Working title: Participation of children with disabilities in inclusive early childhood education and care

More and more children attend inclusive instead of seperating early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions in Germany (Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung, 2020). Participation as well as playing and learning together of children with and without disabilities can be considered as a goal of inclusion. Also, advantages for the development of children with disabilities, such as in language and social-emotional development, are postulated e. g., because of a higher number of social interactions (Blackmore et al., 2016; Piskur et al., 2014). At the same time, language abilities represent a crucial prerequisite for initiating and maintaining interactions (Harper & McCluskey, 2002). Previous research results show that often children with developmental language disorder or other disabilities participate less, form smaller play networks and have greater difficulties to access peer interactions than their peers without disabilities (Chen et al., 2019, 2020; Kuutti et al., 2021; Lütolf & Schaub, 2019). Therefore, it is important to investigate which personal and environmental factors influence their participation in daily activities in ECEC institutions. The PhD project aims to first, summarize and analyze the current state of research in a systematic review. Subsequently, the participation and interaction behavior of children with disabilities in inclusive ECEC institutions will be further investigated in an empirical study.