Inclusive education in Croatia, as a member of the European Union, has a decades-long history. During this period, Croatia was among the first countries in the world to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Nowadays inclusion extends to all children, including, for example, those belonging to cultural minority groups, children at risk of poverty, and children in alternative care systems, among others. In Croatia, the legislative framework ensures that students with special educational needs (SEN) receive curricular and professional support, as well as pedagogical and didactic accommodations. Approximately 85% of students with SEN in primary schools are included in inclusive educational settings in Croatia (School e-Repository, 2025).

Today, inclusive education is an indispensable topic in teacher education. The European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education (2012) states that the core competencies of teachers in inclusive education include: valuing student diversity, providing support to all learners, collaborating with others, and engaging in professional development. The teaching process should be flexible, through the use of diverse instructional materials, techniques, and teaching strategies that can address the wide range of students’ educational needs. What’s more, teachers are expected to apply Universal Design for Learning, that is, a curriculum design approach that accommodates learners with diverse needs equally well, regardless of SEN status, gender, abilities, cultural or linguistic background. For such a heterogenous population, it is necessary to implement inclusive teaching practices, such as differentiation and personalization (Lindner & Schwab, 2020).

Personalized instruction is a teaching approach in which instruction – including content, pace, methods, assessment – is tailored to the unique needs, abilities, and interests of each student (Shemschack & Spector, 2020). Differentiation is, on the other hand, a didactic strategy that enables teachers to respond to the diverse needs of heterogenous student groups (Nusser & Gehrer, 2020). It can be implemented through various approaches, including co-teaching, instructional methods, and provision of individualized feedback and support.

Research show that teachers feel more prepared to teach SEN students and differentiate their instruction when they hold positive attitudes toward inclusive education (Savolainen et al., 2020). However, teachers in mainstream inclusive classrooms often work with highly diverse groups of students, meaning that differentiation may become an additional source of stress if they do not feel adequately prepared (Pozas et al., 2023). Nevertheless, when students perceive teaching as more inclusive, their perception of school wellbeing and social inclusion is more positive, as well as academic self-concept (Alnahdi et al., 2022). Yet, studies exploring students’ perceptions of inclusive teaching in mainstream classrooms are lacking (Lindner et al., 2019).

There have been found some differences between Maths and German teachers with students’ perception of Maths teachers being that they more frequently use inclusive teaching practices (Schwab et al., 2019). One study found that female students, younger students and SEN students perceive inclusive teaching practices as being more frequent (Durán-Martinez et al., 2024).

This study aimed to validate the Croatian ITPS-S and to investigate how SEN and typical students perceive teachers’ inclusive practices across gender, grade level, and subject.

We asked:

1. Does the Inclusive Teaching Practices Scale – Students’ version (ITPS-S) retain its two-factor structure in the Croatian context, and does this structure demonstrate measurement invariance across students with and without SEN, across students’ gender, grade and teachers’ subject?

2. Do students’ SEN status, gender, and grade level influence their perceptions of teachers’ inclusive practices?

3. Does the subject taught by the teacher (Croatian vs. Maths) affect students’ rating of inclusive teaching practices?

By identifying strengths and gaps in inclusive teaching, the study supports evidence-based improvements in education aligned with European principles.

The study was conducted between 2024 and 2025 in three regions of Croatia. All schools within these regions were invited to participate, and those that consented were included in the study. Following approval from the Faculty Ethics Committee and authorization from the Ministry of Science, Education and Youth, the research was carried out in collaboration with school principals and professional teams. To ensure ethical compliance, informed consent from parents was obtained prior to students’ participation. Students completed a paper-and-pencil questionnaire during regular school hours, which took approximately 20–25 minutes. Measures were taken to guarantee the anonymity and confidentiality of student responses. The study included 1,317 Croatian students in 6th and 7th grades, with an average age of 12.7 years (SD = 0.7). All students attended inclusive classrooms, with 48% being female and around 13% identified as having SEN. The proportion of SEN students in this study aligns with national data from Croatia, which indicate that approximately 10% of primary school students are identified as having special educational needs (Ministry of Science, Education and Youth, 2025). SEN students in Croatia either receive support through individualized teaching and assessment strategies or partial curriculum adaptations. Some students were additionally supported by teaching assistants, with 20.3% of SEN students in our sample receiving such assistance. A number of SEN students also had more than one disability. Measurement instrument included Inclusive Teaching Practices Scale – Students’ version (ITPS-S; Schwab & Alnahdi, 2020). The scale consists of 14 items evenly divided into two subscales: Personalization (e.g., ‘During the lesson, my teacher takes into account my academic acievement.’) and Differentiation (e.g., ‘During the lesson, my teacher varies learning activites to promote different learning styles.’). Students rate each item on a 4-point Likert scale with ‘1’ meaning ‘not at all true’ and ‘4’ meaning ‘certainly true’. The ITPS has been previously validated in studies with primary and secondary school students, showing satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha ranging from .77 to .87) (Alnahdi et al., 2022; Schwab et al., 2019). For this study, the scale was back-translated by two researchers. Any discrepancies in wording or phrasing were discussed and reconciled to create a single version. The Croatian version was then retranslated into English, and the items were compared with the original to ensure that both meaning and context were preserved. In our sample, the scale demonstrated good internal consistency.

The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure and the Bartlett’s test of sphericity demonstrated strong relationships among the items of the Croatian version of the S-ITPS, indicating that CFA could be conducted. The fit indices for the two-factorial model of the S-ITPS indicated a good model fit. To ensure the meaningful interpretation of group mean differences, we examined measurement invariance of the two S-ITPS subscales across relevant groups. The results demonstrated configural, metric, scalar, and strict invariance across all comparisons (students with SEN vs. typically developing students; girls vs. boys; 6th- vs. 7th-graders). These findings indicate that the S-ITPS assesses the underlying constructs equivalently across groups, supporting valid comparisons of latent means. Furthermore, S-ITPS demonstrated configural, metric, scalar, and strict invariance across teaching subject (Croatian language vs. Mathematics), indicating that the instrument measures inclusive teaching practices equivalently in both groups. To explore whether students’ SEN status, gender, and grade level influence their perceptions of teachers’ inclusive practices, independent t-tests were done. There were no significant differences between SEN students and their typically developing peers in their evaluations of teachers’ differentiation and personalization practices in the classroom. Likewise, no gender differences were observed. However, a significant difference emerged between students in the 6th and 7th grades. Specifically, younger students (6th grade) reported more frequent use of inclusive teaching practices by their Croatian and Mathematics teachers compared to 7th-grade students. Regarding differences in students’ assessments of their Croatian versus Mathematics teachers, a significant difference was found in the overall score of inclusive practices and on the differentiation subscale, whereas no significant difference emerged on the personalization subscale. Overall, students reported more frequent use of inclusive teaching practices by their Croatian teachers than their Maths teachers particularly in the area of differentiation, with the effect sizes for these differences in the moderate range.

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