The impact of contact on students' attitudes towards peers with disabilities.
Real friendship moments, not shared space alone, shift middle-school attitudes toward disability.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Schwab (2017) asked middle-school students about classmates with special needs.
Kids filled out a survey on attitudes.
The study also noted who picked an SEN peer for joint activities like games or lunch.
What they found
Students who freely chose to hang out with an SEN peer held warmer views of disability.
Kids who only shared the same classroom showed no attitude boost.
Voluntary contact, not mere inclusion, made the difference.
How this fits with other research
Mavropoulou et al. (2014) saw the same link in younger grades: having autistic classmates lifted knowledge and empathy.
Durbin et al. (2019) went further, showing an 11-week music program with autistic peers cut victimisation and lifted prosocial feelings.
Malli et al. (2017) sounds like a clash: high-schoolers without Tourette’s feared “social contamination” and wanted distance.
The gap is age and label: early teens welcome contact, older teens may not unless it is structured and cooperative.
Why it matters
You can’t just place learners with disabilities at the back table and wait for magic.
Set up short, fun, opt-in joint tasks: cooking, robotics, band, or peer tutoring.
Let typical students choose roles so contact feels voluntary, not forced.
Track who joins and invite the hesitant with low-pressure jobs like handing out materials.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study aimed to understand the relationship between contact with peers with Special Educational Needs (SEN) and students' attitudes towards their peers with SEN, by examining the inter-group contact theory in regular and inclusive classes. A total of 463 students in 8th grade, with a mean age of 14.42 years, from 25 secondary school classes in Styria (Austria) completed a self-report questionnaire regarding their contact with peers with SEN and their attitudes towards peers with disabilities. Contact was indicated by nominations for joint activities and examined in inclusive and regular classes. The German short version of the Chedoke-McMaster Attitudes towards Children with Handicaps scale (CATCH; Schwab, 2015b; Rosenbaum et al., 1986) was used to measure students' attitudes towards peers with learning disabilities and emotional disorders. Students with SEN are less frequently nominated by their peers for joint activities, such as working together on a school project. Students from inclusive and regular classes did not differ in their attitudes towards peers with SEN. However, those students who nominated at least one peer with SEN for a joint activity had more positive attitudes towards peers with disabilities. Freely choosing contact with a peer with SEN was associated with more positive attitudes towards disability while simply attending the same class may have no effect or even a negative impact on students' attitudes.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2017 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2017.01.015