Education for all in action: Measuring teachers' competences for inclusive education.

While inclusive education has achieved international importance, there is no valid instrument to measure teachers' competences in creating quality classrooms for diverse learners, which this study aims to remedy. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with 975 pre-service teachers and 600 in-service teachers were used. Central to teachers' inclusive teaching competency is both beliefs and efficacy. Results show that teachers hold professional beliefs on student diversity, organized in four factors mapping unto axes of diversity (specifically ethnicity, disability, SES, and gender & sexuality). Teachers also hold beliefs on the responsibility of the educational field to create inclusion, organized in three factors: general school policy, initiatives geared specifically towards ethnic minority students, and initiatives for students with a disability. Furthermore, the results show five factors related to self-efficacy: noticing student diversity, enabling high-quality student-interactions, creating stimulating learning environments, collaborating with colleagues and diverse parents. The factorial structure and scale-scores are discussed for what they unveil of teachers' thinking about diversity in the classroom.

The Impact of Gender Variance on Adolescents' Wellbeing: Does the School Context Matter?

Schools are often heteronormative environments, negatively influencing the wellbeing of LGB students. Less is known about the impact on gender-variant adolescents. Hence, this study investigates the wellbeing of gender-variant students-as evidenced by their gender (a)typicality and pressure for gender conformity- in different school cultures-as evidenced by the level of traditional gender role attitudes and homonegativity. We examine these context-dependent associations in a sample of 4987 Flemish students, who were questioned three times in 2012-2014. Multilevel regression analyses show that both gender-typical and atypical adolescents feel worse in heteronormative than inclusive schools. Furthermore, the social acceptance of boys seems to be more conditional on gender-conformity in heteronormative than inclusive schools. Overall, inclusive schools ensure higher wellbeing for all students (regardless of sex or gender variance), and student-teacher relationships seem central in explaining these school differences. Implications for school policy as well as research considering heteronormativity and gender-variance are discussed.