Physical education teacher training for disability

Abstract

This work in focused on investigation of physical education teachers’ education with pedagogical bases for students with disabilities. Starting from an American research on teachers of physical education who work in contact with the disability, it has shown how the teachers express negative attitudes towards inclusion because they consider their training inadequate. The aim is to understand the phenomenon of physical education teacher training analysing the documentary research of the master’s degree programs in sports sciences in Italy, with a specific study on the master’s degree in sports sciences at the university of Salerno and, finally, a survey on teachers’ perception of disability. The first study revealed that the main difficulty encountered is the inability to plan inclusive and personalized lessons, since the degree courses refer to the bio-medical area. The second study, the analysis of the Master degree course of Science in Sports Science at the University of Salerno, mainly refers to the pedagogical-didactic area and aimed at teaching and designing for the purpose of education for the disabled. From the fact-finding survey on teachers’ perceptions emerges that both pedagogy and teaching are fundamental for any job in the motor and sports field, even for those who decide not to teach. In conclusion, the training of the physical education teacher who also teaches the disabled must have a less bio-medical and more pedagogical education.