Education, including physical education (PE), is an area where the practice of inclusion matters every day. These practices are often intended to contribute to equality and/or prosperity, but at the same time they seem to alienate students from physical education and lead to new forms of isolation (see for example Holland et al., 2022; Storr et al., 2022). Teachers, including PE teachers, struggle with these paradoxes of inclusive teaching practices (PIT). Often, their inclusive educational practices turn into individualized practices (Wienen, 2022). However, this is a practice that simultaneously excludes students. For example, when students are made responsible for their own progress in learning to perform a dance, and their next dance moves are available at any time in instructional videos. These videos show what needs to be done to reach the next level. However, in this case, students are expected to become part of the group that carries out the next level, which means they do their own inclusion work. Students exposed to such practices have reported feeling isolated from both peers and teachers (Kruiswijk, 2017).

Teachers' attempts seem to be driven by exclusive mechanisms, of which they are not aware (Dobush, 2021; Ledoux et al., 2020; Van Doodewaard. 2022). These mechanisms are often embedded in discursive practices of gender, ethnicity, ability, insecurity and citizenship (Hermans, 2023). Critical researchers have been warning for more than twenty years about the negative impact of such discriminatory practices on students, but these practices appear to be resistant to change. Or are we missing something?

That is why our research is driven by questioning the status quo: what would happen if we studied discriminatory inclusion practices in PE as ruins of capitalism and colonialism – as sites of dualistic practices, driven by hegemonic sports, health, and citizenship discourses, which scored the best, rewarded the healthiest and celebrated the most civilized as winners? (Hermans, 2024; Lynch et al., 2022; Tsing, 2015; Wienen, 2022). Inclusion practices in schools continue to label students as normal/adequate or abnormal//inadequate. The norms for including students in the 'normal' category appear to be ambiguous and riddled with educational dilemmas (Corcoran, 2019; Van Doodewaard. 2022).

We will engage in the art of noticing to discern rhizomatic patterns in inclusive teaching practices in PE (Tsing, 2015, Gravett, 2022). The art of noticing offers the opportunity to question PIT practices and look beyond their paradoxes (Taylor et al., 2023). It facilitates noticing thoughts and feelings that underlie exclusionary practices and embracing the ambiguity and unpredictability of relational practices that are part of PIT.

The research is an ongoing project, which means results and conclusions will be shared at the conference.

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