Social and emotional competencies are important for success at school and in life —include the abilities to understand and manage emotions, achieve positive goals, show caring and concern for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions (Mahoney et. all, 2020). They are related to academic achievement, prosocial behavior, and positive attitudes toward school, self, and others (e.g., Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011). Therefore, the development of social and emotional competencies of all children is one of the important goals of inclusive education which implies identification of difficulties in a child's socio-emotional development at school.

Recent research shows that children with disabilities, compared to children without disabilities, face more challenges in different aspects of social and emotional functioning (Emerson, King, Llewellyn, Milner, Aitken, Arciuli, and Kavanagh 2019; Narvaez-Olmendo , Sala-Roca, Urrea-Monclús 2021; Swift, Iriarte, Curry, McConkey, Gilligan, Antunes 2021.)

Recent reviews of the literature indicate a lower level of social participation of students with special educational needs (SEN), as well as a lack of friendships (Schwab 2018; Hassani et al. 2020). Students with SEN are significantly less likely than students without SEN to engage in social interactions, be less accepted than others, and form fewer social relationships, which increases the risk of their social marginalization within the classroom (Hassani et al. 2020).

In terms of social interactions, students with SEN are more likely to be alone on the playground and have fewer interactions with their peers than their classmates (e.g., Avramidis, 2013; Hassani et al. 2020). A review of the literature Hassani et al (2020) point out that the lack of interaction between students with SEN and their peers is not only a consequence of significantly fewer attempts by students with SEN, but also of their peers. This is particularly worrying because the lack of social interaction can be attributed not only to a lack of prosocial behavior by students with SEN, but also, probably, to negative attitudes of their peers towards them (Hassani et al., 2020).

There is limited number of research on social-emotional outcomes of inclusive education, especially in low-income countries where there are limited resources for implementation of inclusive education. In Bosnia and Herzegovina inclusive education started in 2004 and mostly provide the placement of students with mild disabilities in a general education classroom, and some support concerning academic needs of children with disabilities.

The aim of this research is to examine differences in various dimensions of social and emotional competences between pupils with disabilities and their peers without disabilities from the perspective of their teachers in Bosnia and Herzegovina inclusive educational context. The focus of this research is on the social and emotional competencies important for participating in everyday school social and academic activities: social inclusion, emotional well-being, academic self-concept, self-awareness, social-awareness, self-management, goal-directed behavior, relationship skills, personal responsibility, decision making, and optimistic thinking.

Since the social and emotional competencies of students are key to achieving the goals of inclusive education, the findings of this research seek to provide insight into the effects of existing practice in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The results will also provide substantiated evidence of the needs of children with disabilities for social and emotional learning interventions in inclusive education.

The sample include teachers (N= 53) who assessed social and emotional competences and inclusion of their pupils (N=106), both sexes, mean ages 11 years, who attend mainstream classes (1st -8th) in Bosnia and Hercegovina. The sample of pupils include children with disabilities (N=53) and children without disabilities (N=53). The sample of children with disabilities consist of children with various mild disabilities: learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, autistic spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, motor disorders. Social and emotional competences of pupils were measured by Devereux Student Strengths Assessment, DESSA (LeBuffe, Shapiro, Naglieri, 2009/ 2014). The DESSA contains 72 items in total, forming a Social Emotional Composite score. The subscales are Self-Awareness (7 items), Social-Awareness (9 items), Self-Management (11 items), Goal-Directed Behaviour (10 items), Relationship Skills (10 items), Personal Responsibility (10 items), Decision Making (8 items), Optimistic Thinking (7 items). The overall reliability is α = .99. Perception of inclusion was measured by Perception of inclusion questionary, PIQ (Venetz, Zurbriggen, Eckhart, Schwab, Hessels, 2015). The PIQ consists of 12 items that measure three central dimensions of subjectively perceived inclusion in school: emotional well-being in school, social inclusion in class and the academic self-concept. Cronbach’s Alpha values were determined for each subscale: social inclusion α =.87; emotional well-being α =.80; academic self-perception α =.75. The survey was conducted online during the spring of 2021. Due to the Covid 19 pandemic and the increased workload in teaching, communication with schools was difficult. After obtaining the consent of the Ministries of Education, 43 schools from Herzegovina were contacted by e-mail or telephone and explained the idea and purpose of this research. 28 schools agreed to participate. Professional associates contacted all teachers in their school who have students with disabilities in their class aged 7 to 13 years. For every student with disabilities, teachers find a couple, ie a student of typical development who is of the same sex and age with the child. The selection of a child without disabilities was carried out by taking the 7th student in alphabetical order in the diary with a change of +/- 2 students if the seventh in a row is not of the same sex as the child with disabilities. If there were two or more students with disabilities in the class, the same principle was applied, considering another peer of typical development who was under number 14 +/- 2.

Teacher’s estimation of social and emotional competences indicates that students with disabilities show a lower level of competencies. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for the results of all pupils and the Shapiro-Wilk test for the sample of children with disabilities and for the sample of children without disabilities showed that the distributions of results on almost all DESSA subscales are relatively symmetric and the T-test was used. The social and emotional competencies of children with disabilities are statistically significantly lower than those of children without disabilities on all subscales (self-awareness, social-awareness, self-management, goal-directed behavior, relationship skills, personal responsibility, decision making, and optimistic thinking) as well as on the overall DESSA score. Teachers estimate that students with disabilities achieve a lower level of inclusion. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for the results of all pupils and the Shapiro-Wilk test for the sample of children with disabilities and for the sample of children without disabilities showed that the distributions of results on almost all PIQ subscales deviated statistically significantly from normal, and the nonparametric Mann-Whitney test was used. It was found that students with disabilities achieve statistically significantly lower results both on the overall score and on the subscales of emotional inclusion, social inclusion, and academic self-concept. The results obtained are consistent with findings on greater difficulties of children with developmental disabilities in social and emotional functioning compared to their typical peers (e.g., Swift et al., 2021; Narvaez-Olmendo et al., 2021). The obtained results indicate the need for a more intensive focus on the implementation of social and emotional learning programs designed to encourage the development of all students, including students with disabilities, as well as teachers in inclusive education. Among the many benefits, these programs should increase the sensitivity to diversity and acceptance of students with disabilities.

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