Disentangling Inclusive Primary Physical Education from the Teachers’ Perspective

Teachers have themselves the best insight into the requirements related to including children, especially those with additional needs, in primary physical education. Therefore, a quantitative survey using an online questionnaire was administered to teachers concerned with the implementation of physical education at primary schools in Europe. The overall response rate (N=1206) was relatively high but shows clear differences between the countries. It reports that 58.3% of the children are taught physical education by specialist teachers (against 36.7% by generalist teachers) and that 36.6% of the children are always included in physical education lessons. Generally, over 80.0% of the teachers ranked inclusion in primary physical education as important in their countries and 65.4% rated their competence to include children with additional needs in their physical education lessons as good or very good. Nevertheless, the results also suggest that teachers are not able to include all children in the lesson without further support and a particular emphasis on motor, physical and emotional needs of children is required. Finally, teachers would welcome in particular video case scenarios, templates of visual resources, video and audio recordings of support personnel and guidance on adapting activities.