This project integrates the primary goal of the Support Unit for Inclusive Schools to help improve the inclusion process of students with disabilities in schools. This commitment is accompanied by the effort to understand the attitudes of acceptance shown by their peers, as well as the variables that determine them and the ways to promote them, with the purpose of developing materials, sustained in literature reviews and empirical data, that teachers in schools may use.

The interest in students' attitudes toward peers with disabilities has fueled a vast body of research over the past decades. Defined as the psychological tendency expressed by the favorable or unfavorable assessment of a particular entity (Eagly & Chaiken, 1993) attitudes determine the way of thinking, feeling and, in its most visible aspect, acting before a target - in this case, students with disabilities - playing, therefore, a decisive role in the processes of educational inclusion.

Adoption of the inclusive education educational model is a globally-sound trend, with many countries making efforts to ensure equal access for all students, including, obviously, students with disabilities. The sequential increase in the number of students with disabilities in schools brought the expectation of the development of positive attitudes in the students without disabilities, as a result of the expansion of opportunities of interaction with the pairs with disabilities. However, data indicates that students with typical development do not establish spontaneous interactions, nor do they develop positive attitudes, tending to show reduced levels of social acceptance of their peers with disability (Diamond & Tu, 2009; Rillotta & Nettelbeck, 2007). This reality calls for the need to modify negative attitudes and create conditions to receive students with disabilities, avoiding the risk that their experience of inclusion is reduced to mere placement in common spaces within the regular school. Facing this problem is fundamental and depends on the acquisition of knowledge about the attitudes of Portuguese students and the variables that influence them, thus intervening on them in a grounded manner.

Therefore, this project has the following specific objectives:

1. To assess the attitudes of students with typical development vis-à-vis students with disabilities and to identify the variables that determine them, namely how attitudes vary according to personal factors (i.e., age, gender, knowledge and contact with people with disabilities), and environmental factors (i.e., characteristics of the class to which they belong, such as the global climate of acceptance evidenced, attitudes of parents and teachers).

2. Evaluate the feasibility of a disability awareness program, as well as its contribution to modifying the attitudes of students with typical development.