Can students with DIsability VIolate the Success Expetations? – DIVISE

In a first study, primary school teachers will be asked to correct a successful dictation by a fifth grader. In a second study, secondary teachers will be asked to provide advice regarding a student's guidance. In a third one, students will be asked to choose a work partner among three fictitious students. In all three studies, the profile of the target will be manipulated in such a way as to be presented as either disabled (i.e., dyspraxic) and having received compensation within her or his successful school pathway, or disabled but not having received compensation, or not disabled. In these three studies, and in line with previous work, it is expected that the competence of the target in a situation of disability having benefited from compensation will be systematically less acknowledged compared to that of the other two targets.

The studies are ongoing. Nevertheless, the results of the first 4 studies carried out (2 with 250 teachers and 2 additional studies, not initially mentioned in the project, with 700 individuals, i.e. nearly 1000 people) provide important support for our initial hypothesis. Indeed, in these 4 studies, it seems that the person with a disability, whether he or she is a student or a worker (gender not specified in the studies), who succeeds thanks to an adaptation perceived as unfair, sees his or her competence badly recognized.
In other words, the test or workstation accommodation may be used as a justification for the lesser competence attributed to the person with a disability.

After 18 months : Conduct experiment 2 and 3

Three papers in progress or to submit

One published chapter:

Jury, M., Khamzina, K., Aelenei, C., Stanczak, A., Pironom, J., Desombre, C., Toczek-Capelle, M.-C., & Rohmer, O. (in press). La réussite des élèves à besoins éducatifs particuliers à l’épreuve de la sélection et du backlash. [The students with SEN success facing selection and backlash]. In O. Rohmer, M. Jury, & M. Popa-Roch (Eds), Apports de la psychologie sociale à la question de l’inclusion scolaire [Contributions of the social psychology to the issue of inclusive education]. Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles.

The inclusion of students with disabilities is an important challenge for the French education system. Indeed, despite recent reforms on the issue (see, for example, law N° 2019-088 of 5-6-2019 "Pour une rentrée inclusive"), the recent Ministry's statistics (DEPP, 2019) show that enabling the full and complete participation of these students is still difficult.
Until now, these difficulties have been mainly thought to be due to a lack of resources or training or to the attitudes expressed by teachers (Hind et al., 2019). In this project, we wish to go beyond these explanations and to propose a more ideological and structural approach notably grounded in the system justification theory (Jost, 2019), the backlash phenomenon (Rudman et al., 2012) and the functionalist perspective in education (Dornbusch et al., 1996). More precisely, we propose that the inclusive school may, counter-intuitively, be perceived as a threat to the status quo.
Indeed, part of the function of our education systems is to select students, i.e. to identify among all students those who would be the most deserving ones. This objective seems to be incompatible with a system that precisely acknowledges that the intrinsic qualities of students are not enough to succeed. Indeed, in inclusive schools, in order to offer an opportunity for success to students with disabilities, teachers are asked to adapt the curriculum and the content to meet the needs of these students. Therefore, by opening the door to success for students who are intrinsically perceived as less competent and less likely to succeed than others (see e.g., Louvet & Rohmer, 2016), we believe that the status quo would be threatened and that the system will have to defend it (for an example in the school environment, see Batruch et al., 2017).
More precisely, we hypothesize that students with disabilities who are successful in school may threaten the social order and are at risk of facing restorative behaviors from both teachers and other students. We postulate that this backlash effect will manifest itself especially when the concerned students benefit from specific adaptations (human assistance, for example), and this regardless of the schooling level (i.e., primary, secondary, higher education).
In a first study, primary school teachers will be asked to correct a successful dictation by a fifth grader. In a second study, secondary teachers will be asked to provide advice regarding a student's guidance. In a third one, students will be asked to choose a work partner among three fictitious students. In all three studies, the profile of the target will be manipulated in such a way as to be presented as either disabled (i.e., dyspraxic) and having received compensation within her or his successful school pathway, or disabled but not having received compensation, or not disabled. In these three studies, and in line with previous work, it is expected that the competence of the target in a situation of disability having benefited from compensation will be systematically less acknowledged compared to that of the other two targets.
Taken together, these studies should enable us to better understand the mechanisms at work in the difficult implementation of inclusive education and open up perspectives to enable all children to access their right to education.