Inclusive education in the sense of creating the best possible learning opportunities for all students and removing learning barriers is a shared goal all over the world. Therefore, the evaluation of the implementation of successful inclusion is a unique challenge for research. Clearly, measuring outcomes of inclusive education is complex, especially in terms of comparability in a transnational perspective. By now, evaluation, and especially systematic long-term data of assessments of effects of inclusive education are missing. To get a broader insight into students’ school experience, the ‘Perception of Inclusion Questionnaire’ (PIQ; Venetz, Zurbriggen, Eckhart, Schwab, & Hessels, 2015), which focuses on students’ emotional and social inclusion as well as their academic self-concept, was developed. The PIQ is freely available in several languages (www.piqinfo.ch) and all three versions (students’, parents’ and teachers’ version) have high psychometric quality (see e.g. Venetz, Zurbriggen, Schwab, & Hessels, 2017). The three variables of the PIQ (social inclusion, emotional inclusion and academic self-concept) can be considered as major outcome variables in the context of inclusive education. In this symposium, three studies from different countries and continents will be presented, which all have a commonality: they all used the students’ version of the PIQ. Moreover, they all include inclusive classes (where students with and without special educational needs (SEN) are educated together) in their samples.

            The first presentation uses data from a cross-national data collection conducted by Statistics Norway. The main focus of this study is to compare the perceptions of inclusion of secondary grade students with physical disabilities with those without disabilities. Moreover, predictors (e.g. SEN-status, parents’ characteristics) of social acceptance will be identified.

            Complementary to this study, the second presentation focuses on the comparison of students’ perceptions of inclusion between students from inclusive classes and regular classes . The sample of this longitudinal study comprises 221 students from German primary and secondary schools. Results indicate that students from regular classes experience a higher level of emotional integration and a higher academic self-concept.

              The third study elucidates the link between students’ social participation, academic self-concept and school wellbeing  and teachers’ teaching practices. The data comprises 807 elementary students from Saudi Arabia. Results show that students with SEN perceive a lower level of social inclusion, emotional inclusion, and academic self-concept. Furthermore, higher levels of inclusive teaching strategies are associated with more positive students’ perceptions of inclusion.

Overall, the symposium will critically discuss positive aspects and challenges of inclusive education. Furthermore, the potential of the PIQ as an instrument to evaluation outcomes of inclusive education will be discussed. All together, the symposium allows for a more comprehensive understanding of students’ experiences in inclusive schooling.

Venetz, M., Zurbriggen, C. A. L., Eckhart, M., Schwab, S., & Hessels, M. G. P. (2015). The Perceptions of Inclusion Questionnaire (PIQ). Retrieved from www.piqinfo.ch Zurbriggen, C., Venetz, M., Schwab, S., & Hessels, M. G. P. (2018). A psychometric analysis of the student version of the perceptions of inclusion questionnaire (PIQ). European Journal of Psychological Assessment. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000443