Özet:

Abstract The Special Olympics Unified Sport program enables sports practices for people with and without intellectual disabilities to work together to promote social inclusion. Based on this program, an action research was carried out to analyze the relationship between athletes with and without intellectual disabilities in rhythmic gymnastics classes based on the Unified Sport. To that end, 18 girls, 12 with intellectual disabilities and 6 without this condition, performed rhythmic gymnastics classes together for 12 weeks, with 2 weekly sessions of 2 hours each, in a sports court in Guaratinguetá, São Paulo, Brazil. At the end of the program, a semi-structured interview with non-disabled girls was used, assessing the data by content analysis. The results showed that the interaction between athletes with and without disabilities promoted improvements in the performance of athletes and enabled the construction of knowledge about the diversities, reaching attitudes of acceptance and respect for differences.

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