Every human being has a need for social acceptance (DeWall & Bushman, 2011). The question how to improve social integration of socially excluded children in school remains an unsolved issue. Studies indicate that ~50 % of students with special educational needs (SEN) and ~15 % of students without SEN are excluded from class community (e.g. Huber, 2008; Krull, Wilbert & Hennemann, 2014). Still, reliable concepts for fostering social integration within the school context are lacking (Garrote et al., 2017). Koster et al. (2009) argue that social inclusion is a multidimensional construct that is structured by the dimensions friendship, contact, individual perception and acceptance by peers. Therefore, developing and evaluating methods with purpose of fostering social integration and taking regard to this proposed structure by Koster et al. (2009) is crucial for school context.

The intergroup contact theory claims that contact provided within specific conditions can help to overcome prejudices and therefore foster social integration (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). Research on intergroup contact theory suggests that several conditions must be met to evoke high quality contacts among students. The intergroup contact theory indicates parallels to cooperative learning in its basic criteria (Johnson & Johnson, 1983; Weber & Huber, 2020). Therefore, cooperative learning may be adapted to structure contact experiences in class to become ones of high quality. By structuring assignments and interactions in class, teachers facilitate contacts fulfilling the specific conditions derived from intergroup contact theory. This would provide an opportunity to foster social integration within the school context economically within daily classes.

The SOZIUS project, funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) aims to investigate if cooperative learning enriched by intergroup contact theory’s conditions can foster social integration within the classroom context. Therefore, an adapted version of cooperative learning (IKL) that contains the conditions for positive contacts of intergroup contact theory was developed (Hank, Weber & Huber, 2022).  This study aims to investigate if IKL can foster different levels of social integration. Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed:

H1) In classes with IKL, peers’ social acceptance, measured in outgoing choices in relation to possible choices, increases more than in the control group.

H2) In classes with IKL, peers’ social rejection, measured in incoming rejections in relation to possible rejections, decreases more than in the control group.

H3) In classes with IKL, peers’ friendships, measured in reciprocal choices in relation to possible reciprocal choices, increase more than in the control group.

H4.) In classes with IKL, individuals’ contacts, measured in outgoing choices in relation to possible outgoing choices, increase more than in the control group.

H5.) In classes with IKL, subjectively perceived social integration increases more than in the control group.

Within a wait-control-group-design the hypotheses were tested. N = 834 primary school students participated (N = 39 classes) in this intervention study. Teachers received two training days to implement IKL and consecutively conducted one IKL-session a day over the course of four weeks. All classes were evaluated pre, post and follow up based on surveys comprising a sociometric instrument (Moreno, 1974) and an instrument about the subjective status of social integration (Rauer & Schuck, 2003). The sociometric instrument provided information on acceptance, rejection friendships and initiated contacts (H1, H2, H3, H4). The subjective status of social integration was considered for the development of the subjectively perceived social integration (H5) and used to control for the initial status of subjectively perceived social integration. Furthermore, results are controlled for age and gender. For data analysis it must considered that time of measurements are ( level 1) are nested in individuals (level 2) being part of classes (level 3). Due to the nested structure of the data, hypotheses are being tested by longitudinal multilevel analysis using lme4 package (Bates et al., 2015) of R. To enable the interpretation of interactions, multi-level analyses are accompanied by diagrams differentiating between the quartiles of initial subjectively perceived social integration.

The results indicate that the intervention group develops significantly better from the first time of measurement to the follow-up measurement. The interaction effect is significant for peer acceptance, friendships, initiated contacts and rejection. Merely for subjectively perceived social integration the proposed hypothesis can’t be confirmed. All in all, this emphasizes the potential IKL could have for fostering social integration in class. IKL is able to improve peer perceived social acceptance. To also affect the subjective level of social integration IKL should be applied regularly and for a longer period to reveal possible delayed effects. Considering the fact that class networks have existed for over a year, a delayed effect on perceived changes within this network is possible. By offering a teaching method which allows to work on the curriculum and foster social integration simultaneously, teachers’ requirement for economic and effective methods are met. The conditions for a successful implementation of IKL will be provided and possibilities to improve conditions of intergroup contact theory (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). The relevance of IKL for children with SEN and the transferability affecting international school settings will be discussed. Furthermore, limitations of the interventional field study will be considered.

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