Primary school students' attitudes to inclusion in physical education classes

Abstract

In view of the importance of a positive attitude on the part of students without developmental disabilities towards the inclusion of students with disabilities into Physical Education (PE) classes, and also of the specific features of PE, this study aimed to examine the attitudes of students without developmental disabilities towards the inclusion of students with developmental disabilities in regular PE classes. These attitudes were studied in relation to students' gender, grade of primary school, previous experience with persons with disabilities, and their level of competitiveness. The sample comprised 291 students in grades 6 and 7 of three primary schools in Belgrade. The study used the CAIPE-R questionnaire (Block, 1995). The results corroborated the factor structure of the instrument and its basic metric characteristics. The findings suggest that students have a positive attitude to inclusion in PE. Significant predictors of General Attitude - inclusion in PE are gender, school grade and previous experience with disabled students in PE classes, while significant predictors of Specific Attitude - inclusion in sports activities in PE are gender and previous experience with disabled students in PE classes. The paper points out the need for further research into the attitudes of students without developmental disabilities towards inclusive PE that would include other developmental disabilities and a greater age range of students from different educational environments, which could contribute to the planning of inclusive PE programs in schools.

Keywords

• student attitudes
• physical education
• inclusion
• primary school