Effects of an Adapted Physical Education Course on Attitudes toward Sport of Omani Individuals with Disabilities

Badriya Al-Hadabi,Bakkar Bakkar,Mohammad Al-Gaseem,Suhail Al-Zoubi,Ibrahim Al-Qaryouti,Fakhriya Al-Yahyai

doi:10.13189/saj.2021.090214

Abstract

The adapted physical education (APA) is a set of sports activities, programs, and exercises that are adjusted to be compatible with individuals with special needs. This research explored the effect of an adapted physical education course on attitudes toward the sport of Omani individuals with disabilities. Participants were 25 undergraduate female students from the Department of Physical Education at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), Sultanate of Oman. The participants responded to the attitudes toward APA scale before and after studying the APA course. This scale consisted of 30 items distributed into three domains related to course instructor, course topics, and course teaching methods. The results revealed that studying the APA course significantly contributed to modifying the participants' attitudes toward the sport of Omani individuals with disabilities. In other words, these effects were demonstrated by the high effect size of the studying the APA course on modifying the participants' attitudes. The research recommends converting the course into a compulsory one, upgrading its credit to 3 credit hours, and adding other courses on Paralympic Games to the program plan at Physical Education Department, SQU. The contributions of this research focused on university special education courses. The presence of these courses will actually contribute to modifying college students' attitudes toward the sport of individuals with disabilities.

Highlights

Individuals with disabilities (IDs) receive a great deal of attention worldwide through the role that the relevant institutions and associations play in facilitating the learning of these individuals in all areas of life
The mean of post-attitudes scale scores was higher than those of the pre-attitudes scale which means that the college students’ attitudes on the post-attitudes scale prominently improved. This implies that attitudes toward the participation of the IDs in the sport became more positive; that is, they had high level according to the criterion of judgment of the scale
The results indicated that there was a significant effect of the APE course on the physical education of college students toward the IDs

Summary

Introduction

Individuals with disabilities (IDs) receive a great deal of attention worldwide through the role that the relevant institutions and associations play in facilitating the learning of these individuals in all areas of life This can be achieved by the integration of efforts of these associations and those of the parents of IDs. This can be achieved by the integration of efforts of these associations and those of the parents of IDs It seems that the initiatives of Non-governmental Organizations striving to protect the rights of these individuals contributed to this interest [1]. This law included legislation that allows the ID to be involved in diverse sports activities by Oman Paralympic Committee [7] This comes out of the Oman belief in providing the opportunity for the IDs to participate in various sports and physical activities to represent Oman in the Arab and international sports competitions

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion