The Effects of Integrated Step Training into the Physical Education Curriculum of Children with Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

(1) Background: This study investigated the changes in step frequency, walking ability, and standing posture of students with intellectual disabilities by integrating step training into the students’ physical education curriculum; (2) Methods: The centroid formula was used to estimate the geometric center of the students’ bodies in video footage of each participant. Each participant’s stepping frequency per minute was recorded. After training, the teachers involved were interviewed regarding the participants’ everyday activities in school. Each step training session was recorded by two video cameras. Each step training session was observed and photographed by a senior physical education teacher with special education qualifications; (3) Results: The step training increased the stability of the participants’ body axes. The participants’ average steps per minute of the participants significantly improved from 24.200 ± 7.554 to 28.700 ± 8.629. Additionally, despite the students exhibiting anxious behavior (e.g., squeezing their hands and grasping at their clothes) at baseline, the frequency of these behaviors decreased significantly from week 4. Overall, the students’ daily activities, motivation, interpersonal interaction, self-confidence, and anxiety behaviors improved; (4) Conclusions: After the 8-week step program, the participants with intellectual disabilities improved their step frequency, movement stability, ability to perform daily activities, walking speed, motivation, interpersonal interaction, and self-confidence, and they exhibited a lower level of anxiety-related behaviors.

Effects of Physical Education on students with intellectual disabilities. A systematic review Autores/as

“…2020;Moreno et al, 2019;Vílchez et al, 2018). It should also be noted that a significant number of studies in school contexts have been conducted in specific special education centres or units (Fernandes et al, 2022;Ferreira & Munster, 2017;Hansen et al, 2021;Jang, 2020;Priyono et al, 2021;Wu et al, 2021). This diversity is also evident in the characteristics of the samples: in terms of size, some actions were carried out with groups of less than ten participants (Ferreira & Munster, 2017), while others had more than a thousand students (Furrer et al, 2020); in terms of age or educational level of the participants, there were no studies with preschool students, and secondary school students (Abellán et al, 2018) and university students (Muñoz et al, 2020) predominated.…”

“…In terms of objectives, the approaches demonstrate the potential of Physical Education. In addition to the development of physical skills (Fernandes et al, 2022;Hansen et al, 2021;Priyono et al, 2021;Wu et al, 2021;Xu et al, 2020), there are studies that focus on social (Cañadas & Calle-Molina, 2020;Carvalho et al, 2020;Ferreira & Munster, 2017), moral (Vilchez et al, 2018, emotional and cognitive (Krutsevich et al, 2020), and vital issues such as inclusion (Furrer et al, 2020;Muñoz et al, 2020) The control group did 2 sessions of PE.…”

“…In terms of findings, all interventions showed positive results. Up to 43% of the studies showed physical improvements, both in health aspects (Priyono et al, 2021) and in conditional physical abilities such as strength and/or flexibility (Xu et al, 2020;Erofeeva et al, 2019), as well as in coordinative abilities such as balance (Wu et al, 2021;Hsu, 2016) and coordination (Montesano, 2014).…”

“…Also, 38% of the interventions improved participants' social skills (Priyono et al, 2021;Ferreira & Munster, 2017), promoted interpersonal relationships (Wu et al, 2021) et al, 2018). On the other hand, 24% of the interventions had an effect on cognitive aspects (Priyono et al, 2021), improved reasoning skills (Vilchez et al, 2018) or reduced student distractions (Tsimaras et al, 2014).…”

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“…Because this process is computer-controlled, students can watch it repeatedly, slow it down, study it from different angles, or even engage in the action. Students can freely control the pace of instruction and choose the content that is critical to them based on their circumstances and ability (Wu et al, 2021). Virtual reality (VR) allows physically disabled people to try out-of-reach experiences like climbing a mountain, extreme sports, or swimming in the sea for the first time.…”