Promoting the emotional and social development of students with and without special needs is a central goal of implementing inclusive education in the school system. The entry into school, and thus into the formal education system, is accompanied by emotions and changes in self-image and social relationships. For assessing emotional inclusion, social inclusion, and academic self-concept, the Perceptions of Inclusion Questionnaire (PIQ) is a widely used instrument. To date, the paper-pencil questionnaire has been used from third through ninth grades but has not yet been used with younger ages. This paper presents an adapted version of the PIQ for first- and second-grade students, which was used on two measurement time occasions (T1, N = 407, MAge = 7.2; T2, N = 613, MAge = 7.6). Information on students’ reading and listening comprehension was collected from the class teachers to verify whether the adapted questionnaire can be used for all students with different levels of language competencies. Measurement invariance was demonstrated to be at least scalar for all groups considered in the analyses. Students with higher rankings of reading and listening comprehension skills reported significant higher levels of emotional inclusion and academic self-concept while there were no significant differences in social inclusion. The findings suggest that the PIQ-EARLY is a suitable instrument for assessing self-perceived inclusion in first- and second-grade students. The results also highlight the importance of students’ language competencies for adjustment to school in early school years.

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Parents play a critical role for their children’s academic development. However, little is known about the link between parental role construction for educational involvement (i.e., parents’ beliefs of whether they should be involved in their child’s education) and educational outcomes in early adolescence. This study therefore investigated relations between parental role construction and early adolescents’ reading, writing, and mathematics self-concepts and achievement. In addition, it was tested whether these effects vary depending on socio-economic status (SES). Relying on data from two measurement points in the first year of secondary school (413 adolescents, 50.5% girls, and their parents), results from longitudinal structural equation models revealed positive relations between parental role construction and initial writing achievement and self-concept. A stronger relation between role construction and adolescents’ mathematics achievement at both measurement points emerged in the presence of higher SES. This study contributes to the current knowledge on links between parental beliefs and educational outcomes in early adolescence and refines these insights by showing that SES moderates some of the effects of parental role construction.