Looking through the eyes of students the perspectives of students with SEBD on (coping)strategies to advance the social acceptance

Background and aim

Social participation is one of the key elements within inclusive education. In the Netherlands the law ‘Befitting education’ (translation of the Dutch law Passend Onderwijs) was recently implemented as a step towards inclusive education. It is argued that increased interaction between students with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) and their typically developing peers will benefit the social and emotional development for all students. However, a quarter of pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) have trouble with social participation in the inclusive classroom. To date, there have been several studies regarding social participation and social acceptance, but the perspective of the student with SEBD itself is not taken into account. The aim of this study is to gain more insights into the coping preferences of students with SEBD, who were socially excluded in their inclusive classroom.

Method

To gain more insights into the preferences of students with SEBD, this study interviewed 15 students from grade 5 and 6. All participants had been educated at regular schools in an inclusive classroom, where they were socially excluded and are currently educated at special educational schools in the northern provinces of the Netherlands.
The participants were interviewed with a semi-structured interview protocol addressing the scenarios of being bullied and exclusion in play. The interviews were designed to question the participants prefered coping strategies in these scenarios. The interviews were analyzed via Multi Grounded Theory principles.

Results

The analyses of the interviews indicate that, overall, the participants prefered the social support of the teacher in both the scenarios of being bullied and exclusion in play. For the situation of being bullied the coping strategy “self-reliance” was the most frequently mentioned and for social exclusion the participants prefered to “distance themselves” from the situation. Regarding the peers of the participants, they would liked it if there peers would bully less and not run along with a bully.

Conclusion and recommendations

This study places socially excluded students with SEBD and their voices as the most important research source to gain more insights into their preferences and strategies when addressing bullying and social exclusion. Overall the participants preferred that the teacher would take a bigger part in situation of bullying and social exclusion. This study implies that the role of the teacher should not be overlooked in the development of social participation in the inclusive classroom.

Keywords

social acceptance, social-emotional behavioral difficulties (SEBD), primary education, (coping)strategies, student voices

Supervised by: Anke de Boer and Renske de Leeuw