Welcome back to the What's New in Adapted Physical Education (APE) podcast/blog page! In today's very special episode we had an interview with Dr. Martin Block about the International Symposium of Adapted Physical Activity (ISAPA) and APE at an international level. Dr. Block is a professor of APE and co-director of the Masters program in APE at the University of Virginia, where he has been since 1992. In addition to these roles, Dr. Block also serves as the President of the International Federation of Adapted Physical Activity (IFAPA). IFAPA is an organization of adapted physical activity professionals and students from all around the world. Currently, IFAPA is working on expanding their webpage to help promote their goals of disseminating information about conferences, programs, research studies, and other news related to adapted physical activity. The long term goal of IFAPA is to create an international network of researchers for collaboration to advance the field of adapted physical activity, which is discussed in the podcast.
Also discussed in this podcast is the ISAPA, which acts under IFAPA, will return to the United States this year (2019) for the first time since 1992. It will be held June 14th through 18th in Charlottesville, Virginia. This year’s theme is Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The goal for ISAPA is to bring international researchers together to share their research in hopes of learning about what is going on in other countries. This podcast covers IFAPA and ISAPA, and differences in APE between the United States and other countries. It also covers the gap between research and practitioners in APE, and what IFAPA is doing to address this gap. For more information on IFAPA, you can visit their website at: http://ifapa.net
If you are interested in the 2019 ISAPA, check out their website at: http://isapa2019.org/index.shtml
Finally, this episode is part 1 of a 2-part series. In the next episode we will have Dr. Justin Haegele from the University of Old Dominion and Ann Griffin from Grantwood AEA on to discuss more about the ISAPA conference and their intended presentations.
This blog post was written by Kylie Wilson, a graduate assistant in the Kinesiology Department at the University of Northern Iowa
