Students with a disability are increasingly being educated in regular secondary schools, which creates opportunities for participation with typically developing peers. However, research has shown that about a quarter of adolescents with a disability has no or very limited peer interactions and low quality peer interactions (e.g. Bossaert, Colpin, Pijl & Petry, 2013). Negative implicit and explicit attitudes are presumed to account for this state of affairs, although this hypothesis has hardly been tested. The aims of this study are to: 1) investigate the relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes of adolescents towards their peers with a disability and peer interaction between both groups; 2) test if a disability awareness training can change the implicit and explicit attitudes of adolescents towards their peers with a disability; 3) test if a change in explicit and/or implicit attitudes results in a change in peer interaction. The disability awareness training was a one day training consisting of six parts: a game on knowledge about people with a disability, sports activities, a wheelchair circuit, a workshop on autism, a movie about people with a disability and a guided discussion. The disability awareness training was implemented in five secondary schools (N= 323). Attitudes and peer interaction were measured three times (before the training, immediately after the training and two months after the training) using questionnaires, an Implicit Association Task, sociometric measures and observations. Results show that the disability awareness training had an effect on the explicit as well as on the implicit attitudes. Analyses to test the relationship between attitudes, the change in attitudes and peer interaction are currently going on. All results as well as a discussion of the results will be presented in the symposium.

Bossaert, G., Colphin, H., Pijl, S.J., & Petry, K. (2013). Social Participation of Students with Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Seventh Grade. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 93, 1952–1956.