The purpose of this study was to examine if perceived behavioral control predicts general physical education teachers’ behavior in teaching students with disabilities (SWD) and what factors are related to general physical education (GPE) teachers’ competence in teaching SWD.
Method:
A convenience sample of 119 Korean general physical education teachers completed this survey. Perceived behavioral control and teaching behavior consisted of 9 and 8 items, respectively. Additional items were related to GPE teachers’ competence, previous teaching experience, and other background questions. Descriptive statistic, correlation, standard multiple regression were used to assess relationships among the factors.
Analysis/Results:
Descriptive results showed that 45% of the teachers had never taken a course related to adapted physical education (APE). Also, 44% of the teachers had never participated in in-service related to APE. Among them, 44% had excluded SWD from their GPE classes. When the teacher asked to describe the reasons why they excluded SWD, they answered concerns for safety (40%) followed by inappropriate physical education programing (25%), distracting the class (21%), and no teacher assistant (19%). Standard multiple regression revealed that the proportion of the variance in teaching SWD in GPE classes explained by 9 items of perceived behavioral control was 26%, F (9, 110) = 4.379, p < .01, R = .51, R2 = .26. It was found that among the 9 items of perceived behavioral control, professional knowledge (β = .42) significantly predicted teachers’ behavior, as did harmony of students with and without disabilities (β = .22), and people’s prejudice (β = -.18), but other items were not significant predictors of teachers’ behavior in this study. The results of Pearson correlations between each factor of previous teaching experience, professional knowledge, in-service, APE courses taken, and teachers’ competence were .50 (p = .00), .34 (p = .00), .26 (p = .01), and .21 (p = .03), respectively.
Conclusions:
In conclusion, teachers’ professional knowledge, harmony of students with and without disabilities, and people’s prejudice were significant predictors on GPE teachers’ behavior in teaching SWD. Also, teachers’ previous teaching experience, professional knowledge, APE courses taken, as well as in-services were significantly related to the teachers’ competence in teaching SWD. In this study, teachers’ professional knowledge was found as an important factor related to teachers’ competence and behavior in teaching SWD. Future research should take a look at how to and in what ways teachers can improve the professional knowledge in teaching SWD.