Background/Purpose Globally, inclusion has become a common educational practice. In Japan, however, physical education (PE) teachers have expressed ambiguity toward teaching students with disabilities in PE and insist they were not adequately prepared to do so effectively (Sato, Hodge, Murata, & Maeda, 2007; Sato & Hodge, 2009). But the research base is undeveloped on Japanese teacher candidates' beliefs about teaching students with disabilities in PE. The purpose of this study was to analyze the beliefs of Japanese PE teacher candidates about inclusion and teaching students with disabilities. The participants were 531 PE teacher candidates (361 males, 170 females) from an university in Japan.
Method The research method was descriptive survey situated in the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991). Data were collected using the Physical Educators' Judgments about Inclusion (PEJI) survey (Hodge, Murata, & Kozub, 2002). The PEJI survey is comprised of three subscales: (a) Judgments about Inclusion vs Exclusion, (b) Judgments about Acceptance of Students with Disabilities, and (c) Judgments about Perceived Training Needs (Hodge et al., 2002).
Analysis/Results Data were analyzed with GLM factorial analysis of variance procedures. Group differences were analyzed as a function of participants' gender, course work preparation, and experience teaching individuals with disabilities.There were no significant group differences across these key variables with respect to the participants' overall indecisive to favorable attitude scores. In contrast, however, gender was found significant regarding their Judgments about Perceived Training Needs, F(1, 530) = 4.21, p < .05. Female participants perceived a greater need for additional professional preparation than males.
Conclusions We discuss the findings and implications for physical education teacher preparation in Japan and elsewhere.
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