1. Introduction
Attention to the most vulnerable students must be a priority for the education system and today’s society [
1]. Inclusive education is the most effective way to address this need [
2,
3,
4]. Inclusive education has had its origins in special education, which has been conceptually overtaken [
5,
6,
7].
As defined by specialists and institutions [
2,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12], inclusion understands diversity beyond the concept of difficulties, disabilities, and specific educational needs. It implies individualized educational attention designed for and within each context and is addressed to all and each of the school members [
8,
10,
12]. Its goal is to avoid the barriers that prevent or hinder the presence, learning, and participation of all students, with particular attention to those most vulnerable [
8,
9,
10]. Inclusion concerns all children and young people: it focuses on presence and participation, including teachers and parents, and involves combating all forms of exclusion [
9,
10,
11,
12]. Inclusion is also a process that is never finished [
10,
12]. Its ultimate goal is to transform educational systems and learning environments to provide an appropriate response to students’ unique needs [
13]. However, achieving a truly inclusive school is no easy task, as it involves a profound transformation of educational centers [
14,
15,
16].
In Spain, the total number of students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) who received scholarly attention other than ordinary care amounted to 623,268 students during the 2017–2018 school year, representing 7.8% of the total student population, which implies a considerable number of families in this situation [
17]. Of these, 35.7% presented SEN associated with disability or severe disorder; 5.4% due to high intellectual capacity; 3.7% due to late integration into the educational system; and 54.2% due to other categories of needs (learning disabilities, language, and communication development disorders and situations of socio-educational disadvantage). The distribution of these students between public centers and subsidized education is practically equal, representing 3% and 2.9% of the total student population.
Spain is a decentralized country with 17 autonomous communities. Although each community has the authority to design and implement a specific model of attention to diversity, all must devote some personnel resources to students with SEN, since there are common standards in this area, as established by the Organic Law for the Improvement of the Quality of Education (LOMCE) [
18]. The most commonly developed support model of integration of students with SEN in Spain is based on the notion of ‘remedial education’, which is basically the special needs education model transferred to mainstream schools, where schools tend to organize themselves in a somewhat fragmented manner, creating separate spaces for providing support outside the main classroom [
18]. Therefore, most of Spain’s supports are of a personal nature (Hearing and Language or Therapeutic Pedagogy.)
The development of an inclusive and quality education necessarily requires the real and effective participation of the family and other social agents in the education of children and young people [
19,
20]. Furthermore, to assess whether and to what extent such real and effective participation occurs, reliable and valid measuring instruments are needed. These instruments would make it possible not only to evaluate the situation at a given time but also the possible change it may have undergone due to an intervention program [
21].
Various research studies [
22,
23,
24] have shown the benefits of adequate family participation in schools on students’ specific aspects, such as school performance, emotional development, and self-esteem. Greater participation of parents has been related to better student performance [
25,
26,
27,
28]; higher attendance and graduation rates [
29]; fewer disciplinary problems [
27,
30,
31]; and improved psychological well-being of parents while improving children’s outcomes, skill development, and psychological adjustment [
32,
33,
34].
The family’s integration in educating their children allows for optimizing an educational intervention [
20,
21,
35]. The degree of family participation is an indicator of the quality of an educational center [
36,
37] since it benefits the center as a whole, both students and teachers, and the families themselves [
38].
A valuable method for determining the quality of inclusion within schools is to ascertain the experiences of the parents of children with disabilities [
39], and it is necessary to have reliable and valid measuring instruments for this purpose.
Despite their importance, too often, the relationship between family and school has been characterized by a lack of communication [
40], disagreement between the two parties [
41], or a considerable gap between expectations and reality [
38]. A previous step to improve the relations between families and the educational system must start with understanding the perception that families have of these relations and their satisfaction with them. Families demand actions aimed at both the attention provided to their children and themselves. Concerning the first aspect, several authors highlight the right of vulnerable students to be attended by qualified professionals who understand and respond to their educational needs [
42,
43,
44]. Likewise, various studies stress the need to ensure that schools are truly adapted and designed to embrace all types of students, without exception, in response to the right to an inclusive and quality education for all [
44,
45,
46]. However, studies such as that of Navarro et al. [
47] indicate that the various supports and structures established by the school administration to address any student’s vulnerability are not working in a fully satisfactory manner for families. This situation generates feelings of helplessness, lack of information and coordination, and feelings of misunderstanding about what is happening with their children in educational contexts. Therefore, it is necessary to rethink how the families of students with SEN participate in educational centers, by promoting more collaborative formulas where each one can develop his or her role, joining all efforts in favor of inclusive and high-quality education, and shortening the distance between the participation model established in educational legislation and what is actually happening. Achieving these ambitious and necessary goals is not possible if there are no instruments to assess families’ perspectives on these aspects.
Despite its relevance, there is not much research aimed at collecting the voice of the families of students with SEN about their relationship with the school system and their perception of it [
48]. Many studies that analyze the parents’ perceptions of their relationship with the school focus on analyzing the parent’s perceptions regarding inclusive educational placements [
49,
50,
51,
52]. Similarly, most studies in this area have focused specifically on one disorder, usually Autism Spectrum Disorder, Cerebral Palsy, or Learning Disabilities [
39,
53,
54,
55]. Simultaneously, much of the research in the field use qualitative techniques, mainly semi-structured interviews, and focus or discussion groups [
56,
57,
58,
59,
60], making it difficult to collect, compare and generalize data [
61]. The few studies using questionnaires [
53,
59,
60] have focused, as discussed above, either on specific disorders or in student’s and teacher’s variables [
62,
63,
64,
65,
66,
67,
68,
69], often leaving aside the perception of the parents. For all the above reasons, there is a need to assess the opinion of the parents of children with SEN regarding the education their children receive, and to give them a voice through a tool that is reliable and valid and that allows studies to be carried out in this respect, in order to enhance the participation of these parents in the inclusive education of their children.
Given the significance of family involvement in promoting inclusive education, and the absence of a self-administered instrument that measures the families’ perception of the support received from the educational system, the present study has as its main aim the development and validation of a questionnaire that assesses the family perception of the support received from the educational system: the Satisfaction of Family in Inclusive Education Assessment (SOFIA) Questionnaire, from now on the SOFIA Questionnaire.
It is hoped that the development and validation of this instrument will contribute to the future design of lines of action that promote an optimal collaborative relationship between families and schools, with the ultimate goal of benefiting the student body and the entire system in general.
4. Discussion
Inclusive education is a key policy objective for children and young people with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities [
99].
The participation of families is essential to achieve the goals of inclusive education successfully. As the literature suggests, a precious method for determining the quality of inclusion within schools is to ascertain the experiences of the parents of children with disabilities [
45].
Despite its relevance, there is not much research aimed at collecting the voice of the families of students with SEN about their relationship with the school system and their perception of it [
46]. Such studies are even scarcer if we consider SEN in general and not as specific disorders [
59,
60,
61]. At the same time, much of the research in this field use qualitative techniques, mainly semi-structured interviews, and focus or discussion groups [
64,
65], making it difficult to collect, compare, and generalize data.
For all these reasons, the present study makes sense, since its main aim was to develop and validate a questionnaire of the family perception of the support received from the educational system, the Satisfaction of Family in Inclusive Education Assessment (SOFIA) Questionnaire, the SOFIA Questionnaire.
To this end, the recommendations of the International Test Commission were followed [
71]. To proceed with the design and subsequent validation of the instrument, three phases were carried out: Phase 1. Bibliographic review and legislative analysis; Phase 2. Preparation of the SOFIA Questionnaire and analysis of its contents’ validity through expert judgment; Phase 3. Analysis of the psychometric properties of the instrument.
Based on the results obtained, an instrument is proposed to measure the families’ perception of the educational system’s support. This instrument is built taking into account the previous scientific literature. It has been constructed following the most rigorous methods, taking into account the validation of the contents by a committee of experts and the international test commission’s procedures. The model resulting from this work that is proposed for the SOFIA Questionnaire has been developed from three factors with 9, 12, and 5 items related to (1) perception of the educational response of the school to the SEN, (2) perception of the school’s attitude towards inclusion, and (3) perception of the psycho-pedagogical evaluation of the SEN. The dimensions found are similar to those proposed in other previous studies on the perception that parents have of the support received by the school system [
57,
67]. Therefore, they are nourished by previous research contributions while adapting to the study sample used in this research. At the same time, analyses of the instrument’s psychometric properties support that they are good for this area. Specifically, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses support the internal structure of the instrument (CFA = SBχ
2 = 607.11,
p < 0.001; χ
2/df = 2.07; IFC = 0.902; IFI = 0.903; RMSEA = 0.071) in the same way, all dimension showed adequate reliability (Cronbach’s alpha ranged from 0.91 to 0.94; CR ranged from 0.91 to 0.95). The AVE results also showed adequate results (0.55 to 0.68). Likewise, each item seems to contribute adequately to the whole scale, and the Cronbach Alpha did not improve eliminating any of them. All the data collected appear to confirm that the SOFIA Questionnaire is an instrument with adequate validity and reliability.
Despite the interest of the study, it is not without certain limitations. Among them, one refers to the sample under study. The selection of this sample was not probabilistic but intentional, which could affect representativeness. Moreover, following Kline’s [
78] criteria on sample size, the sample is within the limits of what is considered adequate for confirmatory factor analysis. However, the size may also have affected the representativeness, and consequently, the generalization of the results. Another notable limitation is that the questionnaire’s design has been made partly based on the Spanish regulations on inclusive education, making it challenging to apply in other countries with a different organizational and political structure in terms of inclusive education. Future research could address these limitations by extending the sample under study to other contexts and countries and using probability sampling. Considering the SOFIA questionnaire’s excellent psychometric properties on the Spanish sample, it seems promising to test it on other languages and adapt it to other countries so that a broader population may benefit from its use.
In conclusion, our research results indicate that the SOFIA Questionnaire’s psychometric properties are adequate for the Spanish context. The SOFIA Questionnaire is presented as a valid and reliable instrument to collect the families’ perception of the support they receive from the educational system. The results obtained from its application can provide knowledge that allows professionals and the responsible administrations to design and plan actions to guarantee an inclusive and quality education for all, including families.
These results could be interesting for the advance of the study of the satisfaction of the families of minors with SEN of the support they receive from the educational system, with clinical and research applications. Among the main applications of this validation would be the possibility of having a suitable tool to know the main weaknesses of the system in the provision of supports and services to families and students with SEN that should guide them in the establishment of corrective actions aimed at achieving an inclusive and quality education for all. Therefore, this type of study contributes to a better understanding of families’ views about the support they receive from the education system and the school environment. The voices of parents of pupils with SEN are rarely considered concerning their relationship with the school system. Families of students with SEN will feel considered when they can express their opinions regarding those aspects of the education system, about their relationship with them, that do not meet their expectations. On the other hand, the information provided by this type of work allows being useful for the administrations in charge of marking the educational policies in the matter of inclusion, bringing the theory closer to the reality of the families and shortening the way between the theoretical contributions of the most recent studies and the reality of the schools. These findings should be disseminated, putting into value the conquests reached and consolidated.
The results obtained in the present study allow to advance and consolidate the research on inclusive education, a field of study with an eminent social utility, since it contributes to guaranteeing one of the most important rights for children, especially those who are most vulnerable, which is the right to an inclusive and quality education for all. Similarly, from a psychological and professional point of view, the results, in general, stimulate useful considerations for promoting best practices that guarantee inclusive and quality education for all.