overall improvements in students’ social skills and believed the training had a natural part in the agenda in school. However, according to facilitating teachers (n = 5), the training is time- and resource-consuming and that has to be taken into account when implementing the
intervention.
The social validity of social skills group training (study III) answers questions also from study II, questions regarding opportunities and obstacles as well as effective interventions for the Swedish school context. Improving social skills must be seen as a core component for children with NDC in mainstream school settings. The social skills group training can be implemented with extra resources. An obstacle regarding this is nonetheless tight school budgets and lack of time. Another obstacle is schools not being able to prioritize social skills interventions, which was described by participating teachers as common in regular schools, with lack of time and concurrent pedagogical content.
Item/subscale Positive
indicators (yes, rather yes)
Responder Students Parents Teachers
Assessment of support needs
Recommendations from clinical services are used for support planning
58 % 24 % 59 %
There is a specific and accessible support plan document (IEP) and support plans are followed up on and evaluated
37 % 24 % 59 %
Staff involved in support plans meet regularly
79 % 47 % 76 %
Use of individualized support
Students are offered alternative options to demonstrate knowledgea*
89 % 65 % 100 %
School rules are adapted to student’s needs
b*
47 % 59 % 82 %
Students receive the individual special education support needed
53 % 47 % 76 %
Everyday individual adaptations in the classroom and schedule are provided
37 % 41 % 88 %
Implementation of a structured learning environment
School uses visualization of schedules and time c*
53 % 29 % 53 %
Students are offered organizational aids d* 32 % 24 % 76 %
Changes to procedures are communicated to NDD* student as early as possible
21 % 53 % 53 %
Individual changes applied to teaching
Students’ interests are integrated in teaching
37 % 24 % 41 %
Strategies for handling stressful situations are provided
37 % 5 % 71 %
Functional response to behavioral characteristics
Staffs get time to discuss NDD student’s behavior and support plans
47 % 29 % 76 %
School offers space for rest and withdrawal 63 % 59 % 71 %
Cooperation with parents
There is mutual exchange of knowledge about the student with NDD between home and school
63 % 53 % 65 %
School uses caregiver’s knowledge to optimize support
37 % 65 % 59 %
There are regular exchanges between caregivers and responsible staff around the student with NDD
58 % 59 % 59 %
Consideration of peer-relations
In case of group-work, the composition of the group takes into account knowledge of the student with NDD
32 % 29 % 88 %
NDD students are prepared for unstructured social situations
21 % 35 % 47 %
Staff education/professionalism
The school staff has basic knowledge of NDD
26 % 12 % 47 %
Staff understands that individualized support might be necessary for a given student with NDD
58 % 53 % 82 %
Note. *Items are translated from Swedish and shortened for reader’s ease and summary presentation; a allowed to present orally instead of in written form, or vice versa; b can spend breaks in classroom; c provide time-timers, visualized schemes; d checklists, planning aids.
* NDD neurodevelopmental disorders
The results based on the completed threads show areas of alignment as well as areas of discrepancy in responses. Schools have a structure of how to map, document and talk about the support and needs of the child, but later there seem to be difficulties in implementing the support in the learning environment. The parent and child more often share the same view, where the child carries a big responsibility. Having this responsibility, students themselves need to ask for help and handle the school’s social environment. Support in the social area of the school environment seems to be a neglected area. The teachers are sometimes unaware and not involved in the planning of the students IEP. Teachers do not know if all
professionals can take part in the plan of support and if IEP is shared in-between the school setting. Furthermore, the relationship between the student and the teacher plays a crucial role in well-being and school attendance. This was described by the students as some teachers seem to have the understanding and knowledge for adjustments in the learning environment where others do not. The inference analysis demonstrates differences among the evaluation of the learning environment between participating groups. Several of the items had negative to no agreement (r = -.21 to .00), 12 none to slight agreement (r = .01-.20) and one fair
agreement (r = .28, p = .001) [“The school staff has basic knowledge of NDD”]. The results show discrepancies in most of the areas of the learning environment, where the lack of basic knowledge is one of the few exceptions where students, parents and teachers agree. The largest areas of discrepancy between teachers versus students and parents were with the following items: everyday individual adaptations in the classroom and schedule are provided, students are offered organizational aids, strategies for stressful situations are provided and when organizing peer and group work, attention is paid to students’ social impairments. In summary, teachers evaluated the learning environment to be more inclusive than students and parents in just above all areas of practical inclusion.
There were significant correlations found between some of the items and the total INCLUSIO measurement. In the whole group, all INCLUSIO domains correlated highly (≥ r = .64) with the total score, and the domain Use of individualized support demonstrated highest
association (r = .85, p < .0001) with overall inclusion scores. Correlations between the INCLUSIO total and specific variables in the responses from students were significant in the following: individual support (r = .75, p < .000), functional response to behavioral
characteristics (r = .70, p < .001) and individual changes applied to teaching (r = .64, p < .003). For parents and the INCLUSIO total there were significant correlations in individual support (r = .91, p < .000), a structured learning environment (r = .88, p < .000) and functional response to behavioral characteristics (r = .82, p < .000). Correlations in the INCLUSIO total and teachers’ responses were functional response to behavioral
characteristics (r = .85, p < .000), individual support (r = .83, p < .000) and cooperation with parents (r = .78, p < .000).
In the last and fourth study, the questions about bridges and barriers for inclusion are answered as well as the question about areas of strength and weakness from a comparative perspective. The overall conclusion from this study is that there is a discrepancy among how inclusion is perceived in reality by different stakeholders. This is in line with the previous investigation with the same instrument, INCLUSIO (Bölte, Leifler, Berggren, & Borg, 2021).
In the first investigation, school leaders evaluated the inclusive learning environment for students with NDC as working better than teachers and other personnel. In study IV, the teachers ranked the environment as more inclusive than students and parents. These
discrepancies can be seen as an obstacle when planning for and providing support to students with NDC in mainstream school settings. Areas of strength from the results in study IV are cooperation between parents and teachers and that evaluation and planning for students’
needs are working relatively well.