Irish physical educators’ attitude toward teaching students with special educational needs

Abstract

This study examined the relationship among the specific special educational needs (SEN) of emotional/behavioural disorder (EBD), specific learning disabled (SLD), mild-moderate mentally impaired (MMMI), and moderate-severe mentally impaired (MSMI) and the selected attributes of gender, academic preparation and previous experience in teaching students with SEN. The Physical Educators’ Attitudes Toward Teaching Individuals with Disabilities-III (PEATID-III) (Rizzo, 1993) instrument was used to collect the data. The instrument was sent to all secondary school physical educators in the Republic of Ireland. Results from ANOVA analysis found that female physical educators displayed more positive attitudes than male physical educators toward SLD and MSMI students. For previous experience, a significant difference in physical educators’ attitudes was found for MMMI students only. Results also found low numbers of physical educators having completed initial teacher training (ITT) in SEN relevant to physical education (PE) at undergraduate as well as postgraduate levels. The results provide evidence that there is a need to promote positive attitudes among Irish physical educators toward teaching students with SEN as well as improved ITT and postgraduate training for SEN in PE.

European Inclusive Physical Education Training

“…The quality and availability of services and education in APA differs from one European country to other. International studies [1][2][3] tell us that with a growing number of students with disabilities being included in general education, more and more physical education teachers are faced with the reality of teaching these students together with the rest of the children. In most cases teachers are not permitted to decide if they will have a student with a disability in their class, but they can decide to which extent they will include this student [2].…”

"Deporte inclusivo en la escuela": diseño y análisis de un programa de intervencion para promover la inclusión del alumnado con discapacidad en Educación Física

“…With Disabilities-III (PEATID III) (Rizzo, 1993), utilizado por otros autores (Duchane y French, 1998;Folsom-Meek, Nearing, Groteluschen, y Krampf, 1999;Folsom-Meek y Rizzo, 2002;Hodge y Jansma, 2000;Kowalski y Rizzo, 1996;Meegan y Macphail, 2006). (Kudláèek et al, 2002), en el ámbito de la EF (Bartoňová, Kudláček, y Bressan, 2007;Fournidou et al, 2011;K.…”

“…En relación a los años de experiencia, parece ser que el profesorado presenta una actitud más favorable hacia la enseñanza de alumnos con discapacidad cuantos más años poseen de experiencia (Avramidis y Kalyva, 2007;Bekiari y Sakelariou, 2004;Block y Rizzo, 1995;Knoll y Fediuk, 2012;Kozub y Porretta, 1998;Meegan y Macphail, 2006;Obrusnikova, 2008;Ozer et al, 2013;Rizzo y Vispoel, 1991). En contraste a esto, Leyser, Kapperman y Keller (1994) y Oh et al (2010) encontraron actitudes más positivas hacia la inclusión en profesores con menos años de experiencia.…”

“…Respecto a la variable género, los datos no revelaron diferencias significativas tras la intervención, coincidiendo con los resultados de otros estudios (Heikinaro-Johansson y Patrick, 1987a;Rizzo y Vispoel, 1991;Rizzo y Wright, 1988), mientras que diferimos de los obtenidos por otros autores que encontraron actitudes favorables (Aloia et al, 1980;Downs y Williams, 1994;Eichinger et al, 1991;Folsom-Meek y Rizzo, 2002;Meegan y Macphail, 2006). A pesar de estos resultados, solo se encuentran diferencias a favor de las mujeres en el aspecto que no creen que la enseñanza en EF con alumnos con discapacidad sea más difícil.…”

“…Esto refuerza la idea anterior, sobre la necesidad de facilitar al profesorado experiencias y formación específica, dada su estrecha relación con la formación de creencias y la autoeficacia. Algunos autores apoyan esta idea como clave para la mejora de la actitud (Block y Rizzo, 1995;Downs y Williams, 1994;Kozub y Porretta, 1998;Meegan y Macphail, 2006;Rizzo y Vispoel, 1991;Schmidt-Gotz et al, 1994).…”