Research evidence demonstrates that attitudes of typically developing peers are of substantial importance for fostering inclusion of children with disabilities in educational contexts (e.g., de Boer et al., 2014). Hence, promoting students’ positive attitudes towards their peers with disabilities is currently seen as a critical step to build consistent educational approaches aimed at guaranteeing the full participation of all children in all aspects of school life (EASNIE, 2011, 2014). Disability awareness programs constitute a form of challenging disabling attitudes and enhancing positive ones (Ison et al., 2010; Lindsay & Edwards, 2013). We view its infusion into the general curriculum as a preventive approach to reduce negative attitudes and barriers to the inclusion of children with disabilities, as well as a way to prepare students to adopt ethical and moral principles of valuing individual differences. This paper reports the implementation of a disability awareness program conducted with 51 fifth-grade children. The purposes of the study were to determine the program feasibility and to evaluate its impact on children’s attitudes. The disability awareness program was implemented throughout eight weeks in 50-minute sessions and included a combined approach using cognitive, affective and behavioural intervention strategies. The sample comprised two experimental classes (C1=15; C2=17) and one control class (C3=19). The condition for class selection was having a child with disability. We explored the program feasibility and its effectiveness through the use of different methods: observation of social interactions in recess; interview with the teacher who assisted the program implementation; focus groups with children from the two experimental classes; a reduced version of the CATCH-scale, applied to the three classes. The data of this study support the program feasibility and its potential effectiveness in promoting positive attitudes in typically developing children towards their peers with disabilities.

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