Inclusion of students with disabilities in physical education: attitudes, ability beliefs and achievement goals

The inclusion of people with disability in the society is fundamental for them to feel accepted by their peers without disability. To achieve it, education should try to improve the knowledge and attitudes towards people with disability. The educational centres are an ideal place to achieve this goal. Teachers have the opportunity to educate in values that favour acceptance of students with a disability by their peers without disability. Specifically, the subject of physical education (PE) presents a unique opportunity to get students to interact. Through games and sports (i.e. Boccia), students can experience what it would be like to have a disability and thus put themselves in the shoes of people with disabilities. This thesis consists of four studies that show a logical thread. The first study analyses the three-dimensional model of the attitude of Triandis (1971) through the validation of a tool to measure the attitude of students towards their peers with a disability. In the second study, the authors examined the relationship between students' ability beliefs and their attitudes towards the inclusion of people with disability in PE. In addition, the influence of gender and prior contact/participation with people with disabilities was analysed. With study three, the psychometric properties a new tool were analysed. Finally, five intervention programs for PE were designed with the aim of combining different variables (i.e. motivational climate) and examining how they influence the change of students' attitudes toward inclusion in PE. Study one analyses a tool based on the model of the attitude of Triandis (1971). According to this author, the attitude is represented by three constructs: cognitive, behavioural and affective. After the exploratory and confirmatory factorial analysis, a bi-dimensional attitude model was obtained, which allowed having a tool available to the teacher. At this point, the authors set out to move forward and raised the analysis of the relationship between skill beliefs and attitudes towards the inclusion of students in PE classes. In addition, other variables such as gender and prior contact with people with disabilities were considered. The attitude presented a negative relationship with the ability beliefs of the entity. However, being a girl was positively related to the attitude toward people with disability. The previous participation variable presented favourable results in the behavioural and cognitive subscales. The previous contact presented more favourable attitudes in the subscale of behaviour and beliefs of the lower entity. It is essential to have valid and reliable tools to understand the characteristics of students in order to design intervention programs to improve attitudes. With study three, the authors analyse the psychometric properties of the Attitude Scale of Students towards Disability in Physical Education (EAADEF). The tool presented excellent joint indexes in the confirmatory factorial analysis, as well as invariant with respect to the socio-demographic variables included. The high inter consistency values of the items and the attitude construct (≥ .77) show that EAADEF is a new solution as an instrument for measuring attitude towards people with disabilities. Finally, with study four, five improvement programs for knowledge and attitudes towards people with disabilities were designed and implemented. In addition, its relationship with the motivational climate generated by the PE teachers in their classrooms was considered. The three manipulated independent variables (contact or not with an athlete during PE classes, duration and motivational strategies) allowed to analyse the keys in the design of the interventions to improve the inclusion process. The results showed that contact with para-athletes resulted in an improvement of attitudes towards inclusion. With these results, PE teachers have tools to design their teaching units to implement during their classes and improve knowledge and attitudes about people with disabilities.