Page 181 - RUICHSS 2023 Proceeding

University of Ruhuna ISSN: 2706-0063
Matara, Sri Lanka

students as a basis for decision-making and leads to higher or lower peer

acceptance depending on negative or positive teacher feedback, whereby
negative feedback has a stronger influence (Schwab et al., 2022). Therefore,

it is important for teachers to be aware of the impact of their negative feedback

on students’ relationships with his peers. Moreover, Pozas et al (2021) and
Alnahdi et al. (2022) provided evidence on the significant positive role that

teachers’ practice of differentiated instruction, (i.e., intentional, systematically
planned and reflected practices that enable teachers to meet the needs of all

learners in heterogeneous classrooms), can have in fostering students’ social

inclusion. Therefore, teachers' didactic adaptation of teaching and learning
processes to the individual needs of students in a class and establishment of

collaborative relationships among students contributes to positive contact
between peers and leads to higher levels of social inclusion (Pozas et al.,

2021). Although these studies offer possible explanations for the obtained
significant differences in social inclusion, further research in Bosnia and

Herzegovina is needed to determine whether the weaker social inclusion of

students with disabilities is related to the lack of differentiated teacher
instruction and more negative feedback.

The significantly lower academic self-concept of students with disabilities
obtained in this study is in accordance with earlier studies that indicated that

SEN students in regular education had lower academic self-concept in

comparison with their non-SEN peers (Alnahdi et al., 2022, Pozas et al., 2021,
Zurbriggen et al., 2018). Research by Pozas et al. (2021) and Schwab et al.

(2022) emphasise the importance of positive teacher feedback on academic

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