The goal is to win, and not to get together, have fun, and benefit from exercise. With an over-emphasis on performance and winning, children with disabilities may find few opportunities to be included in school, after-school, and weekend team sports.
Previous Page. Table of Contents. Related Articles. It only makes sense, then, that regular participation in physical education classes would also promote positive advancements in students with special needs. Research has shown that physical education programs can do a great deal to improve the lifestyle of children with special needs; they can increase competency in gross motor skills, help to control obesity, improve self-esteem and social skills, encourage an active lifestyle, and maintain motivation in various areas of life.
Often, there are challenges to including children with disabilities in a physical education program. Parents may be apprehensive about allowing their child with special needs to participate in physical education activities. Studies have shown that special education students are less likely to enroll in physical education, and consequently, further studies have found that special education students are more at risk of developing childhood obesity than their general education peers.
Yet, many resources have begun to make it easier to include children with special needs in physical education endeavors. Research has also proven that physical education is necessary to develop motor skills and aid in a wellrounded development of a student.
Physical education in schools gives students a chance to learn to work as a team, develop interpersonal relations and it also helps them release any kind of stress that they may be holding on to.
That is when the idea of adapted physical education comes into play. Adapted physical education APE is the art and science of developing, implementing, and monitoring a carefully designed physical education instructional program for a learner with a disability, based on a comprehensive assessment, to give the learner the skills necessary for a lifetime of rich leisure, recreation, and sport experiences to enhance physical fitness and wellness.
Any student who may have autism, Deaf — Blindness, hearing impairment, intellectual disability, multiple disabilities, orthopedic impairment, other health impairment, serious emotional disturbance, specific learning disability, speech or language impairment, traumatic brain injury or visual impairment including blindness needs to be provided adaptive physical education for their development. APE services can be delivered in the general physical education setting or a self-contained one. Accordingly a physical training programme must be customised to adapt and accommodate the weaknesses and strengths.
In India, parents try their level best to educate their child in a special school if they need it. However, physical education is not an aspect that is given enough importance whereas it is equally important. It is also a good way to make friends and prevent exclusion. Classes needed to be well-organised and well-planned in an APE set up.
There are seven class formats that are most commonly used in adapted physical education settings. Peer teaching or tutoring: using classmates or students without disabilities from other classes for teaching and assisting students with disabilities. Teaching stations: several areas in which smaller subsets for the class rotate to practice skills.
Self-paced independent work: each student works on individual goals at his or her own pace following directions on task cards or with guidance from the teacher or assistant. Physical education teachers need to undergo special training to become an adaptive physical education teacher.
In summary, when children could not be active, had their capabilities questioned, or were socially marginalized, they experienced these situations as constituting a bad day in PE. Fortunately, the same participants also described how they had good days in PE. There were times when classmates were quite encouraging and helpful. For example, during relay races children with disabilities remarked on how they were cheered on.
Moments like those described above were categorized as promoting a sense of belonging. When participants were engaged in PE, they recognized they were reaping the intended benefits of PE, such as developing skills, enhancing their health, and learning fitness and health concepts.
The recognition that they were obtaining benefits just like the able-bodied children represented having a good day in PE. One final theme indicative of having a good day was the intrinsic pride and extrinsic compliments rewards they experienced from being successful and demonstrating their skills.
In a research effort similar to the above study, Donna Goodwin sought to understand if all children with disabilities perceived offers of assistance positively. She found that children with disabilities viewed some forms of help as supportive and other types of help as threatening. There were a number of key differences between the types of support seen as threatening versus supporting.
First, support that was pragmatic or functional and helped the children engage in a game was seen as supportive—being pushed in the wheelchair across a grass field to reduce travel time when the alternative was wheeling all the way around the field.
When children without disabilities did not ignore children with disabilities and encouraged their sport participation, this was perceived as being done to secure control over their moves. In contrast, threatening help was that which was provided unilaterally, where the helper refrained from asking if the help was needed.
Finally, when children viewed offers of help as tantamount to an indictment of their capabilities, it was seen as a threat to their self-worth and interpreted negatively. Individuals with disabilities have to weigh the short-term task-oriented benefits, such as being helped across a grass field quickly, against the more long-term self-oriented costs, such as a missed opportunity to experience pride in independently wheeling around the entire field.
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