Children's involvement in Physical Education lessons : Differences between children with high grades and children with disabilities

Abstract: Children with disabilities need physical activity in order to promote development and health, and this can be fulfilled in their physical education lessons. However, adapting lessons for children with disabilities can be a very complicated task as there are many factors that affect, both positively and negatively, the child´s general self-efficacy, their self-efficacy in their physical education lesson and their aptitude to participate. In a previous descriptive quantitative study teachers self-rated teacher skill were positively correlated to self-efficacy for students with high grades but negatively correlated to self-efficacy for students with disabilities. Therefore, the aim of the study is to test two hypothesis concerning the relations between teacher´s teaching skills, environmental prerequisites and climate and the student´s general self-efficacy, self-efficacy in physical education and aptitude to participate for with high grades and with disabilities respectively. With the help of a quantitative study with questionnaire data the hypotheses were tested for children with disabilities and children with high grades within PE lessons in regular Swedish mainstream schools. The results show that teaching skills are negatively correlated to general self-efficacy, self-efficacy in physical education and aptitude to participate for children with disabilities. For children with high grades the same relations were positive. Regarding prerequisites for physical education and climate in class both were positively related to general selfefficacy, self-efficacy in physical education and aptitude to participate for both children with high grades and children with disabilities. The importance of having an individually adapted lesson planning and grading criteria are discussed.