With a growing interest in sport, fitness, and a healthy lifestyle, bodily practices are increasing in importance in our society. In the school context, physical education (PE) is the subject where these practices play a central role. But, the German language discourse shows in an exemplary manner that inherent body-related social normality requirements are articulated in didactic traditions and curricular requirements, and that these normality requirements have exclusionary potential for those students who do not fit into the norms. Against this background, this article seeks to understand children with visual impairments’ (CWVI’s) individual constructions of PE in a school specialized for CWVI in Germany. This interview study with eight CWVI focused on individual opportunities and challenges concerning central aspects in PE. The findings show that the CWVI draw ambivalent perspectives on PE that range from existential fears (e.g., fears of heights) to feeling free in working off energy. These aspects especially gain importance in connection to the body, when the general wish to learn and experience with the body seems to be disturbed by normality requirements – like doing certain movements in a pre-defined way – which lead to existential challenges for the CWVI. Further, the relationship between blind and visually impaired students in PE seems ambivalent. Within this special school setting, the segregation according to the external differentiation in “handicapped” and “non-handicapped” somehow leads to a kind of subsegregation at the blind and visually impaired school.

The aim of this study was to reconstruct subjective constructions of experiences in PE and feelings of being valued within PE classes in Germany by students with visual impairment (VI). Two female and two male students (average age: 19.25 years) participated in the study from the upper level. For the reconstruction of experiences of feeling valued, episodic interviews with a semi-structured interview guide were used. The data analysis was conducted with MAXQDA 2020 based on content-related structuring of qualitative text analysis with deductive–inductive category formation. To structure the analysis, the main category, feelings of being valued, was defined by two poles (positive feelings of being valued as opposed to bullying). As a main finding, respondents primarily reported negative feelings and experiences characterized by instances of bullying, discrimination, and physical and social isolation, perpetuated by both their peers and teachers. In search of a deeper understanding, we identified social hierarchy as an underlying structure determining the students’ perceived positioning within the social context and thus directing their feelings of being (de-)valued. It became evident that it is not the setting per se that determined social hierarchy, but that it is more about the concrete manifestation of social hierarchy.

Physical education (PE) is an important part of school education worldwide, and at the same time, almost the only subject that explicitly deals with body and movement. PE is therefore of elementary importance in the upbringing of young people. This also applies to children with visual impairments. However, existing findings on participation and belonging in PE as well as on physical and motor development reveal that this group of children and adolescents is noticeably disadvantaged in this respect. Against this background, this paper aims to explore fundamental barriers and challenges across different types of schools, types of schooling, and countries from the perspective of visually impaired children. The qualitative interview study with 22 children with visual impairments at different types of schools in three countries (Austria, Germany, USA) reveals that none of the respondents could escape the power of social distinctions and related problematic and existing hierarchies. Hence, ideas of normality and associated values remain the main challenge for all of them. However, the type-forming analysis provides important insight across settings on how visually impaired children differ on this, allowing for greater sensitivity to the concerns of children with visual impairments.

The issue of health plays an important role in the German language sports pedagogical discussion and in German curricula. It is also important here that the idea of ‘Bildung’—an educational ideal in the German tradition which is still of paramount importance and which stems from the obligation of enlightenment and is intended to enable mature judgment—is a normative idea for school lessons. In terms of health in physical education, this throws up the question of whether PE for young people should not simply be focused towards a healthy lifestyle, but rather towards understanding what and how a healthy lifestyle could be and reflect on the role they want it to play in their lives in an emancipatory manner. Therefore, this paper examines the way in which health and health education are considered in current curricula in Germany. A hermeneutic oriented qualitative text analysis is carried out. Alongside differences between the states, the analysis shows an overall tendency towards narrowing down health education. The paper finally seeks to critically discuss this narrowing from a pedagogical perspective as an exemplary process which might be observed in a similar way in other countries.