Inclusive and Adaptive Physical Education in the Post-Digital Era: A Narrative Review of AI-Assisted Differentiation, Universal Design and Participation for Diverse Learners

Abstract

Inclusive physical education has taken a post-digital turn, where technology is not a secondary teaching resource but a constituent element of the daily ecology of lesson planning, feedback, assessment, and participation. This narrative review critically synthesises the current evidence on AI-assisted differentiation, universal design in learning, adaptive physical education, and digital participation in learning among diverse learners. To conduct the review, the authors focused on primary studies published between 2021 and 2026, whereas recent systematic and scoping reviews were used to introduce the evidence climate. A synthesis identified four themes. To begin with, technology was most inclusive when it enhanced teacher judgement and was not a substitute, since barriers to participation were typically pedagogical, social, infrastructural, and technical. Second, digital media and universal design assisted teachers in providing many representations, flexible paths of tasks, and alternative forms of expression, and the empirical foundation remained fractured and frequently based on small-scale validation or design experiments. Third, AI, augmented reality, virtual reality, and exergames fostered feedback, motivation, and motor-skill practice, but the improvements came unevenly with designs that focused more on novelty than on alignment to the curriculum. Fourth, inclusive digital PE necessitates ethical governance, available infrastructure, student voice, and peer mediation. Overall, the literature indicates that in the case of a larger system of embedded AI-assisted differentiation, aligned with learning outcomes, and managed by trained instructors, the system could support inclusive and adaptive PE. The primary value of the review is the creation of a pedagogical synthesis which links digital innovation with inclusion but does not view disability access, UDL, and AI-enabled personalisation as two distinct strands of research.