Making inclusion easy
Issue: Volume 31 Number 1
Gymnastics Australia and the Australian Football League (AFL) have dismissed any notion that promoting a culture of inclusion in sport is difficult.
‘It’s been surprisingly easy,’ Gymnastics Australia Education Manager Linda Pettit said of her organisation’s ongoing work to include children with disability in programs.
‘Coaching well is just about providing opportunities for people as per their own individual needs,’ Pettit said. ‘What we’re trying to do is reinforce that if you have a child in your program with a disability, your coaching practice really should not change. Be aware of the disability but maintain the strategies and competencies that we already have in the program, which is just about catering for individual needs.’
Pettit said initial groundwork for changing the culture began with speaking to coaches at national championships, letting them know that inclusion resources would soon be available that included tools and tips which could potentially add to their coaching experience.
Geoff Reitschel from Gymnastics Australia said providing these resources was an important step. ‘We took the approach that if we’re going to have this shift towards inclusion and we have expectations of our [gymnastics] community, then we will resource our community to be able to do it properly.’
Those resources have included an online education package — Managing Inclusion in Gymnastics — aimed at raising awareness and getting across a social message about inclusion rather than the technical aspects of coaching a participant with disability. The package has been supported through the Australian Sports Commission’s Sports CONNECT framework, which assists national sporting organisations to develop a Disability Action Plan and provides funding assistance for some of the strategies under those plans.
The next step for the sport is making managing inclusion a mandatory part of any accreditation or re-accreditation process for coaches and officials from 2011.
AFL Manager of Coaching, Umpiring and Volunteers Lawrie Woodman said his sport is also seeing the success of having a more inclusive approach with Indigenous communities and people with disability.
‘It’s not that different to what coaches would normally do. All we’re asking is that coaches take an inclusive approach to their coaching so that no matter who turns up at a training session, or at an Auskick centre or a junior club or a senior club for that matter, the coach can embrace and welcome those people and include them in their activities.
‘High performance coaches do it all the time by making small-sided games, uneven numbers, focusing on a particular skill, or tactic [and] inclusive practice is exactly the same just doing it for a different reason,’ Woodman said.
An AFL review of manuals resulted in some modifications to ensure that the material presented in accreditation courses focused on the practicalities of inclusion.
‘We use an acronym called TREE when we’re talking about inclusion,’ Woodman explained. Coaches can apply the TREE principle to modify and challenge players according to their ability:
T — Teaching/coaching style
R — Rules and regulations
E — Equipment
E — Environment.
‘Really it just comes down to creating opportunities for anyone to have a go in a game, to get a kick, get a touch, kick a goal, make a tackle but become part of the team.’
