Mexico’s education system is coordinated by the Public Education Secretariat (Secretaría de Educación Pública, SEP) and organized into three educational levels (OECD, 2019): (a) basic education (pre-school education, primary education and lower secondary education); (b) upper-secondary education (with options between general or vocational programs), and (c) higher education. Children start school at the age of, and are first formally streamed into different educational pathways at the age of 15 as they enter upper-secondary schools (Santiago et al., 2012; OECD, 2018). More than 90% of students attend public school, which are publicly subsidized (OECD, 2019). The rest of students attend private schools which obtain their resources from student fees (Santiago et al., 2012). Even though private schools are not linked to governmental resources, they still require the authorization of the state educational authorities and must implement the national curriculum established by the SEP.

The Mexican education system caters to the educational needs of a large and highly diverse population (Forlin et al., 2010), e.g. according to languages and dialects (OECD, 2019). Students with special education needs attend mainstream basic schools or specialized institutions (García Cedillo et al., 2015). Nevertheless, despite that certain policies and practices such as delayed tracking and limited ability grouping are implemented, reports from OECD (2018) indicate that Mexico ranks amongst the countries with the lowest level of inclusion. Moreover, when it comes to reading performance, Mexico has been able to reduce the gap between different groups of students, such as students from different socio-economic status, immigrant status and gender (OECD, 2023). However, such differences are non-significant.

In 2012, a constitutional reform established quality education as a right for all Mexicans (OECD, 2018). In addition, Mexican law states that private schools cannot deny admission to students with SEN (Official Gazette of the Federation [DOF], 2011). Mexico’s policies ensure full participation access to quality learning and are committed to ensure educational institutions and all educational stakeholders value diversity (OECD, 2023). Nevertheless, although Mexico has established educational support such as curricular adaptations and accommodations to students with disabilities in inclusive settings (SEP, 2012), Romero-Contreras et al. (2013) argue that inclusive education in Mexico is still unsatisfactory. In fact, out of the 15% of students who have a disability, only 2.85% receive inclusive education (DOF, 2017). Moreover, approximately 90% of students attend public schools (OECD, 2019), having access to free education. In contrast, private schools are not publicly subsidized and thus, are tuition-based operating without any government funding (Santiago et al., 2012). Most private schools are attended by middle and high socioeconomical status students (García Cedillo et al., 2015). Even though private schools cannot deny admittance based on disability (DOF, 2011; Lavin et al., 2020), many students with SEN are left without appropriate support for their specific learning needs as they would need to pay private school tuition as well as the additional support required within these school settings (García Cedillo et al., 2015). Considering the fact that the key objectives of inclusive education is fostering students’ emotional, social and academic development and the impact these might have on their quality of life, it is necessary to empirically explore students’ perceptions of inclusion.

Three important student socio-emotional variables related to the effectiveness of inclusive schooling are social inclusion, emotional well-being, and academic self-concept (Knickenberg et al., 2020). According to empirical evidence, students’ social inclusion, emotional well-being, and academic self-concept can be perceived differently between boys and girls. For instance, research has reported that girls have shown higher levels of emotional well-being as well as social inclusion (Schneekloth and Andersen, 2013; Ato et al., 2014; Krull et al., 2018; Guillemot and Hessels, 2022; Knickenberg et al., 2022). In contrast, Venetz et al. (2019) found that males have higher levels of academic self-concept than girls.

Even though researchers and authors have long argued on differences on students’ socio-emotional development when attending public or private schools, empirical research on the topic is still sparse (Plata Zanatta et al., 2014). From the few limited studies exploring such topic, have already indicated certain differences across variables such as self-esteem and self-concept (Salum-Fares et al., 2011; Plata Zanatta et al., 2014). Given the results of the previous limited research, it seems meaningful to explore the potential differences between public and private school students when it comes to their perceptions of inclusion.

In light of the aforementioned theoretical background, the aim of the present brief report is to present the results of a small-scale exploratory study which investigates students’ perceptions of inclusion with focus on social inclusion, emotional well-being, and academic self-concept. The research questions guiding this study were:

According to Alnahdi (2020), item level analyses are mostly never conducted. Nonetheless, “much information can be observed at the item level that can be overlooked when comparing only the overall means” (Alnahdi and Schwab, 2020, p. 777). Therefore, the present study will examine Mexican school students’ perceptions of inclusion by exploring at an item level how they rate their school experiences.

Following convenient sampling (Creswell, 2012), 101 Mexican students (40% boys and 60% girls) from third to ninth grade with a mean age of 12.93 years (SD = 2.43) participated in the study. The sample included students attending public (59%) and private (41%) schools. A total of 5 participants were diagnosed as having SEN (visually impaired N = 1; emotional and behavioral disorder N = 4). The participants completed a voluntary online survey during January and February of 2021 and which took approximately 15–20 min. Given that students were underaged, parental consent and ethical approval by the appropriate educational institutions were obtained. Based on G*Power 3.1 calculations, the required sample size for comparing two independent mean samples (non-parametric tests such as Mann–Whitney U tests) with an estimated effect size of d = 0.50 and a power of 0.95 is a total of 184 participants (Buchner et al., 2021). Unfortunately, the current sample size is not in line with the established threshold (Faul et al., 2007). However, some relevant articles have argued that depending on the purpose of the study, a smaller sample could be appropriate. For example, Isaac and Michael (1995) suggested that in case of an exploratory study, such as the case of the present brief report, samples with 10 to 30 participants can have many practical advantages (i.e., simplicity, easy calculation and the ability to test hypotheses). Moreover, Hertzog recommended samples of 30–40 participants per group for studies comparing groups. Therefore, based on the recommendations from Isaac and Michael (1995) as well as Hertzog (2008) and considering that this is an exploratory study, it was decided to use the current sample in order to examine the present study’s research questions.

Students’ perceptions regarding their social inclusion, emotional inclusion, and academic self-concept at school were assessed using the Spanish Perceptions of Inclusion Questionnaire-Student version by Venetz et al. (2015). The PIQ is a short-form version of a questionnaire to assess students’ integration (originally in German as the “Fragenbogen zur Erfassung von Dimensionen der Integration von Schülern [FDI]”) by Haeberlin et al. (1989), which includes three subscales with four items each: social inclusion (i.e., “I have a lot of friends in my class”), emotional well-being (i.e., “I like going to school”), and academic self-concept (i.e., “I am a fast learner”). Important to highlight is that the PIQ has been designed to assess three different perspectives, this means that it can be self-administered or responded by a child’s teacher or parent. In order to fulfil the purpose of this study, the student perspective questionnaire was administered. The items were responded by students using a 4-point Likert scale (1 = not at all true to 4 = certainly true). Given that in the present study the results were based on item level comparisons, no subscale scores were used.

The students’ PIQ perspective questionnaire’s psychometric properties have been previously documented (see DeVries et al., 2018; Zurbriggen et al., 2019). Additionally, German, English, Spanish as well as other language versions of the PIQ are available online (see Venetz et al., 2015) making it possible to be implemented in different countries [i.e., Germany and Saudi Arabia (see Alnahdi and Schwab, 2020)].

Statistical analyses were conducted in IBM SPSS Statistics 27. Before analyses were conducted, data normality tests for each of the 12 items of the PIQ were carried out. As seen from Table 1, the Shapiro–Wilk test indicated that the scores were not normally distributed.

Given that the current sample is not in line with the parameters’ threshold and the scores are not normally distributed, non-parametric tests will be conducted (Vickers, 2005; Field, 2013). Thus, in order to answer the first research question, Chi-Square goodness of fit tests were computed for each of the 12 items of the PIQ. Concerning the second and third research questions, Mann–Whitney U Tests with Dunn’s post hoc tests between gender (male and female) and school type (public and private school) for each item were calculated.

First, Chi-Square Tests for each item (based on a scale of 1 to 4 where the theoretical mean is 2.5) were calculated. From Table 2 it can be seen that all item level scores are statistically significant, indicating that a high rating (above 2.5).

To answer the second and third research question, Mann–Whitney nonparametric tests between students’ gender and school type on all 12 items of the PIQ were calculated. As seen from Table 3, there significant differences with small effects between male and female participants in items 3 (‘I am a fast learner’) and item 7 (‘I like it in school’) PIQ items. In detail, item 3 was rated higher by males, whereas item was rated higher by female participants (Table 3).

With regards to mean comparisons between school type, Mann–Whitney nonparametric test that four items were significantly different between students attending public and private schools. Overall, these four items (item 1 ‘I am a fast learner’, item 2 ‘I have a lot of friends’, item 7 ‘I like it in school’, and item 10 ‘School is fun’) were rated higher by students attending public schools than their counterparts attending private schools. As observed in Table 4, the items’ effect sizes are small to medium.

The present study exhibits several limitations. The first limitation from this study stems from the relatively small sample, and thus, was only able to explore large effects (Faul et al., 2007). With such a sample, the overall findings as well as gender and school type differences have to be interpreted very carefully. Consequently, it is necessary for future research to continue to investigating student perceptions, however, raising and balancing the participants accordingly. Second, although convenient sampling (as used in this study) is a common research sampling approach that possesses great advantages (e.g., least time-intensive and simple to conduct), it also carries important disadvantages. One of these is that the results obtained from such samples have generalizability only to the sample under study (Bornstein et al., 2013). Hence, the findings from this study must be considered with caution. Therefore, future studies with other types of samples such as simple random, stratified or clustered samples are necessary. Additionally, the present small-scale study makes use of students’ self-reports. Although surveys addressing students’ perspectives are economical, recommended in research, and possess validity (Butler, 2012), self-reports might be biased (Venetz et al., 2019). Thus, it is strongly suggested that future studies integrate all stakeholders’ perspectives, that is students, parents and teachers, make use of multi-trait-multi-method (Venetz et al., 2019), as well as the use of mixed-methods research designs that could provide rich and more in-depth information. With such a design, it could be possible to give more insights into the quantitative data. In addition, although this sample included students with SEN, unfortunately the SEN sample was too small to be included as another research question. Given the extensive scientific literature exploring differences between students with and without SEN perceptions of inclusion in mainstream classes (McCoy and Banks, 2012; Bossaert et al., 2013; Schwab et al., 2015; Hascher, 2017; Knickenberg et al., 2020; Schwab and Alnahdi, 2020), it would be important to deeply investigate Mexican students’ (with and without SEN) perceptions of inclusion.

Lastly, the current study presents and discusses its findings on the basis of item level mean scores instead of the mean scores of the three sub-scales of social inclusion, emotional well-being and academic self-concept. Hence, the results from this study must be interpreted with caution. Notwithstanding such limitation it is important to highlight that to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that uses and examines the Spanish version of the PIQ instrument in Mexico. Carpenter et al. (2016) as well as Wieland et al. (2017) argue that a rigorous evaluation at the item level are appropriate in order to understand how a scales function, particularly when it comes to new surveys. Based on this, it was decided to conduct the analyses at an item level. Nonetheless, given that the Spanish version of the PIQ has not been used, appropriate explorative and validations studies are currently being conducted in Mexico.

Taking into consideration the limitations of this small-scale study, future research directions are suggested. A recent study by DeVries et al. (2018) reported that students’ perceptions of inclusion changed from Grade 6 to 7 indicating potential longitudinal effects of inclusive schooling. Thus, more longitudinal research is needed in order to explore changes across school types, transitions, and inclusive education. Additionally, future work should consider that differences between private and public schools when it comes to inclusive education (Pozas et al., 2021). Thus, future investigations should aim to follow research designs and samples that explore nested structures. Using such an approach could be a meaningful addition not only to the current international research, but also research in Mexico. Lastly, cross-country comparative research is strongly encouraged as “these types of studies provide new contextual understandings of the differences and similarities between education systems in distinct cultures” (Alnahdi and Schwab, 2020, p. 11).