybe at a ratio of one teacher or maybe two teachers and there were seven children in the class and he was coming to my classroom in which there were going to be thirty children and he wouldn’t have been the only child with needs within that classroom.

So, I suppose I was looking at how do I teach ‘PE’ now and I met him at the end of the first year when I was kind of starting to think about what I might research and it just made sense to me. I have a real interest in sport myself and fitness and I always enjoy teaching ‘PE’.

So, I kind of started to look, was it a valuable area for research? I started to look at what was out there for the main classroom teacher and it seemed to be quite a unique case in finding a child who was coming from a special school in Dublin and he was coming to our school just to see how we would adapt, not only the curriculum but even the physical school environment and the classroom and the reality of the situation was, there was a lot to be done and I thought that my research might be beneficial to this child.

Interviewer – Question 4:  Catherine, Jean McNiff is one of the theorists who promotes action research and it’s a cyclical process. Could you tell us a little bit about that cyclical process for practitioner teachers?

Participant: So, with action research, I basically would choose one area and for me it was ‘PE’. I would research that area; I would adapt my own practice and then I suppose I would record how that all went. So, I recorded that data through mm…

So, I’ve my observation notes and my reflective journal and then I would look at all that and assess how was this action research actually improving my practice and how would that influence future teaching and learning and then the process would continue again.

Interviewer – Question 5: Great and the problem was then, what was the problem you were pointing to look at?

Participant: Yeah. I suppose for me I was unsure on how I was going to include this child, how I was going to plan effectively to ensure his learning and through ‘PE’. 

In the June at the end of my first year I met with that child, his parents, the physio, the psychologist and the current teacher and the principal of the school with my own principal and we had a very big meeting about the transition and we were trying to create a plan and we were looking at an ‘IEP’ (Individual Education Program). We looked at that in the June, then I went away and planned that and over the summer I was pondering over, ‘would this be an area I could research?’. Could I suppose pool ‘PE’ together with this child’s movement to our school. 

Then he started the school in September, and I gained ethical approval in November time and had the pre-intervention interview around Christmas and then in January I started the plan and it ran for six weeks. It was eight x thirty minute lessons, ‘PE’ lessons. So, there were eight ‘PE’ lessons that were scaffolded by four ‘SPHE’ [Social Personal and Health Education] lessons, one each week.

I was quite enlightened about how different his situation was at that time and I was thinking he’s going to be coming into a very busy mainstream classroom with 29 other children, there’s a lot going on, there’s a lot of movement, children coming in and out for resource just in the general running of the day, so, I was looking ahead to see what I could put in place now and Ben also has Autism. So, there was a lot of things I was trying to consider, he has Autism and Cerebral Palsy and he uses a wheelchair and a cane walker. So, we were trying to look at all these things and our school is quite an old school and we were looking at practically putting in ramps, working out a classroom plan that would facilitate him moving around the classroom. Simple things like that that I was hoping would help him when he started with us. 

I gained more probably from the pre intervention interview from his mother about his personality, his likes, his dislikes. She had shown me videos from him at physio, what he could do. Even simple things like, how to get him from the chair. I spoke to his physio around Christmas time when I was planning the lessons. Even just simply how to get him from a chair to a mat and we realised it was from a chair to a bench, from a bench to a mat to safely get him to the floor and I soon realised that this was something that he really really enjoyed, the freedom of being away from the chair and being like the other children was very important to him in his own words. 

So, I gained, I’d say the specific of what I gained was probably more important from the pre-intervention interview. It was a lot of paperwork I suppose and general kind of discussion the first day I suppose. We were all apprehensive. They had attempted for him to move to our school the year before and just with a lot of surgery and things it wasn’t possible. So, I suppose the parents were looking towards, they weren’t really looking towards his educational needs specifically, they were just hoping he’d be happy, he’d be content, he would settle in and I suppose as his teacher I was looking at the educational side of things I think more so specifically in ‘PE’ but also in general across all the subjects and I was wondering how I was going to be able to facilitate that.

Interviewer – Question 6: Catherine, one of the strategies recommended in inclusive education is talking to the child themselves about their capabilities. Could you tell me a little bit about your interactions with Ben, maybe before he started in your school and maybe in the first term?

Participant:  I learned a lot from when he started in our school in September and I learned that he is a very calm, a very interested child. He likes routine so we would have set up a visual time table, we would have all key times for our various classes including ‘PE’ every week and he would be very interested in keeping to that timetable which was good for me too in a very busy class day. 

I learned I suppose how he learned best was from short specific learning objectives. What I would have done when I was creating the plan is, I would have worked with this ‘SNA’ [Special Needs Assistant], I would have shared the learning objectives with his ‘SNA’ before the lesson and perhaps pre thought some of the content before the lesson. Simple things like, he had very little experience throwing or catching a ball for example. I suppose in the class that he was in with the seven children there was such a variety of different needs, it was very difficult for that teacher to carry out a normal ‘PE’ lesson in the way that we would in mainstream schools. So, I suppose I was just looking at that. I would have started off and I would have worked with a balloon maybe at the beginning towards working with a soft ball and now he would work with a basketball or maybe a tennis ball and that sort of thing and he really enjoyed that. So, just looking.

I suppose I worked as well with talking to Ben and just asking, what do you enjoy, what do you like as opposed to speaking about him. I worked as well with the Irish Wheelchair Association and would advise a ‘don’t tell me, show me approach’, because of his communicative difficulties. Sometimes he would find it hard to explain what he could do or maybe what he enjoyed, and I would just ask him to show me instead or show other children.

In terms of other children it was very important in, I created the four ‘SPHE’ [Social Personal and Health Education] lessons to I suppose educate them and gain awareness in the school community even in something so simple as a child coming behind thinking they were being very helpful and pushing him. I had to explain this to the children you know, this is like someone coming behind and pushing maybe you or I whereas when you’re in the chair you maybe need to actually ask the person would you like me to push you and encouraging Ben himself to say, ‘yes I’m tired, could you push me’ or you know, ‘no I’m okay actually I can push myself’, and just giving him that language and that…, just the ability to speak for himself and to gain confidence in that way was really important in such a big classroom.

Interviewer – Question 7: So, Catherine, now I want to know a little bit about your ‘PE’ lessons in the first term because the intervention was going to be in the 2nd term for your MTeach. So, I’d like to know what you’ve learnt in your first term from interacting with Ben in the ‘PE’ lessons?

Participant: So, in the first term I had looked a little bit at games and I had also looked a bit at basketball and I had actually later on in the year we had revisited basketball and the Irish Wheelchair Association actually came in and gave us a two hour lesson where all the children were able to use wheelchairs with Ben which was lovely. But we had looked at games and then I suppose I specifically chose athletics because I felt it was a little bit clearer than games because games was a wee bit more complex and with Ben with his autism there was a little of kind of maybe social skills that were required for games and I found games to be honest…, I suppose I started it at the start of the year because it is something I find is taught a lot whereas for me I choose athletics because it was a little clearer. Even simple things like he was running in straight lines, it was easier to teach jumping and that sort of thing so that’s why I went with athletics in the end.

Interviewer – Question 8: Right. So now moving on from that, the athletics program the MTeach research was really focussed on a four-week athletic program that you were going to plan and then teach. So, I’d like to know now a little bit about this intervention?

Participant: So, I would have focussed on running, jumping and throwing. In terms of running we would have done a lot of relays; we would have done grip relays. It was probably one of the easier ones. I would  have put a cone maybe halfway for Ben so he would have had shorter distance, maybe just simply teaching him that he had to move around the cone and come back in a straight line and we’d be doing air high five to the next person in the relay. 

In terms of jumping, we did what we call the one big push which is the standing long jump, and we taught that to Ben. We would have pre taught that with his ‘SNA’ a little bit because although it sounds very simple, he was very tempted to do a few small pushes as well, but we got it in the end. I had originally planned to maybe do it for one lesson, and it ended up for two and then throwing was a really important one, we did that in partners, we did that walking towards throwing at a target. We worked with foam javlins, we worked with bean bags, and a variety of materials. 

Interviewer – Question 9: Catherine, now I would really like to know about Bens interactions in the ‘PE’ lessons. How did he actually run, throw, jump? How did he carry the baton? Also, you mentioned you did a lot of stretching. Was he in the chair, out of the chair? …just to give us a little bit more insight into those aspects of your teaching.

Participant: So, when it came to the stretching I found that this was very important to him and he loved the freedom of getting out of the chair and I found that even when I took him to a local park being on the swings and getting out of the chair he really enjoyed, so, I thought I would incorporate this. So, as I mentioned before in discussions with his  physio we worked out a strategy to get him from the chair between myself and his ‘SNA’, the chair to the bench and the bench to the mat and we would generally do this either at the start or at end. We wouldn’t do it at both ends because it is quite time consuming and simple things like practically if his ‘SNA’ wasn’t there and sometimes she was on break during the ‘PE’ lessons, I couldn’t physically really, it would have been more difficult for me to do it alone. So, that would have been something we would have done. Some of the stretching we would have done in his chair, things he could do with his arms or let’s say pulling his knees into his chest. Some of those things he could do, or his head movement exercises. 

In terms of the actual relay, we would have planned that he would have gone half the distance and his ‘SNA’ would have been by his side even just encouraging him to stay focussed to look ahead and to be aware of the person coming before him. With the likes of the baton, he would have carried it between his knees. We would have started off with a bean bag and then we would have moved on towards a more traditional baton. Just important to stay focussed on his part of the relay was very important and just to go as quick as he could showing him how to put his hands further back of his wheelchair and go as quick as he could was all a learning curve for him.

Interviewer – Question 10:  And then in the throwing in athletics, so, I’m curious to know how Ben collected the objects after throwing?

Participant: Yes. So, with throwing Ben actually had very little experience in just reaching his arm back and just releasing and he found that quite difficult and that took us quite a long time. We would have started off with bean bags and that sort of thing and we would have moved on towards let’s say the foam javlin and bigger balls in the end but that would have been quite difficult for him and then he would have had a grabber. Just a traditional quite a long grabber just to pick up mm…, let’s say the likes of a bean bag, we would have attached maybe a little cable tie to the end of it to help him to lift it up, to scoop it up. 

We would have actually had to tell the other children, they would have been I suppose helpful and wanting to keep things going and they would have maybe lifted it up for him and it kind of discouraged him. So, we had to be quite strict about that letting him even though it took time at the start, picking it up for himself and what I would have done is I would have hung a bag off the side of his wheelchair let’s say if we were doing tennis or if we were doing athletics with bean bags. Instead of him wasting time maybe picking them up, if he would have had bean bags in this little bag and would have thrown quite a few and it would have I suppose, given him more opportunities for learning in that time.

Interviewer – Question 11: And then what resources underpinned your athletics lessons and the planning? Particularly maybe organisations that you were going to use and online resources as well as the facilities that you had at your disposal?

Participant:  Seven out of eight of my lessons were planned as indoors, so I would have used the school hall. In terms of physical resources, we would have used a lot of mats for stretching, we would have used a lot of throwing equipment, we would have used a lot of cones that sort of things. In terms of resources like online resources or resources for my own planning, I found the ‘Best Start Inclusive Schools Project’ very good from the Irish Wheelchair Association, it is skill cards and pictures, it is really really useful. I base my own lessons on the ‘PSSI’ [Primary School Sports Initiative] lessons on their website which is very good. I looked at the ‘IPPEA’ [Irish Primary PE Association] website, CARA website, just for some materials on inclusive practice in ‘PE’ and I also engaged in some ‘CPD’ [Continuous Professional Development] as well.  

I would really recommend to go through things like the ‘TREE Model’, which is lessons are adapted through teaching, the equipment, the resources and rules. I think that would be really useful for any teacher who is looking towards teaching a child with a physical disability.

Interviewer – Question 12: You also had four social personal and health educational [SPHE] lessons that supported your athletics program. Could you tell us a little bit more about those lessons and their interactions with the children?

Participant: While ‘PE’ was the key focus, ‘SPHE’ was there to support the plan. The first lesson of the ‘SPHE’ plan would have looked generally at the importance of physical education, the second would have looked at maybe the importance of a healthy diet, sleep and exercise. The third looked more closely at disability, disability awareness and athletes with disabilities and I partnered the children up and we have one iPad between two children, and we have a select time each week that we can use them. So, the children I would have picked maybe fifteen different athletes, they’d pick it out of a hat and they’d research this athlete and created a profile which they shared then with the rest of the group and we were lucky enough with the forth lesson to have an athlete who is a Para chair soccer player, so she came and visited our class, she was fantastic. 

So, we may be spent a few days creating questions to ask her and the children were so excited, we showed them videos and then she came in which was lovely for me to see they had very little interest in her disability. The more interest they had was in the actual sport, which was the most important thing, how she prepared, why she wanted to be an athlete, what qualities she thought she had that helped her in her sport. So, it was really really good for the children. So, the ‘SPHE’ was there to I suppose open the floor to discussion and to allow the children to speak about it. It was no longer maybe an elephant in the room that we weren’t talking about, it was something that we were saying that these people have a disability but they also have many other attributes, skills and personality traits and that’s what we were looking at was the key focus on ability and it was a great experience for the children especially meeting Aoife who was our Para chair athlete.

Interviewer – Question 13:  The action research process as we said already is a cyclical process. You wrote up the thesis and your findings and you made recommendations. So, what has it brought to the next stage of your teaching this year because now you’re teaching Ben again?

Participant: I suppose I’m a little bit more natural at it now and I took some other areas of the ‘PE’ curriculum and I started developing in terms of gymnastics we looked at, which was okay because we had a plan with the physio of how you know how to get him onto his mat and then we find that the most effective way to teach gymnastics for Ben was actually in stations. 

The whole class worked in partners and I had set out little cue cards of how the children should be doing each move in the gymnastics and I’d one child doing it and the other child assessing. 

For Ben, what we had for time efficiency, he would come out of his chair onto the mat and he would complete a variety of the poses that he could do, and then he would come out of his chair and then his partner would do a variety of them, instead of roaming around the classroom while the rest of them roamed around the classroom. It worked very well. 

Then the other strand that we did was the aquatics. We actually just about two months ago we did a six week program in a local swimming pool and for myself and my ‘SNA’ we thought that the most important thing was for us taking the nerves and the anxiety away from it was being organised, being planned. We went and met the coaches before we took all the children. 

So, we went the previous week, we looked at the pool and looked at the steps, we looked at the changing room, we looked at the access in and out of the pool and we just made a plan and we organised I suppose there is when you see the reality myself and one other teacher were taking sixty kids along with my ‘SNA’ and we’re trying to manage all of this, manage the bus. Unfortunately access to a lot of these buildings are very old you know, we had ramps in and out, but the pool had no real shallow end, it was quite deep for Ben but luckily he has some experience in swimming which was brilliant. His mum would take him weekly swimming so he was well used to swimming with his armbands and his noodle and what we would do is we’d get him dressed and organised and we would take his chair to the very edge of the pool which his noodle with myself and his ‘SNA’, one on each side, we would lift him to the edge of the pool and then we would let him get into the pool with our help and then we would do the same thing at the end, we would take him right to the edge of the pool and would gently really with one hand under each arm on each side and holding onto the noodle we would help lift him out and we would have maybe a plastic bag laid out on his chair and a towel so his chair wouldn’t get wet and that worked out really well and it was a really enjoyable experience for everyone involved I think down to the fact that we were organised, we had a plan. I suppose he wasn’t wasting any time; he was there with his classmates enjoying his ‘PE’ time and was enjoying his swimming which was the most important thing. 

Interviewer: And he was able to participate with all the children in the same tasks?

Participant: Yes, he was. He would take off the noodle and wanted to be down on the pool deck and I worked as a swimming coach myself in the past and I’ve swam myself so it’s something I’m very used to and I’m really interested in, so it was no problem. So, I would have sat down in the pool deck and I suppose the coach was there and she had a lot of other children and she didn’t know Ben as well as I did so I would be giving her my input and saying you know maybe we could take away the noodle now and we could just work with the armbands or maybe we could use a float and float on our back. Yeah, we adapted everything just there and then for him. I suppose she wasn’t planning it as much so we adapted then and there, and he would have been doing a variation of the same thing as his classmates.

Interviewer – Question 14: What are the three messages that you can give to the teaching community?

Participant: The importance of collaboration came out many many times dealing with key personnel like himself primarily, his mum, physio, visiting coaches let’s say the GAA [Gaelic Athletic Association] coach, the likes of his ‘SNA’ was very very important, so allowing her to pre teach some of the skills with my input. Collaborating with her, sharing the learning objectives with her to maximise her role in the lessons because I found once she knew what we were trying to set out to learn she was able to actually help him achieve those learning objectives, it was really really important. 

Also I suppose the importance of research, the importance of looking at videos for best practice, looking at some of the websites that I have mentioned or some of the programmes with a key focus on his abilities, his interests and trying to plan accordingly for that.

Interviewer – Question 15: And then are there any key resources then that you would recommend to use? I think you’ve mentioned some already but just to summarise them again.

Participant: I would look specifically at the Best Start Inclusive School Project, which was developed by the Irish Wheelchair Association, I would also look at the Inclusion Club [website], at the Move Well, Move Often which is the ‘PSSI’. The ‘PSSI’ PE lessons online as well as CARA and some resources on the IPPEA website.

Interviewer – Question: Catherine, how have you disseminated your research from your MTeach journey?

Participant: So primarily I looked to sharing my findings with the parents initially and then I shared them with my colleagues at a staff meeting. I then went on and spoke at the PEPAYS [Physical Education, Physical Activity and Youth Sport] conference in Limerick, which was really really good, it was in September last year 2018. I shared my research there with others, there were people there who were lecturers in Ireland and abroad, there were other teachers who were there and I suppose it was a really good experience for me to be able to share that information with them and share some of the resources that I have also made and things that I have found that have worked well and things that maybe have not worked so well and that I have learned from myself.

Interviewer: Thank you Catherine for coming along today. 

References and Resources

• CARA Centre: Active and Healthy Lifestyles for People with Disabilities https://caracentre.ie/
• Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) https://www.gaa.ie/my-gaa/
• Individual Education Plan (IEP) https://ncse.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/final_report.pdf
• Irish Primary Physical Education Association (IPPEA) https://www.irishprimarype.com/
• Irish Wheelchair Association Best Start Inclusive Schools Project http://activeschoolflag.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Irish
• Wheelchair-Association-Best-Start-Schools-Inclusion-Project.pdf
• Mc Bride, C. (2018). Physical Education: One Teacher’s Approach to Inclusion of a Child with SEN. St. Patrick’s College, Dublin City University (MTeach)
• PDST, Move Well, Move Often: Developing the physically literate child through the lens of fundamental movement skills. Teacher Guide, PE Curriculum, Dublin, 2017. https://pdst.ie/Physical-Education-Main
• Physical Education Physical Activity and Youth Sport (PEPAYS) https://www.pepaysireland.com/
• Primary Schools Sports Initiative (PSSI) http://pssi.pdst.ie/clickme.html
• Special Education Needs (SEN) https://ncse.ie/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ChildrenWithSpecialEdNeeds1.pdf
• Social Personal and Health Education (SPHE) https://pdst.ie/SPHE
• Special Needs Assistant (SNA) https://www.sess.ie/faq/what-role-special-needs-assistant-sna
• Introduction to the TREE Framework. Episode 12. The Inclusion Club. November 2011: Updated September 2013, August 2017. http://theinclusionclub.com/e12-introduction-to-the-tree-framework/