While a growing number of students with learning disabilities (LD) attend inclusive educational settings together with their regular peers in Germany, little is known about antecedents or consequences of LD students' well-being in exclusive and inclusive types of special education (Wild et al., 2015). Therefore, the present paper investigates whether LD students’ school-related well-being differs depending on the educational setting by focusing on social participation as a widely discussed antecedent of well-being (de Boer, 2012; Hascher & Baillod, 2004). Since LD students’ typically differ in their academic performance, which is also a potential predictor of well-being (Werning & Lütje-Klose, 2012), reading performance as a "key competence" will be considered as a second antecedent and as an outcome of social participation. The data stems from the BiLieF-Project comprising N = 452 elementary school children with general LD. Nearly half of them (44%) attended exclusive special education schools, the others were members of an inclusive classroom. Students have been surveyed and administered a standardized reading performance test in third (t1) and fourth grade (t2 and t3). In addition to comparing the development of students' social participation in inclusive and exclusive settings, reciprocal effects of all three constructs have been analyzed using structural equation models. School-related well-being—indicated by attitudes towards school—did not differ between exclusive and inclusive settings and became less positive over time in both settings. Results from multiple-group modeling (χ2 (18) = 2.7, p<.01, CFI=.98, RMSEA=.06) suggest that the perception of social participation predicts positive attitudes towards school only in exclusive settings, whereas there are reciprocal effects in inclusive settings. Furthermore, performance predicted attitudes towards school only in inclusive settings. Possible explanations and implications of these findings will be discussed.

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