Susanne Schwab

Who intends to learn and who intends to leave? The intention to leave education early among students from inclusive and regular classes in primary and secondary schools

ABSTRACT Early school leaving is a serious problem for individual students, especially for students with special educational needs (SEN). This study tests predictors of early school leaving, using data collected among 1,047 students from 60 inclusive and regular classes in primary and secondary schools in Austria with 4th- and 7th-grade students aged 9–11 and 12–14 years. Multilevel regression analyses show that higher school wellbeing and a more positive student–teacher relationship reduce the intention of both 4th and 7th graders to leave school early. Additionally, for 7th graders, having a migrant background and more individualised instruction are predictors of a greater intention to leave school early. School grade, gender, socioeconomic background, SEN, social integration, class climate, school setting (regular class vs. inclusive class), and the heterogeneity of the class composition had no impact on the intention to leave school early.

Motivation für die Beschäftigung mit Inklusion während des Studiums bei Studierenden des Lehramts an Grundschulen

Die Forderung nach der Gestaltung inklusiven Unterrichts stellt auch die gegenwartige Ausbildung angehender Grundschullehrkrafte vor grose Herausforderungen. Die Ergebnisse unserer Studie zeigen, dass sich die Motivation von Studierenden des Lehramts an Grundschulen zur Beschaftigung mit dem Thema Inklusion wahrend ihres Studiums durch bereits vorhandene Erfahrungen aus dem inklusiven Unterricht und ihre Selbstkonzepte im Hinblick auf die eigene Durchfuhrung inklusiven Unterrichts in der Grundschule erklaren lasst.

Measuring students’ and teachers’ perceptions of resources in inclusive education – validation of a newly developed instrument

ABSTRACT Previous research suggests that the perception of available resources has a major influence on teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education (Avramidis, E., and B. Norwich. 2002. “Teacher’s Attitudes Towards Integration/Inclusion: A Review of the Literature.” European Journal of Special Needs Education 17 (2): 129–47; Schwab, S. 2018 (in press). Attitudes Towards Inclusive Schooling. A Study on Students’, Teachers’ and Parents’ Attitudes. Münster: Waxmann). On the side of the students, no similar studies exist that examine the impact of insufficiently perceived resources on inclusive education. To assess the extent to which students – and their teachers – perceive that the resources at their school are adequate or meet their needs, the ‘Perception of Resources Questionnaire’ (PRQ) was developed. To analyse the psychometric quality (factor structure, reliability, validity) of the instrument, data were collected from 42 inclusive classes (n = 701 students, n = 27 teachers) of lower secondary level in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The main component analysis showed a single factor structure. The reliability of the scale (cronbachs alpha .67) can nevertheless be considered acceptable, since it is a short scale which comprises heterogeneous items in terms of content. For the purpose of validation, multilevel regression analyses were conducted. The findings show that only the teachers’ perception of resources – and not the resources actually available – is a significant predictor for students’ perception. Finally, the findings are discussed.

Assessing Behavior Difficulties in Students

Research about assessment has increased dramatically in recent years. As argued by Greiff (2017), this is true for psychological assessment in general and clinical and educational assessment in particular. Especially in the field of school psychology, the assessment of behavior difficulties has received a considerable amount of research attention (Volpe & Chafouleas, 2011). Behavioral difficulties are related to a wide range of developmental dysfunctions in a variety of domains, such as social skills, self-regulation, executive functions, attention, information processing, motor activities, emotions, and distress (for an overview, see Garner, Kauffman, & Elliott, 2014). Behavioral manifestations range from internalizing behavior (i.e., withdrawn and inhibited symptoms) to externalizing behavior (i.e., undercontrolled and disruptive symptoms). Since any behavior is embedded in a broader context (e.g., ecological theory of human development and socialization of Bronfenbrenner, 1989), it has to be studied with respect to the relevant contextual factors. As stated in our call for papers, the topic of behavior difficulties of students has reached a rather prominent position in education and inclusion debates in recent years. Children and youth with behavioral difficulties present tremendous challenges to both families and schools (Landrum, 2017). In order to intervene as early as possible, it is important to have appropriate instruments to assess core features of behavior difficulties. However, there are many available instruments that do not consider new developments in scale constructions (for an overview, see Danner et al., 2016). For instance, about a decade ago, measurement invariance within different subgroups such as students with special educational needs and students without special educational needs was hardly ever taken into account. Nowadays, the analysis of measurement invariance or equivalence in broader terms (e.g., Chen, 2008) is considered to be a prerequisite for comparing group differences. And yet, analyses of measurement invariance are still not applied as standard routine, and many publications in this research area do not even refer to this important asset. This special issue aims to expand our knowledge on the assessment of behavior difficulties, introducing innovative assessments, and discussing challenges which influence the quality of measurements. Further, in our call for papers, we encouraged authors to examine the different instruments available in line with the developments in the assessment of psychological constructs. In the following paragraphs, we provide an overview of the six articles that compose this special issue. All of them have undergone a blind review process. Beforehand, we would like to thank all the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, which ensured the high quality of all papers accepted.

Friendship stability among students with and without special educational needs

ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that students with special educational needs (SEN) have fewer friendships than their peers without SEN. In this longitudinal study, 545 students from primary and secondary schools, including 106 students with SEN, were surveyed at the beginning and the end of the school year. The results show that students with SEN generally have fewer reciprocal friendships and, proportionally, more often nominate students with SEN than students without SEN. The stability of friendships is lower for students with SEN than for students without SEN. Additionally, for students with SEN, same-SEN-status friendships were as stable as cross-SEN-status friendships, whereas for students without SEN friendships with peers without SEN were more stable than those with peers with SEN.

Self-efficacy of prospective Austrian and German primary school teachers regarding the implementation of inclusive education

This study examined the psychometric properties of the German version of the Teacher Inclusive Education Self-Efficacy Scale (TIESES). Five hundred and nineteen teacher education students from Austria and 765 teacher education students from Germany participated in the study. Results of a multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (for the two countries) confirmed a single factor structure of the scale with partial scalar measurement invariance. Regression analysis showed that self-efficacy when implementing inclusive education was explained by the motivation to deal with inclusive education during their studies, previous experience with inclusive education in internships, study interest and the country in which the students went to university.