After Tokyo’s successful bid for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2013, the Olympic and Paralympic education programme has been provided at schools nationwide by the central and local governments to promote the Olympic and Paralympic Movements. This education programme is also expected to be an intangible legacy of the Games beyond 2020.

The purpose of this study is to find out what is needed for the Paralympic education programme to take root in schools as a legacy. For this purpose, the authors analyzed the questionnaire survey results from 1,077 elementary schools, 635 middle schools and 67 schools for special needs education in Tokyo and Chiba Prefecture.

Findings indicate that more than 80 percent of the schools carried out the Paralympic education programme, and that the majority of teachers felt positive about its educational effectiveness. However, the results also reveal that there are many difficulties in the implementation of the programme, such as lack of class hours and time to prepare for newly introduced programmes, budget constraints, and adaptation to annual school plans. These results support previous reports that teachers are struggling with a difficult situation caused by too many tasks and responsibilities.

To continue Paralympic education beyond the Tokyo Games, rather than the current top-down approach, it should accommodate the current school system so that it can be incorporated without becoming a burden to schools. For this, there is an urgent need to raise teachers’ awareness that Paralympic education could play an important role not only to enhance the momentum of the Games, but also to raise awareness of the notion of an inclusive society, which is an ultimate goal of the Paralympics.

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To elucidate the current situation and issues of Paralympic education, this study analyzes the results of interview surveys conducted with 18 teachers who responded to a questionnaire survey of teachers in elementary, middle schools and schools for special needs education in Tokyo and Chiba Prefecture. The interviews were conducted from February 14 to March 31, 2020. The 18 teachers came from 16 Paralympic education-implementing and 2 non-implementing schools.

The author and two researchers assigned certain keywords to the transcribed sentences from the interviews. The data was then grouped according to similar keyword patterns, and those patterns were labeled. As a result, six categories came out of the interview data: Reasons to Start, Purpose, Positioning, Practice, Task and Building a Legacy.

By analyzing the results, it was found that Reasons to Start the Paralympic education programme began with Tokyo winning the bid to host the Paralympic Games as a main starting point, which led to government requests to implement Paralympic education in schools and the promotion of Paralympic education by the government. A personal connection of teachers to people who could give lectures on the Paralympics and para sports in schools also had an impact.

Regarding Positioning and Practice of Paralympic education, while the Paralympic education programme is mostly implemented in the subjects physical education and integrated study, there is difficulty in correlating the education programme with other subjects. The Purpose of learning Paralympic education can be categorized into two aspects. One is learning through the Paralympics, such as understanding of inclusive society and understanding of others. The other is learning about the Paralympics itself, for example the chance to motivate students to be interested in para sports and the Paralympics and understanding of Paralympic sports and its rules. In addition, an adapted perspective integrated the aspects listed above. How to set the Purpose is important. However, it was found that Paralympic education is currently being implemented in an ambiguous way. It was also found that the current state was caused by a lack of positioning of Paralympic education in the school’s curriculum. This positioning in the school’s curriculum is also a Task for a continuation of Paralympic education.

In order for Paralympic education to Build a Legacy, it is necessary to solve problems of budget and the burden felt by teachers. In addition, since schools with a high potential to continue Paralympic education have school characteristics/ school spirit that could be linked to Paralympic education, the results suggested that awareness of the “unique educational initiative” and “philosophy” of each school could lead to the stable implementation of the Paralympic education programme.

To drive Paralympic education forward, it is important to consider how to relate Paralympic education to school characteristics/ school spirit. It is also important to rearrange activities that are already provided in schools, to fit together with the Paraympic education programme. Furthermore, the results suggested that actors outside schools, such as local governments and public and private organizations, play important roles that support the programme. Based on these discussions, initiatives and research to enrich Paralympic education in each individual school will be necessary.

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In the last twenty years, the situation surrounding Para sport and Para athletes in Japan has been changing. On the occasion of the 1998 Nagano Paralympic Games, Japanese media began paying attention to the Paralympics. With the Olympic and Paralympic Games expected in 2021, the Paralympics and its significance have become more prominent than ever in Japan.

In this study, the authors examine photographs in two major Japanese newspapers covering summer and winter Paralympic Games from 1996 to 2018, to determine how Para athletes have been portrayed by tracing its changes. Our results show the number of published images has significantly increased since Tokyo’s successful bid for the 2020 Games in 2013. The data also reveals gender inequality in the number of times Para athletes appear in the newspapers during the period. In addition, the findings suggest that competitiveness tends to be focused on more intensively than human interest stories. Though this tendency could empower persons with disabilities, it might, on the other hand, make persons with disabilities face segregation and marginalization in society, which could be one of the biggest tasks for the media to tackle.

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Analysis of media coverage of the Paralympics has included studies of its amount and modality（ for instance, whether it is in the general news section or in the sports section）, as well as the degree of exposure in photos of the physical area of the disability. However, there has not always been sufficient analysis on the substance of contents of the coverage of each individual athlete.

This study examines the media coverage of each Paralympic athlete, dividing the contents into three areas: the cause of their disability, how the athlete overcame difficulties associated with their disability, and coverage that connects to a wider, social meaning. The study analyzes the media coverage from the perspective of identifying and searching for the social significance of the Paralympics, focusing on major Japanese language newspapers between 2017 and 2020.

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