The participants in the study were pre-service PE teachers in their fourth year of a PETE program at a university in Saudi Arabia. This cohort was chosen because the participants were close to graduating and taking teaching positions the following year. Of the 35 eligible participants, six participants (17.14%) who completed the 6-week APA intervention program (M_age = 22.3 years) agreed to be interviewed in this study. A small sample of participants enabled an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon of the people in perspective for this study [26]. Most participants (n = 5) reported that they have neither a family member nor a friend with a disability. All participants have taken the adapted PE course. One participant reported having previous experience teaching students with intellectual disabilities. Overall, two participants reported having observed PE teachers teaching students with disabilities, whereas one had been persuaded to teach PE to students with disabilities.

The APA intervention program contains inclusive PE skills recently described by Alhumaid et al. [27]. This program aimed to increase the level of SE among pre-service PE teachers in teaching students with PD in general PE settings. The program consisted of six sessions of 3 hours per session; one session a week (total of 18 hours). The program was conducted on-campus (e.g., a gymnasium) and off-campus (e.g., a Paralympic sport club gymnasium).

Face-to-face, in-depth, individual, semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants regarding their participation in the 6-week APA intervention program. The benefit of adopting semi-structured interviews as a research method is that they enable interviewers and interviewees to co-create shared understandings through their inherently open-ended nature [28].

In the present study, we followed suggestions by Creswell [29], Jacob and Furgerson [30], and McGrath et al. [31] in structuring and formatting the interviews. For example, McGrath et al. [31] suggested that interviews start with relatively easy warm-up questions to encourage the participant to feel comfortable. In addition, Jacob and Furgerson [30] suggested that interviewers should prepare a script to guide the process during the interviews. Moreover, the semi-structured interview guide was created based on Bandura’s [32] Self-Efficacy Theory sources and previous studies [6, 33], the present study’s objectives and the participants’ participation in the APA intervention program. For example, it featured questions such as ‘How would you describe your experience in the intervention program?’; ‘Explain how your SE has been changed from the beginning of the program to the end?’ Towards the end of the interview, participants were asked one question about their feelings about the intervention: ' Do you have any additional concerns or comments that you would like to add about the intervention?’

The participants who had agreed to participate in the study were contacted by phone to arrange and confirm the location, date, and time of the interviews. Before starting each interview, each participant was given a research information sheet detailing the structure of the interview and asked if they needed more information. After reading the research information sheet, they signed the consent form if they agreed to participate. A checklist to ensure that all questions were covered and the same basic line of questions was consistent was utilized for each participant [34]. All interviews took place in a conference room at the university. All interviews lasted approximately 25 minutes and were audio-recorded using a digital recorder. This helped check the accuracy/veracity of the data collected [35], and transcribed interviews were emailed to each participant. All participants agreed with the content of the interview. Pseudonyms such as Ahmed, Mohammed, Ali, Saleh, Saeed, and Khaled were used to protect the confidentiality and anonymity of participants in this study.

Two approaches were used to analyze the interviews. First, a deductive data analysis approach was applied using a theoretical approach. This method is justified by allowing basic themes extracted from the data [36]. Second, the inductive approach was applied manually by identifying important themes. A model by Winfield et al. [37], which involved deductive techniques, was applied to obtain the structure of the final themes.

The transcripts were read twice for familiarization and coded using NVivo12 software. Then, three analysis phases were conducted to check for consistency. Specifically, the transcripts were coded using the NVivo for data abstraction in stage one. These nodes were defined using unique codes for the various statements represented as aspects and dimensions of conversation [38]. Later, these nodes were used to recognize and sort the general categories and themes emerging from the data [39]. Several nodes were created by applying NVivo software functions to determine the participants’ most frequently occurring responses about each element. These words were analyzed by choosing stemmed words, which were found from the words cloud and treemap to demonstrate their regular usage by the participants and their significance in this analysis.

The second stage involved collating the main topics mentioned in the raw data themes as an inductive technique. We narrowed down their focus to applying the themes at this stage, where the inductive technique was used after grouping all codes of statements showing the most similar themes. In getting to stage three, the deductive technique provided the dimensions of the themes obtained from the second stage.

The data revealed six major themes and 12 subthemes (Table 1).

The findings highlighted that the participants expressed positive attitudes towards the idea of inclusive education. This result agrees with previous studies’ findings [40-42]. Further, Folsom-Meek and Rizzo [43] posit that teachers’ attitudes significantly affect how they interact with and teach students with disabilities in general PE classes. In this regard, the present study’s finding that the participants expressed positive attitudes towards inclusive PE is likely to reflect the APA intervention program’s positive impact on their feelings toward inclusion. The participants agreed that the APA intervention program provided both persons with and without PD an opportunity to learn and interact in beneficial ways.

Literature has reported that PETE programs fail to provide adequate training for pre-service teachers. For example, several studies from Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland [44-47] suggest that PE teachers felt they did not receive enough training in teaching students with disabilities in PE classes during their undergraduate studies. Therefore, these results may explain the present study’s findings in which several participants stated that they felt the APA intervention program should have been longer. In particular, in terms of the APA intervention program’s duration, while the participants reported that it should be longer, a previous study by Reina et al. [6] that tested an intervention of the same duration (18 hours) found that participants reported that the 18-hour program was perfectly acceptable. A possible explanation for these contradictory results might be that the Reina et al. [6] intervention program involved in-service PE teachers, whereas the present study's APA intervention program targeted pre-service PE teachers. Therefore, in-service PE teachers are likely to have more experience teaching students with disabilities [48] than undergraduate pre-service teachers. Thus, it is logical that pre-service PE teachers may require a longer, more intensive intervention program than in-service teachers.

Researchers have recommended providing pre-service PE teachers with more experience teaching students with disabilities [40, 48, 49]. Concurrent with the literature, the participants in the present study also reported improvements in their inclusive teaching skills, abilities, and SE in teaching students with PD following the APA intervention program. Consequently, this result confirms the widely held view in the literature that practical experience positively influences individuals’ confidence and abilities toward including students with disabilities in general PE settings [24, 50, 51].

Next, in terms of the impact of the participants’ physiological and emotional status [52] on their SE towards teaching students with disabilities, these aspects appear to be closely linked to their eventual success or failure. Moreover, Miesera et al. [53] examined the impact of pre-service teachers’ concerns about their attitudes and SE in terms of teaching inclusive classes. The authors concluded that respondents with fewer concerns expressed more positive attitudes and had a higher level of SE towards teaching successfully in inclusive settings. Similarly, participants in the present study also stated that they were concerned about teaching students with disabilities before participating in the APA intervention program. These concerns could be related to their previous experiences; for example, observing unsuccessful inclusive classes [54], having to teach students with disabilities without professional supervision [55], lack of skills required for inclusive PE [56], or lack of support [57]. However, all the participants in the present study reported feeling much more confident teaching inclusive classes for students with and without PD after participating in the APA intervention program. Therefore, in light of Miesera et al.’s [53] results, it is likely that the participants in the present study indicated positive attitudes and high levels of SE towards the inclusion of students with PD due to the APA intervention program. The present study’s finding is also in accordance with other studies [55, 58, 59] that suggested participants with no previous experience in inclusive teaching felt anxious when teaching in inclusive contexts.

Peebles and Mendaglio [60] suggested that interviews could provide researchers with perspectives and explanations that cannot be caught in quantitative studies. In addition, continued investigation in this field will support teachers in understanding which experiences are most effective at promoting SE and preparing pre-service teachers for the challenge of inclusive education. In the present study, when asked what participants felt had been the most effective activity for enhancing their confidence and SE teaching students with disabilities, most participants reported that the APA intervention program’s practical teaching elements were the most effective. This result was expected as mastery experiences [32] have been identified as the most powerful source of SE. This result is consistent with previous studies that reported that Irish and Canadian pre-service PE teachers’ level of SE improved after gaining practical experience teaching students with disabilities [48, 60, 61].

The Spanish Inclusive-T guide [62] suggests that participants should be able to perform simulations of several types of disabilities (e.g., PD). Disability-simulation activities can enhance teachers’ attitudes towards and empathy for persons with disabilities [63-66]. McKenney [67] also concluded that disability simulation activities helped to decrease participants’ nervousness and increase their feelings of ease towards teaching persons with disabilities. In line with this finding, the participants in the present study mentioned that the simulation activity positively impacted their confidence toward inclusion. Participants experienced a simulated PD with a mentor with a PD as a real-life model. Consequently, the positive impact of this simulation highlights the importance of such approaches when designing an intervention program to improve teachers’ SE towards teaching students with disabilities.

McCarthy and Campbell [68] and, more recently, Garcia and Gonzalez [69] suggested that the extent to which persons without disabilities are provided with opportunities for direct contact with persons with disabilities positively affects their attitudes towards the latter. This is significantly linked to the SE level of persons without disabilities [70, 71]. For example, interacting with para-athletes in sports activities can improve PE teachers’ confidence toward including students with disabilities in general PE settings [72]. Moreover, such interactions are also effective at raising social awareness about the difficulties that para-athletes face during training and competition [62]. In the present study, the interview data are consistent with other findings in the literature in that having the opportunity to interact with para-athletes was one of the most effective activities for improving the participants’ level of SE towards including students with PD. Therefore, PETE programs should provide these kinds of activities for pre-service PE teachers in order to increase their awareness and confidence in inclusive PE [73, 74].

The literature has reported that although pre-service PE teachers expressed positive attitudes toward inclusion, in reality, they are poorly prepared to include students with disabilities in their PE classes [60, 75]. Therefore, it is clear that having positive attitudes toward inclusion per se does not necessarily result in pre-service PE teachers feeling fully prepared to teach inclusive classes [76]. As a result, in the present study, we felt it was necessary to explore the extent to which the participants felt prepared to teach inclusive PE classes.

In this regard, the participants expressed mixed feelings regarding preparing for teaching in inclusive PE contexts following the APA intervention program. In particular, while most participants reported feeling well prepared after the APA intervention program, a few stated that they felt inadequately prepared. This finding is similar to that of Ahsan et al. [77], that pre-service teachers’ readiness for inclusive education varied considerably. A possible explanation for these mixed levels of readiness might be that the participants’ level of expectation about the demands of teaching in inclusive contexts differed between the participants in the two studies. Another possible explanation might be that other confounding or unknown variables may have impacted participants’ preparation, such as having previous experience with persons with disabilities [60]. Hodge et al. [9] concluded that PE teachers with more experience demonstrated and expressed more preparedness in teaching students with disabilities than those with less experience.

Consequently, to clearly investigate an intervention program for pre-service PE teachers, we recommend that future research engage participants with no previous experience with disabilities to participate in the intervention program. Indeed, these differences (mixed feelings in terms of participants’ preparation to teach in inclusive PE contexts) can be considered positive differences through which the influence of the APA intervention program is explored from more than one perspective. Therefore, this difference in the results may contribute to developing evidence-based recommendations that could benefit future intervention programs.

Qualitative studies aim to provide an in-depth exploration of respondents’ subjective experiences of a phenomenon [30] and, in the present study’s context, allow them to express their opinions freely about their participation in a particular APA intervention program [78]. Therefore, the present study’s results underline that taking advantage of participants’ experiences in an APA intervention program is worthwhile to improve the program’s content for future research. Therefore, the participants were asked to suggest how the APA intervention program could be improved. The participants reported that being able to spend more time working with persons with disabilities would be highly beneficial. This finding is in line with a recent study, which found that the interaction with students with disabilities helped pre-service PE teachers to gain confidence in themselves [79]. Also, in this respect, the participants’ claims are consistent with other studies [12, 51, 60], which suggest pre-service PE teachers need to spend more time with students with disabilities. In particular, Coates [80] and Tindall et al. [48] concluded that it is necessary to provide such experiences for pre-service PE teachers within the area of APA to improve their level of SE towards including students with disabilities.

The participants also gave other valuable suggestions to improve the APA intervention program’s content. For example, one participant recommended that the APA intervention program include different age categories (i.e., children and adult students). This suggestion is in line with a recent Saudi study by Aldabas [81] that special education teachers showed low confidence in their preparedness toward teaching younger students with disabilities (i.e., preschool and primary school). Moreover, another participant from the present study stated that the APA intervention program would be much better if it provided extra equipment such as sports wheelchairs. This finding is in line with the suggestions Bastos et al. [82] provided that PE teachers should improve their knowledge of para-sports (e.g., equipment and rules). The present study’s findings also support prior findings by Haegele et al. [83], who reported that the availability of equipment is a significant factor in order to promote the participation of students with disabilities in PE classes. In addition, another participant from the present study recommended spending less time on theory-based sessions and more on practical sessions. This claim may explain Haegele et al.’s [84] results, which concluded that their 2-day workshop intervention failed to reach its goal of improving teachers’ attitudes toward inclusion because it mainly emphasized theoretical information such as knowledge of relevant legislation, disability definitions, and activity modifications. These results align with Clift and Brady’s [85] suggestions that an inclusive program designed for pre-service teachers should move away from traditional theory-based courses and instead emphasize practical and collaborative practices.

Despite the strengths of this study, certain limitations must be acknowledged. The sample size is the first limitation of this study. As the present study’s sample of pre-service PE teachers (n = 6) is small, in the present study, we applied the concept of transferability from one context to another instead of large-scale generalizability [86]. Second, the sample comprised pre-service PE teachers who were purposefully sampled from those who participated in a 6-week APA intervention program. Indeed, this approach was applied based on the purpose of the present study. Lastly, female participants were not represented in this study because no PETE programs were available for female students at the time of data collection.