Attitudes towards inclusive education have a crucial place in the effective implementation of inclusion practices. The aim of this study was to explore teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education in preschool education in Portugal and to identify teachers’ personal and professional variables that influence these attitudes. The data were collected from a sample composed of 68 preschool teachers working in mainstream schools located in urban and rural areas. The results indicated overall positive attitudes towards inclusion. Having previous personal contact with a person with special educational needs predicted more positive affective attitudes, whereas having previous experience teaching classes that included students with and without special educational needs predicted less positive behavioural intentions. From these results, we infer an emergent need for continuous training and for the promotion of positive attitudes among preschool teachers to achieve the successful implementation of inclusion at this educational level.

The aim of this study was to analyse the existence of differences in lexical development as a function of day care attendance and maternal education. Data were collected using the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences. The reports of 2084 toddlers were analysed. The results for toddlers older than 24 months indicated that those from mothers with higher educational levels produced a higher number of words in all lexical categories than those from mothers with lower educational levels. When considering younger toddlers, a significant effect of maternal education was only found on the number of common nouns produced. Nevertheless, the size of these effects was small. Quantity of day care attendance had no effect on the number of words produced. No interaction effects between maternal education and day care attendance were found. These findings indicate that maternal education may be differently associated with the production of words from different lexical categories.

School engagement is a multidimensional construct characterized by vigour, dedication, and absorption towards academic work that is related to school achievement. This study aimed to examine the measurement invariance of a school engagement measure – the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale-Students (UWES-S) – across secondary school pupils and university students. Two samples of secondary school pupils (n = 251) and university students (n = 229) were used. The results supported the original three-factor structure (vigour, dedication and absorption) of the UWES-S instead of a two- or a one-factor structure in both samples. Evidence for the metric and scalar invariance of the measure across secondary school pupils and university students was also found. The university sample had higher scores in vigour and absorption but not in dedication. These findings demonstrate that the UWES-S can be used for developmental studies where school engagement and its relation with other variables needs to be compared across distinct educational levels.