handicapped student. It is somewhat more difficult to conceptualize situations when most mentally handicapped students should be excluded from general physical education classes. There may be, however, situations wherein the integration into general physical education classes of a mentally handicapped student (or a group of such students with similar characteristics and intensity of mental retardation) would effectively deny both equality and quality of educational opportunity to both the mentally handicapped student and the non-mentally handicapped student.
In relation to academically-oriented classes, the situation tends to be reversed. The conceptualization of situations where the mainstreaming of a mentally disabled student might actually work to the detriment of the handicapped student is a relatively easy task, whereas contentions that mainstreaming in academically-oriented classes might prove to be detrimental to physically handicapped students are more difficult to support.
Three research articles that examined teacher perceptions toward the
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