Education and Inclusion of Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities in Physical Education Classes

The inclusion of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in mainstream education has become a global priority over the past 40 years. The first public law – The Education for All Handicapped Children Act, published in 1975 in the USA, made an unequivocal case for the rights of children with disabilities to access education alongside their peers as equals. Since then, global awareness of the education of children with SEND has led to the development of national and international policies aimed to promote and support the education of such children in mainstream schools. A subfield of education that has been consistently acknowledged as a primary opportunity for encouraging and promoting inclusion within schools is physical education (PE). PE not only provides opportunities for SEND children to be physically active, but it also provides meaningful engagement and interactions with other children that can benefit the psychosocial development of children with SEND profiles. Despite such opportunities, the research evidence has also consistently shown that children with SEND profiles are still not fully included in PE classes. As such, researchers have widely investigated the barriers and facilitators to the inclusion of SEND children in PE, reporting that teachers’ attitudes are one of the most important barriers and proximal factors influencing inclusion. Research has also shown that other factors can also potentially affect teachers’ likelihood of practising and implementing inclusive PE – such as teachers’ perceived self-efficacy, and also the nature of the school context within which they work. The aim of this project was threefold, to: systematically review and synthesise the literature on PE teachers’ attitudes towards inclusion the inclusion of SEND children within PE; investigate the factors influencing Irish PE teachers’ attitudes and wider perceptions about the inclusion of SEND children in PE lessons; and test and confirm, for the first time, a structural model of inclusion in PE that brings together teachers’ attitudes, self-efficacy, and perceptions about the school context within which teachers work. The findings of this thesis indicated that teachers have largely favourable attitudes toward the inclusion of children with SEND in PE, and that experience working with SEND children was positively associated with such favourable attitudes. The findings of this thesis also indicate that a wide range of different factors affect teachers’ attitudes – including, knowledge and preparation, years of teaching experience, direct experience working with SEND children, type, and degree of SEND, and collaboration and teaching support. Within the Irish context, the findings this thesis revealed specifically that having different types of disabilities within the class positively influenced Irish PE teachers’ attitudes toward inclusion. This suggests that exposing teachers to students with diverse profiles promotes favourable attitudes toward the inclusion of otherwise marginalised population groups within PE. The findings of this thesis also suggest that Irish secondary school PE teachers have higher perceived self-efficacy levels than their counterparts working in primary schools. This suggests that components of the secondary-level pre-service curricula may have a positive influence self-efficacy in delivering inclusive pedagogies. The findings of a structural model of inclusion reported in this thesis also showed positive and significant associations between Irish PE teachers’ attitudes toward the inclusion of SEND children, self-efficacy in delivering inclusive pedagogies, and perceptions about the school within which they worked. This suggests that the attitudes of Irish teachers towards the inclusion of SEND children profiles in PE are embedded within wider initial education and professional learning and development needs.