Investigation of the effectiveness of the special education program developed for taekwondo coaches working with students affected by intellectual disability and Autism Spectrum Disorder

The general aim of this research is to examine the effectiveness of the special education program developed for taekwondo coaches working with students affected by intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorder. This research was designed with a single-group pretest-posttest model, which is one of the experimental models of quantitative research method. The participants of the study were determined by criterion sampling model, which is one of the non-random sampling methods, and 20 coaches who met the criteria and volunteered to participate in the research constituted the participants of the research. In the research, before implementing the curriculum, pre-test knowledge levels were collected by applying the "Knowledge Level Determination Questionnaire on Special Education for Taekwondo Coaches" developed by the researchers and pre- test data on the level of practice were collected with the "Behavior Assessment Tool on Special Education for Taekwondo Coaches" developed by the researchers by watching three sessions of training video recordings. The special education program, which was developed by the researchers taking into account the needs of the coaches and finalized with expert opinions, was presented online for 15 hours in total for five days, three hours each day. After the special education program was presented to the coaches, post-test data on knowledge level and application level were collected in the same way. The data obtained in the research were analyzed using SPSS 25 statistical program. As a result of the research, since it was aimed to test the significance of the difference between the pre-test and post-test values of the group of taekwondo coaches, the correct or incorrect answer rates of each item in the questionnaire were compared before and after the procedure. In this categorical data analysis, McNemar test, one of the approaches suitable for repeated measures, was used. In addition, frequency (f) and (%) values were reported in the presentation of descriptive findings. When the pre- and post-processing of the research is compared statistically, it is seen that it is effective both at the level of knowledge and at the level of implementation skills. When the knowledge levels and implementation skills of the coaches are compared, it can be said that the increase in knowledge levels is higher. KEYWORDS: Autism spectrum disorder, Intellectual disability, Taekwondo, Trainer, Sport