Sue Combs, together with her colleagues from the University of North Carolina, investigated the attitudes of the physical education teachers towards the inclusion of children with special needs in their lessons. The team identified two physical education teachers who had a positive attitude towards the kids with special needs and two who had a negative attitude. All of them were from an elementary school. Their aim was to find out how their attitude developed, and how it affects their teaching.
It is a requirement for students with special needs to be included in the general physical education classes. However, these kids attend these classes without their teachers and this has given physical educators a lot of challenges.
These tutors have to teach and train kids with special needs without neglecting the others. Over the years, there have been studies done to find out how a teacher’s attitude affects his teaching. Theories have been formulated, and all have come to one general conclusion; a teacher’s philosophy or thinking towards children with disabilities, directly influences the success of the students.
The method used was PEATID-III; this method has been universally accepted. Four physical educators were chosen using purposeful sampling technique which looks for situations with a lot of information. The four teachers selected had a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 18 years in the teaching service, and all had had children with disabilities in their classes. Jan and Jennifer were positive regarding inclusion of kids with special needs in their lessons, while Sean and Tammy were not.
The teachers were asked a series of questions separately regarding their experiences and their philosophy regarding the inclusion. The questions were not the same, some were excluded and others were included depending on the response of the interviewee.
Analysis of the data started from analysing individual interview transcripts and ended by group scrutiny. In the individual transcripts, key themes were identified and were later compared with others during group scrutiny. The method had some limitations though, because the study was focused on elementary schools, the results could not be used in other levels of education such as the secondary level. Also the number of subjects interviewed was small and a conclusive recommendation was not possible.
It was found out that the educators, who had positive attitudes, already had developed teaching methods that accommodated children with disabilities, while the other two stuck to the convectional teaching methods. The conventional methods usually leave little room for adjusting the programme to suite the disabled.
The study continued to disclose that, only those teachers who had received formal education on children with special needs, developed positive approach. On the other hand, the other two teachers who had a negative attitude had received no education regarding children with special needs. Researchers have concluded that; including lessons dealing with disabilities to physical educators, made them develop a more positive outlook.
The discoveries made in this study may be used when it comes to hiring of physical education teachers. This study will help them hire educators who have a positive outlook and uses modern teaching methods rather than the convectional ones. Furthermore, non convectional teachers would aid the other old teachers by giving them tips on handling children with disabilities. Administrators should incorporate disability lessons during the training of physical educators.
All children deserve top quality physical education regardless of their abilities and inabilities. Laws ensuring that the disabled get physical education should be enforced to ensure that they benefit from physical education. In future studies researchers should find out how the teacher’s attitude affects those without disabilities, by getting feedbacks from the student themselves.
Reference
Combs, S., Elliott, S., & Whipple, K. (2008). Elementary Physical Education Teacher’s Attitudes Towards the Inclusion of Children With Special Needs: A Qualitative Investigation. Physical Education , 1-12.