Attitudes and Self-Efficacy of Arabic-speaking Physical Education Teachers in Israel toward Including Children with Disabilities

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the attitudes and self-efficacy (SE) of physical education (PE) teachers in the Arabic-speaking educational sector in Israel toward including children with disability in their classes, utilizing translated questionnaires. The specific goals were (a) to describe the structure and internal consistency of the responses to the Attitudes Toward Inclusion in Physical Education (ATIPE) and Situation Specific Self-Efficacy (SE-ASPE) questionnaires of an Arabic-speaking PE teachers' sample, (b) to assess the effect of selected background variables on attitudes and SE in the study population, (c) to determine the association between SE and attitudes toward including children with disabilities in PE in the study population, and (d) to describe the differences in PE teachers' SE toward including children with different disabilities. The results indicated a bi-dimensional factor structure of the ATIPE and an unidimensional structure of each of the SE-ASPE subscales: intellectual disability (ID), physical disability (PD), and visual impairment (VI), and confirmed an internal reliability. The impact of background variables on attitudes and SE indicated that females had more favorable attitudes and SE than males, age had a small significant impact, training, and experience in inclusion of children with disability had a significant impact. Finally, it was found that the SE toward including children with VI was lower than toward ID and PD.  Based on our findings it can be recommended that the training processes be strengthened, and include continuous education workshops on inclusion with an emphasis on VI.