The social participation of students with special educational needs (SEN) as well as other elements of the school-related well-being can be regarded as informative indicators for the inclusion-related quality of a school. Such indicators represent relevant measures for the individual as well as the collective psychosocial outcomes of both, a schools’ inclusive concept as well as its realisation.Building on the prior work of Headey et al. (1984), Ryff & Keyes (1995), Grob et al. 1991 as well as Hascher (2004), a multi-professional research group consisting of regular as well as special education teachers and scientists adopted a six-partite set of questionnaire scales to be administered to students of grade 6 to 10 with and without SEN at the Laboratory School Bielefeld/Germany (Kullmann et al. 2015). The educational concept of this state-run experimental school has been profoundly inspired by the ideas of progressive education as well as the work of John Dewey. It has been serving for a broad range of students including those with SEN for more the 40 years (Thurn 2012). The analyses to be presented are based on a survey that has been administered on a yearly basis between 2013 and 2015. On average, a total of 294 students of the grades 6 to 10 participated (average return rate: 94,7%), of which 9,5% (N = 28) were SEN students. The measurement of social participation was realized by two scales: A newly developed 3-item scale on the “affinity to classmates” (Cronbach’s Alpha without/with SEN, e.g. for 2014: .852/.850) as well as a 4-item scale on the absence of social problems in school (with regard to classmates and other peer students; C-Alpha: .799/.877). The two constructs on social participation are characterised by fairly similar and equally high ratings by both, students with and without SEN (e.g. mean values around 3.7 and 4.0 (minimum: 0; maximum: 5), effect size (d)<.20). They are moderately correlated (r=.415) and structural equation modeling clearly indicates that both are linked to four other measures of school-related well-being while it does not appear appropriate to further condense them to one central figure. In the final paper, we will present further analyses regarding the interconnection between social participation, other elements of school-related well-being as well as additional factors of school quality, e.g. the individual teacher support as perceived by the students or the social competence as an educational goal on the school level.

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