Role of School Inclusion

(1954), can be applied to this situation. Allport’s contact hypothesis was developed following World War II in order to promote intergroup contact and reduce prejudice (Pettigrew, 1998). Allport (1954) outlined four important factors that are required in order to encourage positive interaction between groups: equal status, common goals, intergroup cooperation, and the support of authorities. The first factor, equal status, requires that all individuals in the interaction should expect and perceive equal status (Pettigrew, 1998). Allport (1954) emphasised the importance of not having one person feel superior to another. The second factor, common goals, requires that the individuals in the interaction all make an “active, goal-oriented effort”, for example, footballers to successfully work in a team, regardless of ethnicity, to achieve a goal (Pettigrew, 1998, p.66). The third factor, intergroup cooperation, requires that the achievement of the desired goals must be a group effort, rather than a competition within the group. The final factor, support of authorities, requires that two groups are more likely to interact positively if they have support from an authority, law or custom. This reiterates Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological model, as it indicates that individuals at the microsystem level, authorities in this case, have an influence on the individual in the centre of the model.

A meta-analysis was carried out by Pettigrew and Tropp (2006) to investigate the contact hypothesis across 515 studies. They found that intergroup contact which follows these guidelines can successfully reduce intergroup prejudice (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). A major finding was that individuals in the studies generalised the intergroup contact effects beyond the specific outgroup of the study and prejudices were reduced to members of the outgroup not directly involved in the study (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). Furthermore, they found that the positive effect was not only found between racial samples, but can create positive interactions across other groups, such as different ages, geographical areas, etc. Research into the contact hypothesis and children has also been reviewed by

measured children’s contact with people with disabilities and their attitudes. They found that 22/35 studies found that positive attitudes increase with contact between children and people with disabilities. However, 11 studies found no association and two found a

negative association. These findings may be due to the actual contact between the children and those with disabilities not being carried out properly, for example, not following Allport’s (1954) guidelines. It could be that a school claims to be ‘inclusive’ and promote interaction between children with and without disabilities, but it is actually a minimal amount of interaction, potentially unequal between the children, or not encouraged by staff. Nevertheless, this review provides support for Allport’s (1954) contact hypothesis and suggests that in more inclusive schools where these 4 elements are followed, children will be more tolerant of differences, such as disability.

Georgiadi et al. (2012) recruited 256 children aged 9-10 years from both inclusive and non-inclusive mainstream settings. The inclusive settings were described as schools that children with intellectual disabilities attended, although the children in this study did not share any classes with these students, and non-inclusive settings were described as schools where there was no form of special education inclusion and no children with intellectual disabilities attended the school (Georgiadi et al., 2012). Georgiadi et al. (2012) aimed to investigate whether the inclusion level of the school (school climate) influenced the children’s attitudes towards peers with intellectual disabilities. The children completed a questionnaire on inclusion comprised of three parts which asked about 1) a hypothetical scenario with a new student with intellectual disabilities and how they would respond in social and educational situations, 2) whether there are any children with intellectual

disabilities in their school and if they know them, and 3) their own beliefs about disability, in which children were asked to draw a child with intellectual disabilities and write a comment about the drawing (Georgiadi et al., 2012). Georgiadi et al. (2012) found that the children expressed overall neutral attitudes towards children with intellectual disabilities. They also found that the type of school (inclusive versus non-inclusive) significantly predicted attitudes towards intellectual disability; children from inclusive schools had more positive overall attitudes towards children with intellectual disabilities compared to

children from non-inclusive schools (Georgiadi et al., 2012).

They did not find, however, that age or previous experience significantly predicted attitudes towards children with disabilities (Georgiadi et al., 2012). Their attitudes scale (the first part of their questionnaire) was broken down into three areas: social attitudes, e.g., ‘would you ask him/her to sit beside you?’, educational attitudes, e.g., ‘should children with [intellectual disabilities] have their own special school where all children have [intellectual disabilities]?’ and emotional attitudes, e.g. ‘would you care if other children made fun of the child with [intellectual disabilities]?’. Children from inclusive schools also had more positive social attitudes towards children with intellectual disabilities compared to children from non-inclusive schools however there were no

differences between educational or emotional attitudes from each type of school, indicating that in inclusive schools children may develop positive social interactions with children with disabilities but do not develop educational or emotional understandings (Georgiadi et al., 2012). Additionally, children from inclusive schools portrayed children with

intellectual disabilities more positively than children from non-inclusive schools; many of the pictures from children from non-inclusive schools depicted a child with intellectual disabilities to be similar to a monster (Georgiadi et al., 2012). However, the comments that children made did not vary between schools; all children made comments that revolved around emotional, social and academic themes, with several comments indicating bullying, such as “the child (in the drawing) tries to run away from school and to run away from the children who hit him” (Georgiadi et al., 2012, p.534). There were also a lot of negative

adjectives used to describe the disabled children the participants drew, such as ‘dumb, dirty, idiot, thick, freak’ which could indicate verbal bullying, if the children use these terms when talking to their disabled peers. Georgiadi et al. (2012) did not measure intentions or actual behaviours, only attitudes, and so their conclusions must be tentative; they cannot necessarily predict behaviour from the attitudes children reported. This is supported by Laws and Kelly’s (2005) finding that 39% of their sample who had positive attitudes towards children with intellectual disability also had negative friendship

intentions. This highlights the importance of investigating actual behaviour or behavioural intentions, rather than relying on attitude measures which may not reflect real behaviour.

McDougall et al. (2004), who analysed previously collected data on students aged 14-16, found that those who had a friend or classmate with a disability had significantly more positive attitudes towards children with disabilities compared to those who had not had any interaction with a child with disabilities. This highlights the importance of including children with SEND in mainstream schools, as there appears to be a positive effect of non-SEND children interacting with peers with SEND, or vice versa, that could potentially result more positive attitudes which could subsequently lead to less bullying behaviour