Adapted Physical Education Teachers’ Perceptions Toward Parents of Children With Disabilities

One role of adapted physical educators is connecting with parents of children with disabilities to enhance service delivery. However, parents experience a disconnect with teachers. Much of the literature has focused on parent perspectives, but equally important is understanding the perspectives of teachers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of adapted physical education (APE) teachers toward parents of children with disabilities. Through semistructured interviews of 11 participants, four themes were extracted: (a) importance and benefits of parent involvement, (b) communicating with parents as a key facilitator to developing relationships, (c) teacher characteristics that facilitate developing parent relationships, and (d) perceived barriers to developing parent relationships. In addition to experiencing parental lack of value for and prioritizing APE, many APE teachers also experienced challenges such as feeling marginalized. Having resilience and communicating through visuals were important factors to create relationships with parents.