Abstract
The present study advocates a wide understanding of inclusion, as a process aimed to identify and remove the barriers that may hinder the presence, participation, and achievement of all students – regardless of their individual differences (Slee, 2018). According to previous literature, one of the major obstacles for students’ social participation in schools is constituted by peer attitudes (Bossaert et al. 2011; Vignes et al. 2009). Studies that sought to investigate the relationship between attitudes towards peers with disabilities and their social participation revealed indeed a significant positive relationship between them (de Boer & Pijl, 2016; Godeau et al. 2010; Petry, 2018). These outcomes suggest that negative attitudes are likely to give place to exclusionary and avoiding behaviors which, in turn, may hinder the social participation of their targets. The current project assumes that the same positive relationship applies also for other (groups of) students, leading to similar consequences, especially when they are recognized as relevant Others. Identifying someone as “Other”/different (from oneself) may indeed result in prejudicial attitudes which, in turn, can lead to his/her marginalization and exclusion.
So far, many studies have been conducted internationally on peer attitudes towards various groups/categories of students. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, there are no instruments measuring peer attitudes towards otherness in general from an inclusive perspective. Instead, in the light of the empirical evidence about the exclusion and rejection of various “different” students by their school and classmates (e.g., students with disabilities and SEN, students with minority/migratory backgrounds, students with different religious beliefs, LGBTQ students, etc.) – it seems pivotal to explore student attitudes towards diversity and their link with exclusionary patterns among peers in schools. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to develop and validate a sound instrument to evaluate adolescents’ attitudes towards otherness in all its broadest sense. The result is the Adolescents’ Attitudes Towards Otherness Survey (AATOS), a questionnaire combining a qualitative and a quantitative approach which, beside measuring their attitudes, also investigates secondary school students’ representations and definitions of otherness.
As a preliminary stage of the project, a systematic review was conducted with the twofold purpose of searching for already developed instruments measuring adolescents’ attitudes towards diversity and integrating research findings on the topic. Moreover, the results of the review constituted the basis for the development of the new instrument. Once the AATOS was constructed, it was first piloted among 108 students (age range: 11-19). After defining some changes needed to the instrument, it was then administered to a sample of 490 students (age range 11-20) to assess and substantiate its validity and reliability. Data was analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. For the qualitative part, the responses to the open-ended questions of the AATOS were analysed through the method of Qualitative Content Analysis (Schreier, 2012). Three rounds of estimation of intercoder agreement were used to assure the reliability of the coding categories, which were then included in the Guide for the qualitative analysis of the AATOS, a very brief booklet providing the instructions and the categories for the analysis of the qualitative part of the instrument for those researchers who may want to use the AATOS in future studies. For the quantitative part, instead, the reliability and construct validity of the instrument were established focusing on the attitude scale. Cronbach’s alpha was used as index of internal consistency to investigate the reliability of the scale. To substantiate the construct validity of the instrument, in turn, its internal structure was analyzed using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, several validation hypotheses were developed and tested in order to investigate the relationships of the AATOS with other relevant related constructs.
All in all, the findings of the project showed that the AATOS proved to be a robust instrument to measure secondary students’ attitudes towards otherness. The outcomes of the current study indeed corroborated its reliability and validity, both for the qualitative and the quantitative part. Moreover, they confirmed the importance of adopting a wider and non-categorical approach to otherness in the study of peer attitudes and exclusionary processes in schools.