Students with disabilities around the world are leaving special schools and special classes and are receiving their education in general education schools. In addition to attending general education classes, these students with disabilities are attending general physical education classes. Unfortunately, research has clearly demonstrated that physical educators do not feel prepared to include students with disabilities into their general physical education classes. Such findings are not surprising given that the typical physical education teacher education program in the United States only requires one course in adapted physical education, and in many countries around the world not even one adapted physical education course is required. However, many physical education teacher education programs do not have the space to add more adapted physical education classes, and other universities do not have professors with specialized knowledge to teach adapted physical education. What can be done to better prepare future and current physical educators? Online education is a relatively new method for delivering information about disability in general and more specifically how to include students with disabilities into general physical activities. The purpose of this paper is to introduce online education and present preliminary research that supports the use of online training with physical educators.
Service-learning (SL) has been implemented widely in teacher education to connect knowledge and practical experiences. In the field of Physical Education Teacher Education, Adapted Physical Education (APE) Courses have been implemented SL to provide hands-on experiences to promote preservice teachers’ attitudes toward individuals with disabilities. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of two SL projects, the volunteer project, and the parasports project, in the Intro APE course on preservice teachers’ attitudes toward individuals with disabilities. A total of 130 preservice teachers participated in this study taking the Multidimensional Attitude Scale Toward Persons with Disabilities (MAS) before and after completing two SL projects. The result of the t-test indicated that there is no difference in overall MAS scores between pre- and posttest (Meanpre = 2.954, SDpre = 0.689, Meanpost = 3.01, SDpost = 0.679; t(129) = 0.390, P = 0.784). However, the significant increase observed in affects subscale of MAS (Meanpre = 3.47, SDpre = 0.374, Meanpost = 3.52, SDpost = 0.188; t(129) = 0.347, P = 0.327). Our finding indicated cognition and behavior of preservice teachers toward individuals with disabilities were positively increased, but not significantly improved yet. Evidence suggested that two SL projects in this study did not significantly improve the overall positive attitudes of preservice teachers toward individuals with disabilities, but it was meaningful to observe that preservice teachers increased their affects toward individuals with disabilities.
The purpose of this study was to examine the expectations from Adapted Physical Education services from the perspective of Asian parents (n = 8) who have children with disabilities. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews, completed in the participants’ preferred language. The data were analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s recipe for thematic analysis. Four themes emerged: (a) “overcoming” the disability in APE, (b) different perspectives on the importance of APE between mothers and fathers, (c) parents’ concern over children being “disrespectful,” and (d) communication issues. Since the culture in the United States is ethnically and socially more diversified, the significance and relevance of the results for effective, culturally sensitive APE provision is discussed. An increased understanding and involvement of Asian parents in terms of their children’s APE program will result in more culturally sensitive, effective, and relevant APE experiences.
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