The stigmatized physical educator

The purpose of this autoethnography is to challenge the traditional, hegemonic, able-bodied identity of a physical educator and to create a space for ‘non-traditional’ physical educators to speak up about their personal experiences and embodied identities. Specifically, I utilise a personal narrative approach in my attempt to address issues of embodiment, ‘the body’ and illness in relation to my teacher identity, with a particular focus on how I have navigated a spinal injury, partial paralysis and lower back surgeries as a physical education teacher educator. Throughout this article, I first explore how my teacher identity was initially centred on my athletic, able-bodied self as a young, naïve secondary physical education teacher. I then delve into how my teacher identity as a physical educator has been changed and altered due to an unexpected ‘illness’ and deteriorated physical conditions I have encountered over the past decade, causing me to question, challenge and critique my perceptions of my teacher identity in my altered and new ‘body’. I situate my teacher identity around Goffman’s (1963) theoretical concept of ‘stigma’, with a particular emphasis placed on the type of stigma associated with abominations of the body.