Instructor’s intended learning outcomes for disability simulation activities in U.S. Undergraduate adapted physical education courses

Disability simulations are widely used yet highly contested in Adapted Physical Education (APE) undergraduate courses. Guided by Biggs’ Constructive Alignment Theory in Higher Education, this study examined APE instructors’ intended learning outcomes (ILOs) for disability simulations, focusing on how instructors conceptualize the purpose and value of these activities. As part of a larger project, six APE course instructors in the United States participated in semi-structured interviews and shared course materials. Action verbs describing intended learning were extracted from interview transcripts and analyzed using Bloom’s and Fink’s learning taxonomies. Following best-practice guidelines, intended learning outcomes (ILOs) were constructed within the context of disability simulation types, as identified in our prior work: sport, accessibility, teaching and activities of daily living. A Collaborative Qualitative Analysis guided critical inquiry into the quality and alignment of ILOs with APE course curriculum. Instructors most frequently described fostering empathy or appreciation for disabled people as a primary outcome; however, these goals were often vague and difficult to align with measurable learning objectives. The findings further suggested an underlying assumption that experiencing impairment is necessary for understanding disability, positioning embodied simulation as a primary pathway to learning. This assumption was interpreted as reflecting a misalignment between instructors’ intended outcomes, pedagogical design and critical disability scholarship. These findings contribute to ongoing scholarly critiques regarding the appropriateness of disability simulations in APE curricula, and support calls to critically reconsider and potentially discontinue, their use in teacher education.