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ADAPTED PHYSICAL ACTIVITY QUARTERLY, 2007, 25, 86-90
© 2008 Human Kinetics, Inc.
Inclusion in Physical Education: From the Medical Model
to Social Constructionism
How teachers in the physical education setting come to comprehend or construct an
understanding of disability greatly influences the way they teach in their respective
settings. More often than not, teachers approach disability from a medical model
perspective (scientific phenomena that promotes stigmatizing and labeling) rather
than from a social constructionist perspective (how social phenomena develop in
particular social contexts). The purpose of this article was threefold. The first was
to explore and challenge assumptions that have formed constructions of disability
and how they may influence the way teachers think and act in the physical education
setting. The second was to introduce social constructionism as a discourse to reshape
constructions of disability for physical education teachers. The third purpose was
to align pedagogical practices within a social constructionist framework for future
contributions to the field of general physical education for students with disabilities.
Conclusions drawn by the author suggest that the constructed nature of knowledge
for teachers serving students with disabilities in the physical education setting is
best developed through the daily interactions between people, social interactions,
appropriate language, and movement.
Grenier, M. (2007). Inclusion in physical education: From the medical model to
social constructionism. Quest, 59(3), 298-310.
Social Skills Intervention for Children Who Are Blind
Children with disabilities often lack the skills necessary to create and engage in
appropriate and positive social relationships with their same-aged peers. As such,
these individuals typically receive fewer responses to their social offers to interact
or play, lose interest with their peers over time, and have a tendency to operate
more often in social isolation. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect a
social skills intervention plan had on a preschool child across three different settings
including school, after-school child care, and home. The plan relied heavily on four
major intervention strategies including classroom-wide interventions, naturalistic
interventions, social integration, and the explicit teaching of social skills. Results
suggest that upon completion of the intervention plan, the child demonstrated an
increased frequency and range of play behaviors and social interactions. In both
the school and after school settings, the child spent less time in social isolation
and either initiated or responded to more social interactions; however, as the child
became more familiar with her peers, it became challenging for her to maintain
the frequency of her social interactions.
Celeste, M. (2007). Social skills intervention for a child who is blind. Journal of
Visual Impairment & Blindness, 101(9), 521-533.
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Web-Based Training for Preparing Teachers to Supervise
Paraeducators
More than ever, the use of paraeducators to increase services provided in special
education has become an important area of discussion. The effectiveness of
paraprofessionals depends greatly on their preparation before entering the
educational setting and their supervision within the setting. Currently, the training
and supervision of these individuals is carried out largely by teachers. Unfortunately,
teacher education programs tend to inadequately prepare teachers to assume this
responsibility. To address this issue, an effort was made to develop and implement a
web-based training model to assist teachers in effectively supervising paraeducators.
The purpose of this paper was twofold: to identify the program features (content
and delivery system, key instructional elements, and key management components)
of the training model and to report initial feedback from six university sites that
used this web-based training program. Results gathered from the feedback suggest
that participants did increase their overall knowledge after completing the training
program suggesting the effectiveness of the web-based model.
Steckelberg, A., Vasa, S.F., Kemp, S., Arthaud, T.J., Asselin, S.B., Swain, K. &
Fennick, E. (2007). A web-based training model for preparing teachers to supervise
paraeducators. Teacher Education and Special Education, 30(1), 52-55.
Teacher’s Verbal Aggression and Student’s Fair Play
Behaviors
The physical education setting has shown to be the most adequate environment to
facilitate the sociomoral development of students (the promotion of social and moral
development) as it pertains to their fair play behaviors. This same setting, however,
contains factors that may also interfere with a student’s sociomoral development.
Specifically, the effect verbal aggression by teachers has on students in the physical
education setting greatly influences their sociomoral development, and thus their fair
play behaviors. The purpose of this study was twofold: to investigate how physical
education teacher’s verbal aggressiveness as perceived by the students is related
to student’s fair play self-reported behaviors and to examine if students’ fair play
behaviors are predicted by teachers’ verbal aggression. Results of the study suggest
a strong relationship between teacher’s verbal aggression and student’s fair play
behaviors as antisocial fair play behaviors positively correlated with teacher’s verbal
aggression and prosocial fair play behaviors negatively correlated with teacher’s
verbal aggression. Simply stated, if teachers wish to promote prosocial behaviors in
their classes they must demonstrate verbal communication that is not aggressive.
Mary, H., Alexandra, B., & Kimon, S. (2007, Spring). Physical education teacher’s
verbal aggression and student’s fair play behaviors. Physical Educator, 64(2),
94-101.
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Building Helping Behaviors in Children With Autism
Children with autism tend to exhibit severe and persistent deficits in social behavior.
Often, these individuals lack the skills necessary to engage in appropriate and
positive social relationships with both peers and adults alike. Children with autism
typically have problems with cooperating, sharing, making friends, and helping
others. As a consequence, they often operate in social isolation. The purpose of
this study was to examine the emergence of helping responses in children with
autism assisting adults using a multicomponent training procedure, or “teaching
package.” Helping was chosen because it has been shown to result in longer
social interactions than other classes of social behavior. The study examined the
effect the treatment had upon the participant’s helping and nonhelping behavior
responses across different trial types (training trials, probe trials, and nonhelping
trials). Categories of helping included such things as locating objects, cleaning,
putting away items, etc. Results suggest there were systematic increases in correct
responding across the different trial types. Participants increased in their helping
responses and became more adept at exuding the appropriate response to both
helping and nonhelping situations.
Reeve, S.A, Reeve, K.F., Buffington-Townsend, D., & Poulson, C.L. (2007).
Establishing a generalized repertoire of helping behavior in children with autism.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 40(1), 123-136.
Inclusive High School Service Learning Programs
Service learning programs are a common practice in education today but little
is known about inclusive service learning programs. As such, the purpose of
this study was to determine whether critical elements of high school service
learning programs (HSSLPs) cited in the literature were perceived as important by
stakeholders of inclusive HSSLPs. Focus groups were conducted at five nationally
and/or regionally recognized inclusive HSSLPs, two of which had inclusive service
learning programs embedded within physical education. Participants from the focus
groups concurred with findings from the literature and confirmed the importance
of each of the critical elements. They also expanded the description of the critical
elements emphasizing the need for inclusive HSSLPs to be flexible and informal
in addressing the elements. Finally, they recommended that HSSLPs (a) be linked
to academic and life skills curricula, (b) eliminate barriers to including students
with disabilities, (c) increase the inclusion of students with severe disabilities, (d)
embrace an inclusive philosophy, and (e) engage in continuous program evaluation.
This study may be of interest to professionals working with or developing inclusive
service learning programs.
Dymond, S. K., Renzaglia, A., & Chun, E. (2007). Elements of effective high
school service learning programs that include students with and without disabilities.
Remedial and Special Education, 28(4), 227-243.
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Social-Behavioral Learning Strategies for Children
With Asperger Syndrome
Individuals with Asperger Syndrome (AS) exhibit deficits in social interactions
and, as such, educational programs for individuals with AS are often inclusive of
social-behavioral learning strategies. This study replicated previous work using
the Stop-Observe-Deliberate-Act (SODA; Bock, 2000) learning strategy with
an individual with AS. The primary purpose was to expand on previous work by
comparing the participant’s behaviors with that of a peer without a disability and
by increasing the number of social settings in which observations took place. The
SODA intervention involved the participant stopping, observing, and deliberating
on a social situation using a self-talk questioning process. He/she then developed
a specific list of things to do and/or say in the social setting prior to acting. A
multiple-baseline-across-settings design was used to analyze the participant’s
social behaviors without and with SODA in a cooperative learning setting, gameplaying situation, and during lunch. SODA was found to be effective in improving
the social-behavioral problem solving of the participant with AS across all three
settings and during both intervention and maintenance phases.
Bock, M.A. (2007). A social-behavioral learning strategy intervention for a child
with Asperger Syndrome. Remedial and Special Education, 28(5), 258-265.
Balance Kinetics and Children With Cerebral Palsy
Interested in the poor reactive balance control of children with cerebral palsy (CP),
Chen and Woollacott performed a lower extremity joint torque analysis of static and
dynamic balance after perturbation. Children with CP, between the ages of eight
and 13, were compared to an age-matched group of peers and a non age-matched
group of younger peers to determine if deficits in balance recovery are the result
of pathology or developmental delays. The children with CP performed worse on
all measures of balance recovery compared to both peer groups. This suggests
that children with CP have a lower developmental level for recovery of postural
control. Unlike the control groups, the children with CP did not demonstrate
temporally organized activation of joint torques after perturbation. Instead, this
group of children activated all joints simultaneously to recover from perturbation,
suggesting that pathological symptoms of paresis or poor lower extremity motor
coordination may also contribute to their inferior scores. The authors concluded
their paper by discussing relevant research studies that suggest children with CP
can improve their balance through training.
Chen J & Woollacott M H. (2007). Lower extremity kinetics for balance control in
children with cerebral palsy. Journal of Motor Behavior, 39, 4, 306 – 316.
Redefining Adapted Physical Activity
The author recognized that there has been limited research or commentaries
on disability sport from people outside of the adapted physical activity (APA)
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field. Purposes of this article were to evaluate sport opportunities for people
with disabilities and to provide suggestions to change sports policies, rules, and
organizations to be more inclusive. The author writes about access and integration
issues, concerns about classification, and the influences of families and media on
the portrayal of sport. Finally, the author tries to instigate a discussion with people
outside of APA on how to further develop the mindset that people with disabilities
are athletes, not athletes with or despite their disabilities as is often portrayed in
society. Thus, the author provides seven ideal-typical models that reshape sport to
include people with disabilities and portray them as the athletes they are instead
of “super-crips.”
Nixon, H.L. (2007). Constructing diverse sports opportunities for people with
disabilities. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 31, 417-433.
Children With Dyslexia and Their Gross Motor Behavior
The primary purpose of this study was to compare the gross motor behavior of
children with and without dyslexia. Both The Test of Gross Motor Development-2
and the Movement Assessment Battery for Children were administered to each group.
A secondary aim of this study was to ascertain age differences within the dyslexic
group on each of the two tests. More specifically, the ball skills, manipulative skills,
and total balance subscales of the Movement Assessment Battery for Children
were compared to the locomotor and object control subscales of the Test of Gross
Motor Development-2. Results of the primary purpose indicated that the children
with dyslexia performed significantly lower than the children without dyslexia on
the total balance subtest. Results of the secondary purpose indicated that younger
dyslexic children performed better than the older dyslexic children. The results
suggest that cerebellar dysfunction may play a role in differences in performance
for individuals with dyslexia. This paper would entice professionals with an interest
in understanding gross motor proficiency in individuals with dyslexia.
Getchell, N., Pabreja, P., Neeld, K., & Carrio, V. (2007). Comparing children with
and without dyslexia on the Movement Assessment Battery for Children and the
Test of Gross Motor Development. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 105, 763-772.
Digest Edited by Rebecca Woodard
Digest Compilers:
Daniel W.S. Tindall, San Francisco State University
Suzanna Rocco Dillon, Wayne State University
Scott J. Pedersen, New Mexico State University
Aaron Moffett, California State University, San Bernardino
Kevin M. Casebolt, East Stroudsburg University, East Stroudsburg, PA