Poster #49 - The Role of Inclusive Classroom Norms for Children’s Reasoning About Social Exclusion Based on Learning Difficulties

• In Event: Poster Session 07

Abstract

Students with learning difficulties (LD) are at a higher risk of being socially excluded than their peers without LD (Krull et al., 2018). When reasoning about inclusion or exclusion of peers with LD, children consider negative consequences for the excluded peer as well as potential negative consequences for the group’s functioning when including the peer with LD (Gasser et al., 2017). Particularly when reasoning about potential impediments to group work, children may use normative behaviors of their classmates as a guide for their own reasoning (Gasser et al., 2017). While group norms have been shown to account for a variety of socialization processes at the classroom level (Veenstra et al., 2022), little is known about the role of inclusive classroom norms for children’s reasoning about including or excluding peers with LD.
To address this gap, the current study investigated whether children’s expectation and reasoning about exclusion of peers with LD was shaped by their perception of inclusive classroom norms. Swiss children (N = 1019, Mage = 10.39, 51% female) from 67 elementary school classes reasoned about a hypothetical scenario, particularly an academic group task, which required a decision between including a peer with or without LD. Based on this scenario, children predicted the inclusion from multiple perspectives (self, friends, story protagonist) and provided reasons for their own inclusion decision which were assessed on the basis of the Social Reasoning Development Model (Killen et al., 2013). To measure perceived inclusive norms, children rated their classmates’ reactions to a hypothetical scenario in which a child with LD was excluded (adapted from Gasser et al., 2018).
Results from multilevel analyses showed that children expected significantly more inclusion of the peer with LD when reasoning from their own perspective than from the perspectives of their friends and the story protagonist. Furthermore, when reasoning about their decision, they were more likely to reference moral reasons when including the peer with LD and more reasons about effect effective group functioning when excluding the peer with LD. Importantly, children from classrooms with higher inclusive norms were more likely to include the peer with LD when deciding from their own perspective (Figure 1) and cited less reasons of effective group functioning than children from classrooms with lower inclusive norms (Figure 2).

Authors

• Carmen Barth, University of Konstanz
  Presenting Author

• Jeanine Grütter, University of Konstanz