Research reveals that generic skills are essential for supporting students to not only finish school education but also achieve transition to the workplace and adult life. However, a comprehensive literature review found limited studies have been done to develop an assessment tool for examining the generic skills of students with special educational needs (SEN). Based on two sub-studies, the current study aimed to develop a short form of the Generic Skills Teacher-Rating Scale (GSTS) to assess six generic skills (i.e., Collaboration, Communication, Problem-solving, Self-management, Information Technology, Critical thinking) of SEN students. A total of 231 Hong Kong students from six special schools (including primary and secondary levels) participated in the two studies. Both CFA and Rasch analyses support a six-factor solution of the GSTS with reasonably good model fit indices. Researchers and educators may view the GSTS as an assessment tool, adding more information on SEN students’ generic skills beyond classroom settings to understand the daily-life functioning of students in special education and inclusive education settings. Implications of the results and future directions are also discussed. Copyright © 2022 The Special Education Society of Hong Kong Ltd.

Although there are an increasing number of studies on assessing teacher emotions in mainstream education, there is a lack of appropriate measurement tools to evaluate the emotions of teaching assistants (TAs) who need to take care of students with a range of special educational needs (SEN). This study tested the generalizability of the 24-item teacher emotion inventory (TEI), among 204 TAs from 122 secondary schools with inclusive education in Hong Kong. We conducted both confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Rasch analysis to test the within-network validity of the TEI. For the between-network validity, we examined the relationships between TAs’ emotions and their attitude toward inclusive education. The Rasch analysis supported the scale’s dimensionality and item fit statistics. The CFA supported the five-factor solution of the TEI. The results also showed statistically significant correlations between positive emotions (joy and love) and TAs’ attitudes toward inclusive education. TAs’ negative emotions (anxiety, anger, and stress) appeared to be negatively correlated with their attitude toward inclusive education. The results supported that TEI is a useful tool to assess the emotions of TAs that play a pivotal role in assisting both school teachers and SEN students, who are more likely to face increased emotional challenges than those not needing to educate SEN students. Implications of this study to enrich the current scope of research on understanding teacher emotions across educational levels and settings are discussed. Copyright © 2022 Yang, Hsu, Ye and Sin.