Will students with and without disorders experience discrimination in inclusive physical and sports education lessons? Teachers' perspective

Abstract

The research aimed to find out and compare the physical education (PE) teachers’ attitudes, whether students with disorders and students without disorders will experience discrimination in inclusive physical and sports education (PSE) classes. The study involved 152 primary school PE teachers with a mean age of 40.86±9.97 years. A modified version of the standardized research instrument ATIPDPE-R was used to collect the research data. We found that PE teachers do not agree that students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) (70.6 %) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADHD) (79.0 %) will experience discrimination in PSE lessons. PE teachers also stated that students with ADHD will experience less discrimination in PSE classes than students with ASD (Z=2.603, p=0.009**). PE teachers further declared a disapproving attitude to the discrimination of students without disorders if students with ASD (67.5 %) and ADHD (73.0 %) will be included in the PSE lessons. Despite PE teachers’ rejection of discrimination against students without disorders in PSE lessons they declared a lower level of discrimination in the inclusion of a student with ADHD compared to a student with ASD (Z=2.644, p=0.008**).