Comparison of physical education content priorities of teachers and parents of children with Down Syndrome

Abstract

Students with Down Syndrome (DS) have unique education and health needs that often require specially designed instruction such as adapted physical education. To ensure that students with DS receive appropriate and quality physical education services there must be adequate communication and agreement of curriculum content between general and adapted physical educators and parents of these students. This study examined the frequency of communication and level of agreement of physical education curriculum content between general (n = 16) and adapted (n = 93) physical educators and the parents (n = 53) of students with DS. Online surveys were sent via email to parents of children with DS, general and adapted physical educators. Results indicated that parents felt they are communicating less frequently with their child's APE teacher than the communication frequency that APE teachers reported. Social skills in physical education was rated the highest priority of all 12 content areas by all three groups. Disagreement between the parents and teachers was found on two content areas, transitioning from school-based to community-based programming and team sports. This study found high agreement among parents, APE, and GPE teachers on most physical education curriculum content areas for students with DS.