Inclusive education in the Netherlands Characteristics and effects

In his dissertation ‘Inclusive education in the Netherlands: characteristics and effects’, Teije van der Bij presents a conceptual and empirical model of the characteristics of inclusive education in schools. This model is constructed with the use of the self-evaluation data of educational professionals of Dutch secondary schools. Besides educational professionals also the perceptions of parents and students of inclusive education were investigated in this research. Particularly the guidance and support of students with special educational needs by mentors and teachers as part of their lessons appears to make the difference for parents and students to perceive inclusiveness in the education of their schools. In addition, a model was developed to study the effectiveness of these characteristics of inclusive education in The Netherlands and tested at school level. The study of the effects of inclusive education showed that not only students with special needs but all types of students benefit from an inclusion learning environment. Moreover, the results showed that the more a school can be characterized as inclusive, the lesser the amount of dropout, repetition of a year and shift to a lower educational track is reported. With these promising results, this dissertation opens up the road to further development of school level evaluation of inclusive education.