Inclusive education is a shared policy goal all over Europe (see e.g. Schwab, 2019) and therefore schools are moving forward to remove learning barriers and create opportunities for the best development of students. Within this trend, not only the academic development but also the social, emotional and motivational development of students has become more and more interest. Focusing on research it seems difficult to compare results on students’ outcomes from different countries, as studies often use different methodologies and research instruments. Moreover, including students voices or self-perceptions are often missing in research. However, within the present symposium, the attempt is made to get results, which allow for comparability in a transnational perspective. Following the trend of assessing the specific viewpoints of students in school, one instrument which has been used already in several countries in Europe (e.g. Austria, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden) is the Perception of Inclusion Questionnaire (PIQ; Venetz, Zurbriggen, Eckhart, Schwab, & Hessels, 2015). This survey instrument focuses on students’ emotional and social inclusion as well as their academic self-concept from students, parents and teachers’ points of view. 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. Zurbriggen, Venetz, Schwab, & Hessels, 2019; Venetz, Zurbriggen, & Schwab, 2019). 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, four studies from different countries (Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland) 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 examines the psychometric qualities of a newly developed verbal version of the questionnaire (PIQ-V) within two samples (N = 69 kindergarten children from Germany and 150 kindergarten children from Switzerland). Results indicated that at least the subscales social and emotional inclusion are also suitable for kindergarten children.

The second presentation focuses on the validation of the PIQ in a novel setting and language group by looking at Swedish 5th and 8th graders (N = 195). The performance and the factor structure of the PIQ were confirmed. Results showed significantly lower levels of emotional inclusion and academic self-concept for children with SEN. Furthermore, the results indicate that in comparison to their same-sex peers, girls with SEN may experience a smaller academic self-concept deficit than boys with SEN.

The third study elucidates the inclusion among children with physical disabilities from 5th to 10th grade from Norway (N = 248 students). Preliminary findings showed that children attending regular schools but spending more than half the time outside of ordinary classroom education, had markedly lower scores on both social inclusion and academic self-concept. Interestingly, the findings highlight a significantly lower risk of negative academic self-concept among children of mothers that had completed a university degree.

The last study links the students’ perceptions of resources (e.g. personal and material resources) with students’ perception of inclusion. 701 secondary graders from inclusive classes from Germany took part in this paper-pencil survey. The results of the study highlighted that the higher the subjective perceived resources in school the more positive are 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. Altogether, the symposium allows for a more comprehensive understanding of students’ experiences in inclusive schooling.

Schwab, S. (2019). Inclusive and special education in Europe. In Sharma, U. (Ed.). Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.ORE_EDU-01230.R1 Venetz, M., Zurbriggen, C. L. A. , Eckhart, M., Schwab, S., & Hessels, M. G. P. (2015). The Perceptions of Inclusion Questionnaire (PIQ). Retrieved from https://piqinfo.ch/ Venetz, M., Zurbriggen, C. L. A., & Schwab, S. (2019). What do Teachers Think about their Students’ Inclusion? Consistency of Students’ Self-reports and Teacher Ratings. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01637 Zurbriggen, C. L. A., Venetz, M., Schwab, S., & Hessels, M. G. P. (2019). A psychometric analysis of the student version of the perceptions of inclusion questionnaire (PIQ). European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 35(5), 641-649. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000443