Inclusive classroom norms, children's sympathy, and intended inclusion toward students with hyperactive behavior

As the classroom represents an important social context for the development of out-group attitudes, the current study investigated the role of inclusive classroom norms for students' attitudes toward hyperactive peers. The study included 1209 Swiss children from 61 school classes who were surveyed in the fifth grade (T1) and in the sixth grade (T2) (M_ageT1 = 11.55 years, M_ageT2 = 12.58 years). Students' attitudes toward hyperactive children was assessed by self-reports on students' sympathy and intended inclusion toward hypothetical children who show hyperactive behavior. Moreover, students rated their classmates' inclusive attitudes. Analyses with an autoregressive multilevel path model revealed that inclusive classrooms norms in the fifth grade predicted students' sympathy and intended inclusion toward hyperactive children in the sixth grade. The results implicate that group-level analyses are important in order to explain hyperactive children's peer group problems.