Inclusive education is the process of integrating individuals with disabilities into a regular classroom, and it helps reflect the world's commitment to equal educational opportunities as outlined in UNCRPD. It emphasizes the importance of embracing diversity and promoting acceptance among students who are impaired. This paper examines why it is…

Globally, integrated school placements as well as inclusion as an education philosophy have emerged as influential trends in education over the past 30 years. Although used interchangeably at times, inclusion and integration are distinct. Confusion about inclusion and integration can lead to mixed messages, which oftentimes affect the education of…

Research indicates that deaf children can have marked social difficulties compared with their hearing peers. Factors that influence these social interactions need to be reviewed to inform interventions. A systematic search of 5 key databases and 3 specialized journals identified 14 papers that met the inclusion criteria. Methodological quality of…

There is an increasing interest in the role of peers in facilitating the social interaction skills of pupils with autism spectrum disorder through peer-mediated interventions (PMI). Several reviews provide promising evidence for the effectiveness of this approach; however, there has been limited consideration of the range of outcome foci and…

This review integrates theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence of a sense of school belonging (SOSB) to highlight its importance in understanding the inclusion efficacy research for pupils with special educational needs (SEN). Specifically, it examines the role of a SOSB on pupils' cognitive, affective, behavioural and social developmental…

The current study evaluated the turn-taking skills of preschoolers with disabilities who participated in a social communication intervention that targeted initiations, responses, and turn-taking skills, and taught children to repair and revise and to avoid interruptions and overlaps. Ten children who enrolled in an inclusive at-risk classroom met…

The increasing trend of placing students with disabilities in general education classrooms has raised questions among researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and parents about classmate peer effects on all students. However, little is known about the peer effects of classmates with disabilities on the outcomes of other students in the classroom;…

This study addresses the convergent validity of a new teacher questionnaire to assess the social participation of students with special needs in regular primary schools. The Social Participation Questionnaire (SPQ) consists of four subscales representing four key themes of social participation: friendships/relationships, contacts/interactions,…

One of the effects of implementing inclusive education is that the composition of the peer group of students with disabilities has changed from one consisting of only such students to one with no, or very few, students with disabilities. The question arises as to the implications of this situation for their social relations and self-concept. In…

This study was designed to investigate the association of quality of Portuguese inclusive preschool classrooms with the social acceptance of children with disabilities. Sixty-four inclusive preschool classrooms from 28 randomly selected school groups from the district of Lisbon participated in this study. Classroom quality was not associated with…

A review of the educational policies and procedures across Canada's provinces and territories reveals that inclusion of students with disabilities in regular classrooms is supposed to be the main policy and school practice. However, inclusive education has also shown to vary in the ways it has actually been implemented and practiced throughout…

The objective of this qualitative study was to explore peer interaction in the context of school activities in mainstream classes that included pupils with Down syndrome together with their peers without disabilities in order to identify enabling conditions. Six children with Down syndrome, each of whom was the only one with Down syndrome in a…

Len Barton has pioneered the sociological study of education in the areas of disability studies and inclusive education. This paper addresses an argument developed by Len Barton that social exclusion, of which disablism is one element, (1) has many compounding forms of differing exclusions, (2) is not a natural but a socially constructed process,…

In this article, James Williams, a young man with Asperger's syndrome (AS) shares his experiences taking physical education in a generalized education setting and discusses the implications for students with AS. He was diagnosed with AS when he was 9 years old. School was tough at times, especially when social interactions came into play. One of…

This paper discusses the results of a study of the role of the computer in scaffolding pupils' interaction and its effects on the disabled (D) pupils' participation and inclusion in the context of socio-cultural theories and the ideals of inclusive education. The study investigated the interactions of pairs of D and non-disabled (ND) pupils…