Including Students with Disabilities in a Physical Education Teacher Preparation Program: An Institutional Perspective

The increasing number of students with disabilities who have the goal of becoming a teacher in either elementary or high school is one of the challenges we are currently facing at the academic colleges of education in Israel. In this chapter, we address the inclusion challenge, namely how we have taken up the challenge to modify one existing teacher preparation program (TPP) in physical education (PE) to enable students with disabilities to study at the same level as the other students who are enrolled in the program. The chapter is composed of four sections. In the first section, we introduce the term inclusive education, elaborate upon its concepts, and highlight a number of developmental phases associated with this term. In the second section, we present the theoretical background and the practical frameworks of an inclusive pedagogy. In the third section, we describe a number of actions taken in one college that enabled students with disabilities to enroll in a PE TPP. In the fourth section, we conclude our discussion and provide a number of ideas for future research, in order to strengthen the understanding of how to integrate students with disabilities in PE TPP.