The development of social relationships has been offered as an important justification for the inclusion of students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) in regular schools. However, recent sociometric research has consistently reported that integrated students with SEND run a greater risk of being socially marginalized within their class (Bossaert, De Boer et al., 2015; Pijl & Frostad, 2010; Schwab, 2015) and have fewer stable friendships than their typically developing (TD) peers (Frostad, Mjaavatn, & Pijl, 2011; Schwab, 2019). The overwhelming evidence on the poor social standing of students with SEND in mainstream settings is often attributed to the insufficient sets of age-group appropriate social skills possessed by these students (Garrote, 2017; Schwab Gebhardt, Krammer & Gasteiger-Klicpera, 2015), which prevent them from interacting and forming relationships with classmates. Unsurprisingly then, a number of school-based intervention programs have been developed with a view to enhancing the socio-emotional development of students with SEND and, ultimately, foster their social participation (Garrote, Dessemontet & Opitz, 2017).

The increased utilisation of school-based programmes aiming at improving students’ social emotional wellbeing could be attributed to research showing social emotional learning (SEL) competencies influence all students’ academic engagement and achievement (e.g., DiPerna, Lei, Cheng, Hart, & Bellinger, 2017) and decrease some concurrent problem behaviors (e.g., DiPerna, Lei, Bellinger, & Cheng, 2015). Moreover, having well-developed social skills and engaging in prosocial behavior can assist traditionally marginalized groups of students, such as students with SEND, to become members of peer groups within their class and ultimately develop friendships.

The present study reports the outcomes of a recently developed such intervention, the XX program. This programme was developed within the scope of an ERASMUS+ funded project, which aimed at improving the social participation and inclusion of all students aged between 8 and 11 years. It consists of 12 sessions, each with an approximate duration of 45 to 60 minutes, conducted two times a week, over a period of 6 weeks. The program does not have a narrow focus on individual students with SEND or those who stand out as marginalized but, instead, it is implemented at the class level thus addressing the entirety of the student population. The programme was designed to strengthen students’ social-emotional skills (empathy, collaboration, self-control, assertiveness) with an emphasis on their prosocial behavior. Students learn to recognize their own feelings and those of their peers and develop the ability to deal with them. Furthermore, it is aimed to enhance students’ self-awareness (self-concept) and increase their understanding of inclusion and acceptance of diversity. Ultimately, peer inclusiveness and the development of new friendships while strengthening existing relationships are important outcomes.

To sum up, the XX intervention activities have been developed in a way that can be easily implemented into the school lessons to establish social routines in the class and sustainably foster all students’ social-emotional skills as a crucial requirement for social participation. More importantly, the programme’s experiential activities (e.g., artistic and reflective tasks, role-play activities etc) can be implemented by regular teachers in their classes without the supervision of a specialist (i.e. a psychologists). The present study represents the first systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of this newly developed programme.

Methodology The study adopted a one-group pretest-posttest experimental design (Christensen, 2007), in which the social skills of the participating students and their perceptions of well-being were measured once before the treatment was implemented and once after it was implemented. The XX program was implemented by general teachers in 5 regular primary schools located in a central region in Greece. These schools were chosen because they included a large number of students with SEND in their registers. All teachers received relevant training prior to commencing implementation. Participants were 207 students (98 boys and 109 girls) aged 9-12 years and drawn from 12 classes representing grades 4-6. One quarter of the participating students (N=50, 24%) had been identified as experiencing SEND at the time of the study. All such students in the present study had been diagnosed by educational psychologists in public diagnostic centres as experiencing mainly moderate learning difficulties and received additional learning support by special education teachers. The program’s impact was determined through the administration of a psychometric instrument prior and after implementation measuring the participating students’ perceptions of social skills possessed; and the students’ perceptions of their psychological well-being. Specifically, the SSIS SEL Brief Scales (SSIS SEL) - Student Form (Elliott, et al., 2020a) was utilized; this instrument consists of 20 items measuring five competency domains, namely the intra-personal competencies of ‘self-awareness’ and ‘self-management’, the inter-personal competencies of ‘social awareness’ and ‘relationship skills’, and a fifth domain, ‘responsible decision making’, that is considered both an inter- and intra-personal competency. This instrument can be completed in 5 minutes, and there is substantial evidence for the reliability and validity of the scores generated when used in universal screening of SEL skills. Additionally, the students’ well-being was screened for emotional behaviour concerns (EBC) through the administration of the EBC-Internalizing and the EBC-Externalizing scales which were recently developed by the same authors to augment the SSIS SSIS SEL Brief Scale (SSIS SEL) - Student Form (Elliot et al., 2020b) Finally, semi-structured interviews with the teachers delivering the XX programme were carried out shortly after completing implementation with a view to eliciting their perceptions about the effectiveness of the programme in strengthening their students’ social functioning and, by extension, their social participation well as to identify the programme’s strengths and shortcomings.

The analyses revealed significant gains on all measurements. Particular social benefits were noted for students with SEND, whose social skills were substantially improved. Specifically, the analyses showed a statistically significant increase in all five competency domains assessed through the SSIS SEL – student form for both students with SEND and their typically developing peers. At the same time, the analyses detected a statistically significant decrease in the scores of all participating students in the EBC scales indicating a reduction in their emotional concerns. The evidence suggests that the XX program represents a powerful intervention, which can improve the socio-emotional skills of the participating students while at the same time enhances their emotional well-being. Additionally, the analysis of the qualitative data revealed very positive perceptions about the XX intervention programme. All teachers expressed positive feedback regarding the improvement of their class community, the students’ social competences as well as their own professional skills following the realization of the intervention program. They unanimously felt that the programme was highly enjoyable and very promising in creating a truly inclusive class climate. Directions for improving some aspects of the programme (i.e. duration and intensity of some of the scheduled sessions) were also provided; these are discussed in the present paper along with directions for further rigorous evaluation of the programme.

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