James Barry

International Symposium on Adapted Physical Activity, Charlottesville, VA

A Descriptive Survey of Grant Funded Physical Education Teachers’ Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions in Adapted Physical Education Background/Purpose: This study examined physical education teachers’ perceptions of their knowledge, skills, and dispositions, who received federal funding and training from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) in Adapted Physical Education (APE). The OSEP offers grant opportunities to institutions of higher education, non-profits, and other educational agencies grant opportunity to develop highly qualified adapted physical education teachers. Methods Survey research methods (Dillman, Smyth & Christian, 2014) were employed to collect information from participants. A 52-item questionnaire was developed along with establishing validity and reliability of the instrument. The survey was sent out to 272 former OSEP participants from seven institutes of higher education (IHE). A response rate of 55.76% was noted for this survey. Descriptive Statistics were used to analysis the data for each construct. The general linear model used as a regression to investigate potential factors of physical educators’ behaviors towards inclusion Analysis/Results Descriptive results from participant mean scores for perceived knowledge showed that participants felt they were well prepared to very well prepared to teach students with disabilities. Mean scores for perceived skills was found to be skillful to very skillful to work with students with disabilities. Mean scores for perceived dispositions score was shown that working with students with disabilities was important to very important. A general linear model ANOVA revealed interaction effects for gender identity and ethnic identity for knowledge and skills. Finally, OSEP personnel preparation grant participant’s perception of their knowledge, skills, and dispositions in APE suggest that participation in an OSEP funded program helped improve physical education teachers for teaching students with disabilities. Conclusions The OSEP APE personnel preparation grant helps prepare teachers to work with students who have a disability in physical education. The data shows that those who participated in the program have high level of APE knowledge, skills, and dispositions. This is important because the number of APE positions has increased, thereby, increasing the need for highly trained APE professionals both at the K-12 and post-secondary levels (Zhang, 2010). Findings can help provide support for continuation of funding for programs such as the OSEP APE personnel preparation grant has allowed IHE to prepare individuals fill the needs of APE teachers at the elementary, secondary, and higher education levels.