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Inclusive education has become increasingly popular based on the assumption that it has multiple benefits for students with special educational needs (SEN). However, contradictions remain regarding the widespread nature of these benefits, particularly when it comes to academic motivation.

In this large-scale cross-sectional study, we relied on the Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect (BFLPE) to assess the links between inclusive education and students’ academic self-concepts and learning interests in the mathematics and verbal domains.

The sample consisted of 21,219 German elementary school children in Grade 4 who were enrolled in three groups: students without SEN attending regular schools (n₁ = 19,069), students with SEN attending regular schools (n₂ = 933), and students with SEN attending special education schools (n₃ = 1214).

Doubly latent multi-group multilevel structural …