A Discourse Analysis of Disability on Websites of Accredited Kinesiology Programs in Canada

Persons who experience disability remain underrepresented and frequently marginalized within university kinesiology programs. This Foucauldian discourse analysis examined the representation (or silencing) of disability on 20 accredited Canadian kinesiology program websites. Four themes, each articulating a discursive strategy displayed at the university, program, and curricular levels, were identified: (a) governing through absence-the active production of invisibility, (b) strategic containment-symbolic inclusion and compartmentalization, (c) the optimization imperative-from excellence to rehabilitation, and (d) counter-discourses-governmental instability or reproduction? Accredited Canadian kinesiology programs largely signal that disability and persons who experience disability do not belong within kinesiology programs. Indeed, the four discursive strategies function together to manage the contradiction between kinesiology's investment in the normate bodymind and universities' public commitment to inclusion. The authors close with suggestions that may enable kinesiology educators and administrators to intervene on how they discursively construct disability, contributing to a less marginalizing and exclusionary education system.