Experiences of Middle School Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Adapted Physical Education

Background: School-age children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are rarely asked to describe their experiences within the programs that they receive and are largely missing from the narrative of their own lives. Current literature on the experiences of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has focused on special education classrooms, sensory perceptions, and minimally on general physical education class expereinces. However, no prior studies have addressed how school-age children with ASD perceive their APE experience.

Objectives: To understand how children with ASD's perceive their experiences in adapted physical education.

Methods: Data were collected from participants (n=10) through drawings, observations in their APE setting and interviews. Exploratory, linguistic, and conceptual comments were used to deconstruct the data, develop themes in individual cases, and then identify connections across cases.

Results: Themes that emerged from the participants were their positive experiences in APE, understanding of the importance of being physically active, sedentary behavior in their spare time, and desire for time in APE.

Conclusions: Learning the barriers and facilitators to any individual’s participation in a positive behavior is important. Barriers and facilitators for these participants included internal (intrapersonal) and external (interpersonal and environmental) factors. It is important in all settings to better identify these factors for populations that, historically, have been thought of as incapable of sharing their experiences.This study focused on a small sample of children with ASD and explored their experiences in APE. Although this study’s outcomes cannot be generalized to the ASD population as a whole, this study will helps to lay the groundwork for future studies with larger samples that, in turn, can help facilitate improved learning outcomes for individuals with ASD in the APE setting.