The impact of students’ soft skills on successful school inclusion at private elementary schools in Italy: a multiple case study

The impact of newcomers’, as well as classmates’ Soft Skills on successful school inclusion was explored by taking three already existent questionnaires from Zhou & Ee (2012), Furman (2018), and Scarupa (2014), all using the same theoretical framework of CASEL (2022), and adopting them to form a student and teacher questionnaire in a specific German primary school in Italy context. After priming the questionnaires, they were further adopted and then distributed to 11 third and fourth-grade classes (n=249) and their teachers (n=11) from two schools, measuring Social Management (α = 0.892), Persistence (α = 0.731), Mastery Orientation (α = 0.715), and Emotional Competence (α = 0.643). To control the Soft Skill dimension, the classroom climate was analyzed through an existing Sink & Spencer (2005) questionnaire with good internal consistency, measuring Cohesion, Competitiveness, Friction, and Satisfaction. Furthermore, Banerjee’s (2022) sociogram tool was used to create a sociogram for each class. Additionally, the teachers’ Communication Skills (α = 0.880), Interaction (α = 0.734), Inclusive Practices (α = 0.758), and Leadership (α = 0.821) were measured through 27 in-class observations using Du Mérac & Corbucci (2022) Dimensioni e descrittori – Prova pratica EDUbadge SFP. Finally, the class teachers were interviewed, and the data was transcribed using MaxQDA. The interview data combined with each class-specific sociogram determined whether the newcomers were successfully included. Considering all results and triangulating the data, a statistically significant impact on inclusion success was analyzed using ANOVA, MANOVA, and T-tests: The Emotional Competence and Persistence skills of the newcomers and schoolmates, the Cohesion and Competition climate in class, and the Inclusive Practices of the observed teachers significantly impacted successful school inclusion. Finally, conclusions for teachers were drawn, and based on the findings, specific strategies for aiding successful inclusion at the two participating schools were proposed.