Even in inclusive classrooms, children with special education needs (SEN) may have lower levels of emotional inclusion and academic self-concept, although their social inclusion may be comparable to their peers (DeVries et al., 2018; Schwab, 2015). Meanwhile, boys and girls may also experience similar perceptions of inclusion, but varying academic self-concept (Pinxten et al., 2013). Newly developed reliably short-ratings (i.e., the Perception of Inclusion Questionnaire; PIQ; Venetz et al., 2015) of these three variables may offer an insight into developmental patterns for children with and without SEN in relation to perception of inclusion and academic self-concept. The present study validates the PIQ in a novel setting and language group by looking at Swedish 5th and 8th grader in an inclusive school. We also investigate differences in emotional inclusion, social inclusion, and academic self-concept based on gender, grade level, and SEN. Participants were 5th and 8th graders in an inclusive school in Sweden (N = 195, 96 female, 97 5th graders). Included were 48 learners with diagnosed SEN. Participants filled out the PIQ (12 items on a 4-point Likert scale representing: emotional inclusion, social inclusion, and academic self-concept). The performance of the PIQ was good. The factor structure was confirmed with CFI = .94, RMSEA = .061 (90% CI: .038 – .082), and SRMR = .061. Strong invariance was also upheld in all cases, except for grade-level, which met the criteria for partial invariance by freeing a single intercept (item 2). Children with SEN had lower levels of emotional inclusion, p < p = .030. Children in grade 8 reported significantly lower levels of social inclusion, p = .041. SEN diagnoses were associated with significantly lower in academic self-concept, p = .004, respectively. Gender interacted with grade and SEN, p = .024 and p = .015, respectively. In comparison to 5th grade girls, 8th grade girls with and without SEN had a lower academic self-concept. Meanwhile, the academic self-concept of boys was consistent over across grade-level. While there is ample evidence of gender differences in academically related variables such as self-efficacy (e.g., Huang, 2013), to our knowledge, our results are the first to indicate that in comparison to their same-sex peers, girls with SEN may experience a smaller academic self-concept deficit than boys with SEN. This novel finding requires more research and validation, but the possibility of gender interactions with SEN status on academic self-concept demands more investigation.  

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