Realising higher education’s Paralympic potential

Paralympic track medalist Dr Anjali Forber-Pratt knows a thing or two about meeting life’s challenges: she’s done it from birth. Orphaned in Kolkata, India, she contracted transverse myelitis shortly after moving to the United States and was paralysed from the waist down. Never expected to succeed, she did – and more.

In fact, she recently completed a PhD in human resource education at the University of Illinois college of education and will be competing in the 100-, 200- and 400-metre wheelchair sprint events at the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

“I’ve always been very driven,” explained Forber-Pratt. She acknowledged that although it was a challenge to stay focused on her doctorate while training six days a week, “the truth is [that] the two – being a student and an athlete – complement each other well".

She added that the opportunity to compete as an elite athlete has given her “a platform to change the world and to inspire others”. And, for herself, “my doctorate is the key that will continue to open doors for the rest of my life so that I can keep doing what I love".

If her past is anything to go by, she will continue to realise the full potential of both sport and academia in her life.

She has succeeded in balancing the two remarkably well so far: she won two bronze medals in Beijing at the 2008 Paralympic Games and, last year, won gold in the 200-metre and silvers in the 100- and 400-metre sprints at the International Paralympic Committee’s (IPC) Athletics World Championships in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Immediately after those games, she attended the IPC’s fifth VISTA conference in Bonn, Germany, where she presented two papers and gave closing remarks.

Under the aegis of “A Multidisciplinary Approach to Paralympic Success”, she and a cross-disciplinary cohort of sport scientists, coaches, athletes and sport administrators exchanged information, research and expertise on aspects of paralympic sport and lifestyle both on and off the field.

On her return to the US, Forber-Pratt turned her formidable skills to completing her dissertation, an auto-ethnographic study that explored the issues of identity development, race, disability and discrimination through the theoretical lens of cultural capital. All this she did while keeping up a rigorous training regimen.

Quite apart from her inspirational achievements, Forber-Pratt’s experience also illustrates the extent to which the paralympic movement can serve as a powerful lever in raising awareness about and understanding for individuals with disabilities.

Indeed, the movement’s growth has been meteoric: from almost imperceptible beginnings as a competition between two teams of paraplegic archers at the Ministry of Pensions Hospital in Stoke Mandeville – coinciding with the opening of the XIV Olympiad at Wembley Stadium, a short distance away, in 1948 – it has grown into an event hosting more than 4,000 participants from 150 countries in 2012.

Sixty-four years later, not only is London once again the Olympic host city, but this time the International Olympic Committee’s bidding regulations dictate that it also provide the venue for the Paralympic Games.

Not enough research into disability sport

In spite of this tacit consolidation of industry intent and goal in general, Dr Ian Brittain of the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University and author of the 2009 book The Paralympic Games Explained, notes that the higher education sector on the whole remains stubbornly reluctant to include research regarding disability sport in its agenda – let alone its curricula.

He explained: “Although people in the higher education sector have taught themselves to say ‘and Paralympic’ between ‘Olympic’ and ‘Games’, very few of them appear to have any genuine interest in the Paralympics.”

Brittain would like to see more substantive content in courses and textbooks that affirms the inclusion of people with disabilities into the rest of society. It is his intention to alert educators and researchers to the potential the Paralympic Games offer in terms of changing attitudes and helping educate society, so that “progress can prevail over prejudice”.

In the short term, he will be guest editing Routledge’s Online Studies on the Olympic and Paralympic Games website from 29 August-9 September 2012.

Longer term, he intends to form an international network with members from Canada, the UK and the US along with a representative from the English Federation for Disability Sport to meet and discuss issues pertaining to sports-related degrees and people with disabilities.

In so doing, it is expected that others will be supported to rise above adversity – like Anjali Forber-Pratt – and to discover their true potential and realise their goals.