Professor Justin A. Haegele - Let the children have their say: Re-imaging pedagogy with visually impaired children

IAS Residential Fellow Professor Justin A. Haegele delivers a seminar on their research - Visually impaired youth are often enrolled in integrated educational environments, specifically within physical education (PE), but seldom experience feelings of inclusion (acceptance, belonging, and value) within those spaces. Rather, they often identify experiencing issues with marginalization, discrimination, and ostracization within PE, and that pedagogical practices that are implemented within this educational space are perceived as inappropriate and belittling because they do not take their needs or opinions into consideration. To address these issues, this work-in-progress seminar will share research that aims to explore how visually impaired students experience specific pedagogical strategies and curricular content, and re-imagine PE for blind and visually impaired youth while co-producing resources with visually impaired youth to be disseminated to PE teachers support feelings of acceptance, belonging, and value. This study centralizes disabled people and their voices as critical parts of the research process, and is guided by the conceptual lens of inclusion as intersubjective experiences. For more information about the IAS, please visit - https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/ias