Perceptions of inclusion in upper secondary schools’ students in the province of Vicenza: a study through the Perceptions of Inclusion Questionnaire.

Abstract

Perception of inclusion is a relatively young research field, which has been widely investigated by scholars in the last decade. It is widely known that Italian education policies are conducting a great effort to ensure each student to feel included. However, students happen to not feel involved at different levels. This research investigates perceptions of inclusion in two different types of Italian high school, an agricultural technical and vocational institute, and a linguistic lyceum. In fact, this study aims to investigate whether the type of school, biological gender, and presence special educational needs impact on students’ perception of inclusion. Various previous European studies (DeVries et al., 2018; Trygger, M., 2019; Kyttälä, M. et al.,2023) confirm the validity of a specific tool to investigate this aspect, the Perceptions of inclusion questionnaire (PIQ; Venetz, Zurbriggen, Schwab, Eckhart, & Hessels, 2015). For this research, the student version (PIQ-S) of this questionnaire has been employed to investigate Emotional Well-Being, Social Inclusion and Academic Self-Concept of high school students. The sample (n=111) consists of students belonging to a linguistic lyceum (n=45) and to an agricultural technical and vocational institute (n=66), all the students involved attended the 9th grade (1° anno di scuola secondaria di secondo grado). The results of the study partially confirmed expectations. The school in which students perceive themselves as more included is linguistic lyceum, mainly for what concerns Emotional Well-Being and Academic Self-Concept. However, students attending the agricultural institute feel more included at a social level. Students with special educational needs appeared to feel generally less included than other students but with higher scores than expected. Opposed to expectations, females generally feel less included than males, even though they achieved slightly higher scores in the Emotional Well-Being and the Academic Self-Concept spheres.