Investigating the impact of adapted physical education service-learning projects on preservice teachers’ attitudes toward individuals with disabilities

Abstract

Service-learning (SL) has been implemented widely in teacher educa tion to connect knowledge and practical experiences. In the field of Physical Education Teacher Education, Adapted Physical Education (APE) Courses have been implemented SL to provide hands-on experi ences to promote preservice teachers’ attitudes toward individuals with disabilities. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effective ness of two SL projects, the volunteer project, and the parasports proj ect, in the Intro APE course on preservice teachers’ attitudes toward individuals with disabilities. A total of 130 preservice teachers partici pated in this study taking the Multidimensional Attitude Scale Toward Persons with Disabilities (MAS) before and after completing two SL projects. The result of the t-test indicated that there is no difference in overall MAS scores between pre- and posttest (Meanpre = 2.954, SDpre= 0.689, Meanpost= 3.01, SDpost= 0.679; t(129)= 0.390, P= 0.784). However, the significant increase observed in affects subscale of MAS (Meanpre= 3.47, SDpre= 0.374, Meanpost= 3.52, SDpost= 0.188; t(129)= 0.347, P= 0.327). Our finding indicated cognition and behavior of preser vice teachers toward individuals with disabilities were positively in creased, but not significantly improved yet. Evidence suggested that two SL projects in this study did not significantly improve the overall positive attitudes of preservice teachers toward individuals with disabil ities, but it was meaningful to observe that preservice teachers increased their affects toward individuals with disabilities.