Justice experiences and social participation in adolescence in inclusive schools

Social participation of all students is a central goal of inclusive education. Research suggests that justice experiences foster a sense of belonging in school. How individual as well as contextual justice experiences are linked to social participation of adolescents has not been investigated so far. We collected data on self-reported measures of justice and social participation of 745 teenagers. We also modeled a collegial sense of needs-based justice stemming from teachers' justice ratings on text vignettes. Our analyses indicate that the schools in our sample differed significantly in their teachers' general sensitivity for needs-based justice. Multi-level models identified positive links between a student's belief in a just world as well as their experienced teacher justice and their reports of social participation. Furthermore, we found that students with special needs reported significantly lower teacher justice than their peers without special needs. All in all, our findings indicate that a just school environment can foster individual social participation.