Conference Agenda

Provide a clear description of the theme/s the panel discussion will address, referring research question, theoretical framework, methodological approach, and intended purpose of the discussion. Bear in mind that the European/international dimension is vital to the success of your submission.
Length: up to 600 words

National and international research has highlighted that outcomes for adults with disabilities are poor across a range of domains, including access to learning and employment (Kelly and Maître, 2021). Longitudinal data highlights that students with disabilities are less likely to be prepared to progress beyond school into further education, training and employment than their non-disabled peers, and are also less likely to actually progress to post-school options (Lipscomb et al., 2017). In the Irish context, SILC and Census data show that a much smaller percentage of people with disabilities have a third-level qualification compared to working age people without disabilities and this education gap between people with and without disabilities has remained over time (Kelly and Maître, 2021). Previous research has identified the lack of transition support from second level to further education and training or employment as a big issue (Scanlon et al., 2020). Research drawing on Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) data also shows how earlier educational experiences, including engagement, attendance, expectations and attainment, are important in shaping later educational transitions for disabled adults (Carroll et al., 2022).

While a number of studies describe the post-school educational options for students with special educational needs (Scanlon et al., 2020; McAdam et al., 2021), less is known about how many students progress to different settings when they leave school, their reasons for choosing particular paths and their experiences of these paths. Internationally, much of the published literature has focused on mainstream higher and further education (see for example McGuckin et al., 2013 in the Irish context), with less attention on vocational training and rehabilitative services (Duggan and Byrne, 2013).

This study addresses these gaps by capturing a more comprehensive range of pathways taken by young people and centring the student voice to understand how and why they chose these pathways and how they fare once they leave school. The study features two cohorts, one comprising students in their final year at mainstream and special schools and the other recruited from a range of post-school settings.

Across the settings, the key research question is how young people decided on their post-school pathway, or indeed whether it was decided for them. Using a self-determination theory approach, we explore the balance of autonomy, competence and relatedness in young people’s decision-making. The role of key factors like young people’s level of impairment/complexity of need, their school context and their socioeconomic background in this decision-making process is also considered.

Assesing attitudes of students toward their peers with disability can emerge as an important step for the accomplishement of social participation of all indepedently to their difficulties and the implementation of inclusion policy of students with disablities in the general school system (Bossaert et al., 2011).

According to previous research, general school students expressed posistive attitude toward their co-students with disability (Rosenbaum et al, 1986). Especially, students show high score in the affective and behavioural subscales of attitudes and lower score in cognitive domain (Tirosh, Shanin & Reiter, 1997; Vignes et al. 2009). Research (Rosenbaum et al., 1988) showed that girls adopt more positive attitude in all of the three subscales (coginitive, affective, behavioural) in comparison with boys. Furthermore, friendship with a friend with disability exerts a positive role on students' attitudes toward their classmates with disability (Tirosh, Shanin & Reiter, 1997). A person with disability who belongs to the close family environment has a positive effect on the formation of attitudes (Vignes, et al., 2009), a finding that contradicts with other study (Gonçalves & Lemos 2014). Communication in frequent periods with a person with disability leads to positive attitudes (Thomson & Lilly, 1995). Additionally, students who present a severe disbality are more acceptable compared to students with mild disability (Cook & Semel, 1999). Also, place of residence showed to be a discriminated factor of attitudes, where students who stay in urban areas express a higher level of positive attitudes unlike to chlidren who are staying in rural areas (Gash & Coffey, 1995). The same study showed that children in the beggining of adolescence express a higher level of social interest for students with disabilities in contrast with other research (Rosenbaum, Armstrong and King, 1988). Furthermore, a pupil with disabilities who attend a general school positively affects the formation of attitudes (Alnahdi, 2019).

Bullying is a widespread phenomenon, internationally defined as repeated violence against victims with difficulties in defending themselves (Olweus, 1993). Bullying is increasingly seen as the result of a group phenomenon, in which several students are involved (Salmivalli, 2010; Saarento & Salmivalli, 2015). This phenomenon operates according to a discriminatory and exclusionary logic, which hinders the possibility of the emergence of respect for diversity among students.

Respect for diversity is more difficult to work on during the period of adolescence, because of the need for students to be socially accepted and recognized by other peers as one of their own (Ragelienė, 2016; Hernandez & al., 2014). Therefore, bullying rates tend to increase during this period (Salmivalli, 2010), especially its verbal form (insults, mockery, etc., Moody & al., 2020). This need for social acceptance and recognition can be explained by the loss of bearings that students may feel, due to their identity development and the changes of school, teachers, and friends they must deal with during their transition from primary to secondary school. This loss of bearings among students accentuates their tendency of conform to each other to increase their chances of being socially accepted and recognized. Conforming means that students observe each other and gradually adapt their ways of thinking, doing and being to those of their peers (Harkins & al., 2017).

Bullying then becomes a means of compensating for the loss of bearings, by bringing students together around a common goal and making them conform. This gathering reinforces the social cohesion between some students, i.e., the strength that emerges from their interactions and keeps them together as a group (Schachter, 1951), making a social function of bullying emerge (Salmivalli, 2010). Bullying then becomes a driving force for social learning among students, highlighting that they learn through discriminatory logic which is opposed to the aims of an inclusive school.

In conjunction with the increase in primarily verbal bullying in adolescents (Moody & al., 2020), it is interesting to note the emergence of a language specific to adolescents, described as « youth talk » (Singy, 2014). This language is characterized notably by the frequent use of insults, particularly those that operate on the principle of social categorization (racist, homophobic insults, etc.). This specificity raises questions about the limits between normality and violence between students, but also invites further study of the function of bullying, particularly in its verbal form. As Delalande (2003) notes, students lose a lot of energy in subjecting each other to the social norms in place, i.e. to what can or cannot be done at each age (Verhoeven, 2012; Prairat, 2012). Bullying can therefore have an educational function, allowing students to show each other and even learn what is expected of them. This contribution aims to analyse and describe this educational function, with a particular focus on verbal bullying, and the challenges it poses to an inclusive school.