Can preservice physical educators’ implicit attitude toward students with disabilities be changed by adapted physical education training program? Based on an Implicit Association Test

Abstract

Purpose: Aim to explore whether preservice physical educators’ implicit attitude toward students with disabilities could be improved by a mid-term adapted physical education training program.
 Design: A randomized and controlled trial was deployed in the current experiment. Subjects were randomly divided into two groups (Experimental group and control group) after the pre-test of IAT. Post-test IAT was conducted for two groups after the training program for the experimental group.
 Findings: Chinese preservice physical educators’ implicit attitudes toward students with disabilities were negative. They also had a prejudice against students with disabilities. But the implicit attitudes toward students with disabilities could be improved by mid-term adapted physical education training. Furthermore, gender and contact experience with disabilities had no significant influence on the change in their implicit attitude.