Implementing The Adapted Physical Education E-learning Supplement into Physical Education Teacher Education Program

Since the first special education classes were implemented in general schools in Korea in 1971, special education in Korea has gone through rapid development (Hwang & Evans, 2011). According to the Ministry of Education (2014), the approximate number of students with disabilities in Korea is 87,278, and of these, 61,451 students with disabilities are included in general school settings. This means that about 70.4 % of all students with disabilities are included in general schools. However, studies showed that GPE teachers would not feel comforatble or prepared to include students with disabilities (Oh & Lee, 1999; Roh, 2002; Roh & Oh, 2005). Since a lack of academic preparation in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) program was one of the primary reasons for lack of competence in GPE teachers toward including students with disabilities (Ammah & Hodge, 2006), it is necessary to develop and implement an Adapted Physical Education (APE) educational supplement throughout PETE curriculum. The purpose of this study was to explore whether an APE e-learning supplement would have an impact on the level of self-efficacy and content knowledge of pre-service teachers related to including students with intellectual disabilities. An APE supplement was developed based on the Instructional Design Model (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2005) to provide three sources of self-efficacy, mastery experience, vicarious experience, and social persuasions. Three groups of pre-service teachers (N=75) took the same content supplement with different delivery system, E-learning group (n=25) with online, traditional group (n=25) with printed handout, and control group (n=25) without supplement. Two instruments, the Physical Educators’ Situation-Specific Self-efficacy and Inclusion Student with Disabilities in Physical Education (SE-PETE-D) and the content knowledge test, were given to all participants twice (i.e., pretest and posttest). A 3x2 mixed effect ANOVA revealed that pre-service teachers’ perceived self-efficacy (p=0.023) improved after taking the e-learning supplement. However, there was no significant difference in the level of content knowledge (p=0.248). A modified Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ) was employed to measure the level of satisfaction toward the supplement. The result indicated that the e-learning group showed significantly higher satisfaction levels than the traditional group did in usability and content quality.