Abstract
Due to the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, e-learning suddenly spread to different levels of education, including university. In Spain, students of sports sciences are prepared during a 4-year study program to work in different areas (including physical education) and with different populations (including people with disabilities). The aims of this study were (1) to assess the effect of pandemic-driven online teaching on self-efficacy (SE) for the inclusion of people with disabilities in a group of university students enrolled in a compulsory course on adapted physical activity (APA); (2) compare the gains from SE before and after the APA course with a sample of students who followed the same course before the pandemic; and (3) explore the influence on SE scores according to three demographic variables: gender, previous SE training, and previous experience with people with disabilities. The study involved a sample of 124 university students (22.1 ± 2.6 years), distributed into two groups: prepandemic (n = 86) and pandemic (n = 38). They voluntarily completed the Spanish version of the Scale of Self-Efficacy of Physical Education Teachers of Physical Education toward Children with Disabilities, obtaining pre- and postcourse measurements. Due to the sudden lockdown, two-thirds of the pandemic course was taught online, and changes in the teaching strategies and tasks had to be made. Similar gains were obtained in both groups for the three subscales of the SE scale (p < 0.001, large effect sizes): intellectual, physical, and visual disability. No significant differences were found for comparisons between groups and the interaction effect of the course taught, nor for the three demographic co-variables. This study shows that teaching strategies that encourage student participation and reflections on learning increase student SE, regardless of the teaching format (i.e., face-to-face vs. online teaching). Moreover, the gains in SE are invariable to demographic co-variables.
Highlights
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a world pandemic due to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), popularly known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)
Self-efficacy has been recommended as a preferred theoretical framework for studying the beliefs of prospective physical education (PE) teachers toward inclusion (Block et al, 2010; Taliaferro et al, 2015)
This study aimed to explore the potential impact on SE achievements when teaching suddenly moved to online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in a sample of university-level students enrolled in a mandatory course on adapted physical activity (APA) for people with disabilities (PwD)
Summary
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared a world pandemic due to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), popularly known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Spanish universities had to adapt to the changes derived from the causes of the pandemic and had to face a new methodological model—e-learning teaching—which not all teachers and students were trained for (Alemany-Arrebola et al, 2020). Before this pandemic scenario, evidence corroborated the differences between face-to-face and virtual classroom contexts because of the “qualities and characteristics of the teaching/ learning experience”
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