Conference Agenda

In the first stages of their career, many researchers experience writing academic papers a challenging task. Writing a research paper is a specific professional skill, but oftentimes researchers are not prepared and mentored enough to fulfil expectations. In addition, scholars today face with constant pressure to publish at a very fast pace, which makes it writing papers a highly competitive and stressful activity.

To support researchers in overcoming this challenge, EERA Network 04, in cooperation with the European Journal of Inclusive Education, invites you to participate in a three-hours workshop on the fundamentals of writing scientific papers for journals in the field of education.

The workshop, especially addressed to junior researchers, aims to present and discuss the essential elements of academic writing. During the workshop, we will review the streamlining processes, writing strategies and editing techniques that help you conceive, draft and complete your paper in a consistent and productive way.

In the first part of the workshop, a panel of four expert researchers will introduce the methods and approaches they usually adopt in developing scientific papers. In the second part, questions and answers from participants will be facilitated through discussion in small groups. The workshop will conclude with a summary of the main suggestions and reflections emerging from the groups.

This international study investigated teacher perceptions toward systemic racism and online distance learning within the context of the COVID-19 as a dual pandemic. Teachers from three locations in Europe and the United States participated in 18 hours of virtual live professional learning lectures using a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) conceptual framework and Schoolwide Enrichment Model pedagogical model in Gifted Education. Given tragic events of systemic racism viewed globally during the pandemic combined with a sudden change from face-to-face traditional learning in buildings to online learning platforms, teachers faced challenges with instructional delivery but gained opportunities to address DEI issues in their virtual classrooms. Despite the pedagogical and societal hardships of COVID-19, teachers with little or no training or experience forged pathways in online distance education. The study provided professional learning as online Professional Learning Institutes to equip P-12 teachers with knowledge, skills, and dispositions to effectively create differentiated curricula based on DEI concepts.

Professional literature supported positive aspects of online teaching and DEI concepts during this dual pandemic. For example, socialization in online learning connects online teaching and learning and issues of diversity, equity and inclusion (Siemens, 2004). Teacher performance with technology and technology training impacted student learning (Lei & So, 2021). Teaching style, preparation, and feedback impacted student learning (Bolliger & Martindale, 2004). Teacher perceptions of online instruction effectiveness compared to face-to-face instruction showed no statistically significant difference (Lei & So, 2021). Freshmen and sophomore interviews found students completed third and fourth college years with “color-blind racism” ideology (Bonita-Silva, 2015).

The researchers asked participants to complete a nine-hour online course on the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM; Renzulli, 1986) as a self-paced Pre-Institute professional learning intervention. The SEM knowledge and skills proposed enrichment for all students and provided foundational methods and practical strategies. Participants practiced using the Renzulli Learning System (RLS) components during the Pre-Institute that included the Renzulli Profiler, Differentiation Engine, Project Wizard, Super Starter Templates, Project Showcase, and the Cebecci Test of Creativity.

Prior to the four-week Professional Learning Institutes, participants signed consent forms, The researchers adapted published surveys on DEI (Pohan & Aguilar, 2001) and online distance education (Çelen et al., 2013), and participants completed pretests to establish a baseline of teacher knowledge, skills, and dispositions toward the dual pandemic areas of DEI concepts and online distance education pedagogy.

The four-week Professional Learning Institutes consisted of nine hours of DEI concepts with three lecture hours during the first three weeks. Week 1 focused on SEM Type 1 enrichment designed to introduce learners to the diversity concepts. During Week 2, lectures addressed SEM Type II enrichment learning focused on real world skills and inclusion concepts. Week 3 addressed SEM Type III in-depth enrichment learning and equity concepts. The fourth week provided additional time to complete enrichment curriculum tasks posted in Google Classroom. Each of the three locations worked in separate online classrooms with the same tasks.

All live lectures included translation and captioning to support the international collaboration between a European country and the United States. At the end of each live lecture, participants asked questions in their own language with explanations translated for non-English speaking participants. Participants unable to attend lectures could view recorded lectures hosted on a dedicated YouTube channel. Following the four-week Professional Learning Institutes, participants completed the DEI and online distance education surveys.

The researchers asked two questions: (a) How does a virtual Enrichment Camp impact teacher perceptions of systemic racism during the dual pandemic, and (b) How does a virtual Enrichment Camp impact teacher perceptions of teaching during the dual pandemic? The online Professional Learning Institutes served as the virtual enrichment camps.

The education act in Norway states that education should be inclusive and that all students receive a high-quality education that meets their individual needs. Furthermore, education should enable students to develop their abilities and talents. However, the responsibility falls on the individual schools and municipalities regarding gifted education, resulting in considerable discrepancies in practices and praxis between schools. The governmental report NOU 2016:14 (2016) "More to Gain. Children with higher learning potential" reveals that there is a lack of Norwegian research that focuses on gifted children and that teachers lack the competence to identify and facilitate education for gifted students. Therefore, according to the report, teachers do not promote sufficiently adapted education. The report recommends that more research in the Norwegian context be conducted to generate knowledge concerning gifted education. This study investigates teachers' perspectives on gifted students and gifted education. The study examines how teachers describe teacher education concerning gifted students and their competence and practices with gifted education.

Theoretical framework: In Norway, little research has been published on gifted students since the 1970s, and the lack of research seems to have had implications on teachers' and schools' practices and praxis. Research shows that gifted education has had a relatively low priority among researchers in Norway, although it is slowly increasing in recent years (Furnes & Jokstad, 2023; Lenvik et al., 2021). Studies show that a lack of research seems to impact gifted students' opportunities for equal education (Idsøe, 2014; Idsøe & Skogen, 2011; Nissen et al., 2011; Smedsrud, 2018; Straube, 2003). Moreover, gifted students are more likely to feel socially isolated, have low self-efficacy, and struggle with their self-identity resulting in a higher risk of school dropout.

To implement inclusive practices effectively, teachers need the right combination of knowledge, skills, and educational foundation. They must also believe in their own abilities and have confidence that they can bring about the changes that they wish to see in the classroom. In other words, they must have a strong sense of self-efficacy for teaching within inclusive classrooms. Teachers who have a strong sense of self-efficacy in their teaching abilities provide lessons of higher instructional quality (Miesera et al., 2019), pay more attention to the needs of individual students (Colson et al., 2017), are more flexible in their instruction and are more likely to involve students in decision making processes (Goddard & Evans, 2018). Due to the numerous benefits of a high level of self-efficacy, it is paramount that by the end of teacher education programs, pre-service teachers feel ready and confident to enter the workforce. However, it is equally as important that levels of self-efficacy remain stable into the first years of the teaching career. Once firmly established, self-efficacy beliefs are thought to be relatively unchanging (Bandura, 1997). A teacher who has a solid cognitive representation of their abilities is unlikely to have that concept changed, even when presented with evidence to the contrary.

Research has increasingly focused on identifying the factors that contribute to high levels of self-efficacy for inclusive teaching practice. Results of studies that have included gender as a variable when examining pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy have been relatively mixed, with the different findings being largely attributed to cultural factors (e.g., Specht & Metsala, 2018; Shaukat et al., 2019) Those teaching in elementary grades have higher levels of self-efficacy for teaching within inclusive classrooms when compared to their contemporaries who are preparing to teach secondary grades (Sharma et al., 2015). Teachers who have more experiences with diverse populations, either professional or personal, tend to have higher levels of self-efficacy for teaching within inclusive classrooms than pre-service teachers who have fewer experiences (Peebles & Mendaglio, 2014; Specht & Metsala, 2018). Although the literature surrounding the factors that contribute to self-efficacy for teaching is relatively rich, research into the predictive capabilities of these factors is scarce. For example, Specht and Metsala (2018) found that for pre-service teachers preparing to teach elementary grades, significant predictors of higher self-efficacy were gender, having friends with diverse learning needs, the amount of experience that they had teaching students with diverse learning needs, and if they had more student-centred patterns of educational beliefs. For those preparing to teach secondary grades, significant predictors were gender, the amount of diverse teaching experience, their beliefs regarding the stability of academic ability, and their beliefs toward the use of extrinsic rewards to motivate learning.

Additionally, only a handful of studies have investigated the longitudinal development of self-efficacy for the inclusive practice of teachers into their first years of in-service teaching. George et .al., 2018 examined efficacy for inclusive practice in year 1 and 5 of teaching and found a significant increase; Mintz, 2019 found stability from leaving preservice to the first year of teaching.

The current study adds to our understanding of the development of self-efficacy from the beginning of initial teacher education through to the first 2 years of teaching by asking the following questions:

1. What is the trajectory for self-efficacy for teaching within inclusive classrooms from the pre-service period into in-service teaching?

2. What quantitative factors influence the trajectory for self-efficacy?

Inclusive education aims at the social inclusion of all students, that is, their equal access and right be involved in a mainstream school (UNCRPD Art 24 2008) and to contribute to all classroom activities (Bates & Davis 2004). Although also Finland has committed to the neighborhood schools as the first educational option for all children (Basic Education Act 2010; Basics of the National Core Curriculum 2014), merely sharing placement in the same classroom environment does not automatically result in all students’ social inclusion (Petry 2018; Vetoniemi and Kärnä 2021).

This paper comes to grips with the topic of inclusive education by focusing on how the aims and principles of inclusive education appear in the learning and individual education plans (IEP) documents. These documents are a key to promote inclusive education in practice, since they define and justify students’ learning aims and contents as well as the need for necessary support measures, and modifications of the classroom environment the student will need to succeed.

The quality of IEPs has not been found to vary by students’ educational placement whether in inclusive or separate learning environments (Kurth et al. 2022), but teachers in inclusive classrooms seem to emphasize social IEP objectives more than teachers in segregated classrooms (Kwon, Elicker & Kontos, 2011). However, earlier research has showed that the general quality of pedagogical documents such as IEPs is often poor. This appears in vague or even missing descriptions of learning aims or pedagogical solutions in the documents (Boavida et al. 2010; La Salle et al., 2013; Ruble et al.; Räty et al. 2019) as well as in the lack of coherent continuity when describing the support measures or pedagogical solutions in the sequential pedagogical documents over the years (Heiskanen et al. 2019). In addition, the documents typically focus on describing children’s challenges rather than planning ways to eliminate barriers in learning environment or planning appropriate support measures for all students (Andreasson et al. 2013; Heiskanen et al. 2018; Isaksson et al. 2007; 2010; Kurth et al., 2022).

There is also a risk that IEPs do not provide concrete guidance for mainstream teachers on how to meet the individual learning needs of students in inclusive classrooms (Bray & Lin Russell, 2018). Therefore, it is of great importance to examine how the aims of inclusive education are advocated in learning and individual education plans and how the transparency in support provision appear in the documents. The research questions are the following: 1) What kinds of meanings of inclusive education are constructed in the learning and individual education learning plans? and 2) How are the aims of inclusive education justified in these documents?

For special and inclusive education policies and practice in most of the Western Countries, Individual Education Plans (IEPs) play a crucial role at the point that Mitchell, Murton and Hornby (2010) in their review write that “IEPs are ubiquitous”. Interestingly, IEPs exist both in countries with special schools or special classes and in more inclusive school systems like Norway, Italy or Portugal. They are called with different names and take different forms in different countries and school systems, but they all have in common the aim to define formal plans for special provisions in schools understood as necessary not for all, but for some pupils, in many countries those identified as having SEN (Alves, 2018).

Previous literature that reflects the use of IEPs within the framework of the development of inclusive education shows that the tool is connected with several challenges. Some of them are related to difficulties in its implementation, like for example accessibility of IEPs in terms of language and communication, the lacking professionals’, parents’ and/or students’ participation in the IEP-elaboration, or the perception of the IEP as an administrative rather than pedagogical tool (Alves, 2018; Andreasson & Carlsson, 2013; Blackwell & Rossetti, 2014; Cioè-Peña, 2020; Elder, Rood & Damiani, 2018; Müller, Venetz & Keiser, 2017; Breitenbach, 2019).

Others, and this are those we focus on in this work, relate to the essence of the IEP structure in being a tool for special provisions for somehow identified “special” student. On one side, IEPs mark pupils that for some reasons are identified not to fit the norm, with special educational needs for which it is assumed that general provision is not responding, on the other side, the simple abolishment of IEPs risks of flattening differences and making educational offer insensitive to individual differences (Alves, 2018; Ianes and Demo, 2021).

Moreover, IEPs can, on one side, design ways to reconnect so called special needs with the learning paths of a class that also implies the risk of a “normalizing” pressure. On the other side, IEPs can design separate curriculum and instructional strategies distinct from those for the whole class, with the risk of segregation (Andreasson, Asp-Onsjö and Isaksson, 2013; Bhroin and King, 2020; Martinez and Porter, 2020).

Finally, additional and specialized professionals (e.g. special education teachers) are linked directly to IEPS and connected with the risk that class teachers and subject teachers to do integrate students with IEPs in their planning and delegate to specialized professionals the responsibility for them, (Mitchell et al., 2010; King, Bhroin and Prunty, 2017; Bhroin and King, 2020; Martinez and Porter, 2020)

In Italy, in contrast to other European countries where separate curricula are formulated for certain categories of students with so called special educational needs, the IEP represents a tool which aims to guarantee all pupils access to the national curriculum and the curriculum of the school (Ianes & Demo, 2021). Despite the almost three decades long practice in the use of IEPs, problems and dilemmas are still arising (e.g., Associazione TreeLLLe, Caritas Italiana & Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli, 2011).

On this background, this paper aims at analyzing the way class teachers and support teachers describe the relationship between IEPs and class planning in Italian primary school classes.

Research on how schools become inclusive of all learners irrespective of their diversity has not yet clearly answered the question about how do schools become inclusive. The research has shown that many variables contribute towards creating highly inclusive schools and it ranges from leaders who are highly inclusive (DeMathews et.al, 2020; Woodcock & Woolfson, 2019); school staff who have positive attitudes towards inclusion; staff with high levels of teaching efficacy for inclusion (Wray, Sharma, Subban, 2022); and, availability of necessary resources (Finkelstein, 2021). While all these variables are important and do make a significant impact in influencing a school's inclusive practices, there is a lack of research that could explain how do these different variables influence each other and contribute cumulatively towards building a school's overall commitment to inclusion. We argue that one key variable that has not yet been researched enough and could perhaps be most significant in explaining how a school builds its overall commitment towards inclusion is the school staff's collective efficacy beliefs about inclusion (Subban et al, 2022).

The overall study was guided by the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 2005). Applying this theory to the field of inclusive education it is hypothesised that in a school, a teacher's actual behaviour (or the use of effective inclusive practices) could be determined if we know the teacher's intentions to teach in inclusive classrooms. The intention to teach in inclusive classrooms in turn is influenced by three interrelated variables of their attitudes towards inclusion, their competence to teach in an inclusive classroom (i.e. teaching efficacy to teach in inclusive classrooms), and the subjective norm or how the rest of the school community perceives the action of inclusion. The subjective norm for the purpose of this study was defined as collective efficacy beliefs. It is the first time we are making an attempt to measure collective efficacy beliefs and determine how it interacts with attitudes and efficacy and influences the intentions of the individual teacher in a school.

We established an international group bringing researchers from six countries (Australia, Canada, Greece, Italy, Switzerland and Germany) to undertake a series of projects in examining the role of collective efficacy beliefs in influencing a school's overall commitment towards inclusion. In this symposium, we will present findings from three interrelated projects.

The first paper of this symposium would focus on how we collaborated across different country contexts to conceptualise collective efficacy and commitments towards inclusion. The paper essentially argues that it takes a village (or everyone in the school community) to make collective efforts to make the school inclusive. The second paper of the symposium will discuss qualitative data from four countries where we interviewed principals of highly successful inclusive schools to understand how they build collective commitment to inclusion and how they support the implementation of inclusive practices. In the last paper of this symposium, we will present an analysis of quantitative data from five countries that examined the relationship between three variables of attitudes, individual teaching efficacy beliefs and teachers' intentions to teach in inclusive classrooms. An examination of this relationship is necessary as ultimately, it is school staff intention that actually is the best predictor of their teaching behaviour.

We hope the symposium will not be of value to researchers and policymakers, it will also be of value to educators. We will share new knowledge related to measuring collective efficacy beliefs and how it interacts with other variables. We will also share the key lessons learnt so far from different countries about how to build collective commitment to inclusion.

Inclusive education is often mandated in many countries through national legislation that is undergirded by global recommendations from recognised organisations like UNESCO (UNESCO, 2016). Student diversity within contemporary classrooms is increasing as learners adopt varied means of processing and expressing information received in the mainstream classroom. It is therefore essential to reconsider the responsibility and roles of modern educators, and of how different stakeholders located within the learning context, can best accommodate student needs (Subban & Sharma, 2021). This study proposes the adoption of more collective responsibility, drawing on the plethora of skills and knowledge vested in teachers, school leaders, paraprofessional staff and parents. In this context, Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory (1974) framed the view that classrooms, and indeed schools, are microcosms of society. If these spaces are to enhance societal functioning overall, there would need to be more socially-responsible sharing of responsibilities when attempting to include all students (Bronfenbrenner, 1974). Emanating from this premise, the study positions the contemporary classroom as a village, drawing together all stakeholders in order to foster a nurturing, compassionate space in which students with varying learning profiles are appropriately accommodated. The study draws on the cumulative wisdom of a group of collaborating academics involved in both teacher education and inclusive education. This convenient sample included experts in the field of inclusive education from Australia, Canada, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Switzerland. Their joint dialogue yielded four key themes that should be incorporated into the learning environment to promote intentional collective responsibility. These themes included the creation of a nurturing community; the development of empathetic relationships; building supportive interaction between stakeholders and designing learning programs involving targeted teaching. Creating adaptable and flexible learning contexts is fundamental to inclusive education, so dialogue of this nature will continue to inform the work of inclusive educators, researchers and educational administrators in the field.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1974). Developmental research, public policy, and the ecology of childhood. Child development, 45(1), 1-5. Subban, P., & Sharma, U. (2021). Supporting inclusive education benefits us all. The Sydney Morning Herald. Accessed from: https://www.smh.com.au/education/supporting-inclusive-education-benefits-us-all-20210219-p57439.html. UNESCO. (2016). Education 2030: Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action for the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Education 2023. UNESDOC Digital Library., Accessed from: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000245656.

Inclusion is a contested concept (Woodcock & Hardy, 2022). Research has shown the importance of teachers’ perceptions of school as well as leaders’ support for inclusion (Woodcock & Woolfson, 2019). Understanding those school systems where leaders effectively support teachers in carving out a community-based inclusive culture is vital for an equitable inclusive school for all. In this paper, we present the results of inclusive school principals’ perceptions and understandings of factors that facilitate inclusive policies and practices in their own school community. The study is an exploratory qualitative research design, collecting interviews and focus groups with 12 principals of highly ranked inclusive schools from Australia, Greece, Switzerland, Italy. The principals were selected through recognition of highly effective inclusiveness throughout the school community. The selected schools reflected a varied range of characteristics, including in relation to size (catering from approximately 100 to 750 students), class (low socio-economic situation to wealthy situation) and ethnicity (mostly white to multiracial and multiethnic schools). Interviews and focus groups were approximately 45-60 minutes each and were recorded and transcribed. T An iterative process of thematic content analysis was carried out manually from a group of three independent researchers (Saldana, 2013). They agreed to work individually and separately in a first cycle of the analysis, following a strongly inductive and “in-vivo” approach. The initial coding phase generated several inductive codes derived from the transcripts. Then, in a second phase, the three researchers confronted each other and identified the axial categories of the content analysis. Finally, in a third phase, categories were read, and additional inductive codes were generated to further compare principals’ perceptions and actions. The findings revealed five broad, key factors that affect and impact on school inclusivity. Those factors regard family cooperation, students’ engagement, commitment to inclusive practices, collaboration among peers (students, teachers, administrative staff), and inter-institutional network. We adopted the framework offered by communities of practices (Wenger et al., 2002) to depict a community-based approach to school inclusion that could encompass these key factors. While previous studies made clear that principals confront numerous challenges in creating inclusive schools, some of which are beyond their control, this study formalizes a community-based approach to school inclusion identifying key facilitation factors on which principals can rely on to navigate material, social, and political challenges.

DeMatthews, D. E., Serafini, A., & Watson, T. N. (2021). Leading Inclusive Schools: Principal Perceptions, Practices, and Challenges to Meaningful Change. Educational Administration Quarterly, 57(1), 3–48. Hardy, I. & Woodcock, S. (2020). ‘Problematising’ policy in practice: principals’ perceptions of inclusion in an era of test-based accountability. Pedagogy, Culture & Society. DOI: 10.1080/14681366.2020.1801813. Hoppey, D., & McLeskey, J. (2013). A case study of principal leadership in an effective inclusive school. Journal of Special Education, 46(4), 245-256. Saldana, J. (2013). The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers. The Coding Manual For Qualitative Researchers(2nd ed.). London: SAGE Publications. Wenger, E., McDermott, R.A., & Snyder, W., (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge; Harvard Business Press Woodcock, S. & Hardy, I. (2022). ‘You’re probably going to catch me out here’: principals’ understandings of inclusion policy in complex times. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 26:3, 211-226, DOI: 10.1080/13603116.2019.1645891. Woodcock, S., Woolfson, L. (2019). Are Leaders Leading the Way with Inclusion? Teachers’ Perceptions of Systemic Support and Barriers towards Inclusion. International Journal of Educational Research, 93: 232–242.

Understanding what drives teachers to adopt inclusive practices is crucial for promoting equal educational opportunities for all students. Attitudes toward inclusive education and self-efficacy in using inclusive practices have been identified as important factors in this regard (e.g., Hellmich et al., 2019; Opoku et al., 2021; Sahli Lozano et al., 2021; Sharma et al., 2018). However, there exists considerable variability in their relative importance across studies and teacher samples, with teacher attitudes being sometimes less (e.g., Opoku et al., 2021) or more important than teacher self-efficacy (Hellmich et al., 2019; Sharma et al., 2018), and with diverging patterns across countries (Sahli Lozano et al., 2021). Country-specific differences (e.g., in school systems and in history, legislation and implementation of inclusive education) are used to explain such differences. But such interpretations must be taken with caution because of methodological issues (Davidov, et.al, 2014). This study is the first to systematically investigate the role of teacher attitudes and self-efficacy in the prediction of teachers’ intention to teach in inclusive classrooms across teacher samples from five different countries (Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Canada; total N = 1207 teachers), while taking measurement invariance of the measured constructs into account. The results indicate that across all five countries, self-efficacy in collaboration is the most important and consistent predictor of teachers' intentions to teach in inclusive classrooms. This points to the importance of collaboration, a construct closely aligned to collective efficacy and commitment, across different country contexts. This further highlights the importance of enhancing collaboration within the school community which can lead to better inclusion in schools. In contrast, significant differences across countries were found regarding the role of attitudes toward inclusion. Accordingly, three important insights of this study are: 1) despite different national contexts, self-efficacy in collaboration is the most consistent and strongest predictor of teacher intentions’, 2) considering domain-specific aspects in teacher self-efficacy is important in the prediction of teacher intentions’, and 3) teacher attitudes seem more central in some countries than in others. Potential factors (e.g., the level of support provided to teachers in implementing inclusive practices or teacher training) that may explain these common and differential patterns across the five national contexts will be discussed.

Davidov, E., Meuleman, B., Cieciuch, J., Schmidt, P., & Billiet, J. (2014). Measurement Equivalence in Cross-National Research. Annual Review of Sociology, 40(1), 55–75. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071913-043137 Hellmich, F., Löper, M. F., & Görel, G. (2019). The role of primary school teachers’ attitudes and self‐efficacy beliefs for everyday practices in inclusive classrooms – a study on the verification of the ‘Theory of Planned Behaviour’. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 19(S1), 36–48. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-3802.12476 Opoku, M. P., Cuskelly, M., Pedersen, S. J., & Rayner, C. S. (2021). Attitudes and self-efficacy as significant predictors of intention of secondary school teachers towards the implementation of inclusive education in Ghana. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 36(3), 673–691. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-020-00490-5 Sahli Lozano, C., Sharma, U., & Wüthrich, S. (2021). A comparison of Australian and Swiss secondary school teachers’ attitudes, concerns, self-efficacy, and intentions to teach in inclusive classrooms: Does the context matter? International Journal of Inclusive Education, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2021.1988158 Sharma, U., Aiello, P., Pace, E. M., Round, P., & Subban, P. (2018). In-service teachers’ attitudes, concerns, efficacy and intentions to teach in inclusive classrooms: An international comparison of Australian and Italian teachers. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 33(3), 437–446. https://doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2017.1361139

Persons with disabilities forcibly displaced form a particularly vulnerable group facing intersectional discriminatory practices. Exiled from their country of origin, they need to live without the protection stemming from citizenship or permanent residency. They may have experienced persecution in the country of origin and/or trauma during the flight. They face discriminatory practices targeted generally against people with disabilities and refugees, but they also experience specific oppression stemming from the interplay of these two characteristics. They may be thus left behind during flight or they may not survive the journey, they often lack access to mainstream assistance programmes and are in danger of being exposed to further protection risks, such as sexual and physical violence and harassment (Reilly, 2010, p. 18). For refugees with disabilities, their journeys often take much longer putting them at greater risk of attack and insecurity along the journey (Kett & Trani, 2010, p. 12). Persons with disabilities remain largely forgotten in situations of acute crisis of human displacement (Crock et al., 2013, p. 736), and so is often their right to inclusive education enshrined in Article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (Bacakova, 2023, p. 35).

The proposed paper aims at shedding light on this partly invisible intersection of vulnerabilities experienced by refugee children and youth with disabilities when accessing their right to inclusive education by reporting on the preliminary results of a qualitative research study investigating the lived educational experiences of newly arrived Ukrainian refugee children and youth with disabilities in Germany. In order to do so, the paper takes advantage of the notion of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 150) together with the concepts of the right to inclusive education stipulated in Article 24 of the CRPD and vulnerability as a human rights concept (Beduschi, 2018; Coleman, 2009; Fineman, 2010; Morawa, 2006; Peroni & Timmer, 2013; Bacakova, 2023). By embracing the intersectional perspective, the paper intends to contribute to addressing not only the possible experiences of disrespect, exclusion and the lack of support in education, but also to highlighting the individual aspirations and examples of their active fulfilment.

The research study focuses therefore on the following research questions:

1. To what extent is the enjoyment of the right to inclusive education enshrined in Article 24 of the CRPD ensured for the newly arrived Ukrainian refugee children with disabilities in Germany?
2. Which obstacles face the participants when accessing their right to inclusive education in Germany?
3. Which factors influence these challenges and which are the possible protective factors, which lead to positive experiences?
4. What educational dreams and aspirations do refugee children with disabilities and their families bring with them to their new home in Germany?

Very little is known about the educational trajectories of refugees with disabilities in urban settings and in Europe and North America in general, creating thus a research gap, which needs to be filled (Bacakova, 2023, p. 42). Furthermore, the intersectional point of view is likely to promote the concept of inclusive education by emphasizing the importance of education for all where no groups and individuals are left behind, and the forgotten ones are given a voice.

Students´ social inclusion in school is a basic psychological need (Ryan & Deci, 2001) and is considered a precondition for academic learning and an appropriate social-emotional development. On the other hand social exclusion is associated with a variety of relevant risk factors such as aggressiveness, anxiety disorders, depressive symptoms and poor school performance or truancy (Newcomb, Bukowski & Pattee, 1993; Flook et al., 2005). Depending on the study, children with behavioural problems are up to three times more likely to experience social exclusion in inclusive classrooms compared to their classmates without special educational needs (Huber, Nicolay & Schulze, 2021).

So far, only a small number of studies address the question of how to influence social inclusion in school in an evidence-based way. Four main approaches are currently discussed (Feinman, 1992) Here we refer to two of them.

The social skills deficit model (Asher, Renshaw & Hymel, 1982) assumes that social inclusion is influenced by students’ socials skills. Up to now there is a large body of evidence, that students with social skills deficits have a higher risk to be rejected in their classes (Newcomb et al., 1993). On the other side there is just a handful of studies that were able to improve students social inclusion just by social skills trainings (Garrote et al., 2017; Zaragoza et al., 1991).

The social referencing theory (Feinman, 1992) assumes that public teacher feedback is another important factor for the students´ social inclusion. According to studies from Huber et al. (2018) or McAuliffe et al. (2009) the core assumption of the model is that teachers´ feedback and peer acceptance of children are intimately connected. The model predicts that students receiving much positive feedback from their teacher have a higher chance for an appropriate social inclusion. On the other hand the model predicts that negative teacher feedback is connected to poor social acceptance. A considerable number of studies have been able to support this hypothesis in recent years, both in experimental studies (e.g. Huber et al., 2018; White & Jones, 2000) and in field studies (e.g. McAuliffe et al., 2009; Spilles et al., accepted).

With reference to both theoretical approaches, students with behaviour problems are in a double risk situation: they have social skills deficits and so there are at risk to receive more negative feedback from their teachers.

We assume, that classroom management is able to influence both, behavior problems and teacher feedback, positively. From this we derive hat classroom management should also have a positive effect on the social inclusion of children with behavior problems. It is predicted that the link between social inclusion and behavioural problems is strong when teacher have a weak classroom management performance. On the other hand, this link is believed to be weak when teachers have perform in classroom management.

The research paper at hand is related to the 'Learning from the Covid-19 pandemic - Building Resilience through inclusive education systems' (BRIES) project of the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education (EASNIE). In this context the following research questions emerged:

'Which tools or materials - developed by education stakeholders from different levels - can support policy development and implementation for inclusive education systems during crisis situations in Europe?"

Related to this main question, the implementation of the research dealt with the following sub-question:

'How can different stakeholders’ experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic be turned into an opportunity to build resilience in inclusive education systems?'

Article 29 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights for People with Disabilities constitutes one of the main pillars for this paper. It is related to issues around participation in political and public life, namely: ‘[…] to ensure that persons with disabilities can effectively and fully participate in political and public life […].’ (UN 2006, online). Therefore, the aim was to include vulnerable learners and other stakeholders in discussions with policy-makers to address challenges and develop tools and material to support inclusive education systems in future times of crisis (Mangiaracina et al. 2021).

A literature research provided the basis for all subsequent activities. For collecting data, a qualitative research approach was chosen (Silverman 2016). Following a theoretical sampling method (Corbin & Strauss 2015), the field research included online focus group discussions and a variety of other methods for exchanging with participants (including a dialogic structure during face-to-face meetings). The focus groups consisted of stakeholders from four different levels (vulnerable learners from lower and upper secondary schools, parents of vulnerable learners, teachers of vulnerable learners, and policy-makers) and six European countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Ireland, and Sweden). The different stakeholder groups were asked to talk about their experiences during the pandemic and try to identify priority areas they think would need most attention.

The collected data (discussion notes and video recordings) were analysed with the qualitative data analysis tool ‘atlas.ti’. Informed consent was collected beforehand.

Regarding the theoretical framework, the research was designed in the style of grounded theory following the constuctivist approach of Kathy Charmaz (2014). Emerging categories and results of the first focus group discussions among same-level stakeholders provided the basis for a second round, this time with multi-level stakeholder discussions within each country. In these discussions participants were asked to think about suggestions of tools and material that might facilitate inclusive education processes in future times of crisis.

Following the concept of ‘constant comparison’ of the grounded theory approach (Clark, 2005), input was analysed with the help of atlas.ti and processed before a third round of exchanges took place. This third round included stakeholders from all levels and all countries. Thereby, two groups consisting of three countries each were formed to make discussions more manageable. For the implementation, different methods were applied.

By presenting outcomes and findings of the research process so far (see below for more information) it is expected to inspire and inform future research. Furthermore, it is aimed to emphasise the necessity to include stakeholders from all levels in policy-making processes in the inclusive education sector. At the same time, an example of how stakeholder participation can be implemented in practice is presented. This includes discussing benefits for all stakeholders who were involved, but also addressing challenges and concerns that emerged.

'there is a conceptual confusion surrounding what inclusion is, what it is supposed to do and for whom'¹

Generating inclusive learning environments is a global priority and is recognised as being a key component in establishing a more equal world (United Nations Sustainable Development Goal - SDG 4).

The notion of inclusive education, which has been strongly developed through the Salamanca Statement⁵ and the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD), has developed historically from the provision of special education for learners with disabilities, evolving to encompass the international Education for All movement which ‘targets’ other ‘disadvantaged’ populations such as girls and learners from ethnic minorities². However, despite being a widespread concept, Inclusive Education (IE) is still debated by academics 3–6, educators 7–9, parents^{10, 11,} and learners^{2, 12}. How can we justify using a concept that has been described as being ‘fuzzy’¹³, and ‘fluid’¹⁴ be used as a universal target in the United Nations SDG4? Despite strong policies being developed internationally, it seems that the existing structures and systems make it difficult to move forward from the discourse of inclusive education into the implementation of a quality, inclusive education for all.

This 2-part discussion panel will bring together academics working in the area of inclusive education, with a focus on ten different country contexts: Australia, China, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, and Switzerland.

We will use the dimensions of Artiles and Dyson’s¹⁵ Comparative Cultural Historical Analysis framework to structure our discussion, by focusing on: 1) participants (targets and ‘actors’ involved in IE), 2) cultural (models of inclusion, provision taking place; beliefs, values, expectations regarding particular groups or learners), 3) temporal/ historical (development of IE), and 4) outcomes. This framework will allow us to discuss how governments and educators in different contexts define and implement Inclusive Education – how it is defined in public policies, what it implies in practice and who the target populations are in each of the contexts. For example, while in some countries there is still a strong focus on supporting disabled students when referring to IE, others refer to ‘Special Educational Needs’, or ‘Additional Support for Learning’ (Scotland) which include aspects such as poverty, linguistic and cultural background, or being ‘in care/ looked after’. While some contexts have considerable differences between regions (e.g. Germany, Spain), others have rather centralised policies and practices (e.g. Portugal).

The countries represented have a variety of approaches and traditions regarding responding to student diversity, and how ‘inclusive education’ is conceptualised and realised. Reports from several contexts suggest clarifying the meaning of the education policy in practice at all levels and how to implement it as a key lever for moving forward (e.g. the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education audit of the Icelandic system for IE). And so, the aim of this discussion panel is to explore similarities and differences between contexts and to interrogate to what extent education systems are presently places where all learners are experiencing equitable, quality education, where all feel welcome, challenged and supported, and where all learners are able to access, participate and succeed in education. Or whether we value some children more than others¹⁶, namely learners with intellectual disabilities¹⁷.

We will then discuss how we can develop education systems that are based on inclusive: concepts, policies, systems and structures, and practices¹⁸. Systems that truly engage with learners’ voices, that are based on the collaboration between different actors (namely educators, learners, and families; education, health and social work), and where inclusive curricula and inclusive pedagogy¹⁹/ ‘didactics’ are core, rather than an afterthought for a minority of learners.

'there is a conceptual confusion surrounding what inclusion is, what it is supposed to do and for whom'¹

Generating inclusive learning environments is a global priority and is recognised as being a key component in establishing a more equal world (United Nations Sustainable Development Goal - SDG 4).

The notion of inclusive education, which has been strongly developed through the Salamanca Statement⁵ and the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD), has developed historically from the provision of special education for learners with disabilities, evolving to encompass the international Education for All movement which ‘targets’ other ‘disadvantaged’ populations such as girls and learners from ethnic minorities². However, despite being a widespread concept, Inclusive Education (IE) is still debated by academics 3–6, educators 7–9, parents^{10, 11,} and learners^{2, 12}. How can we justify using a concept that has been described as being ‘fuzzy’¹³, and ‘fluid’¹⁴ be used as a universal target in the United Nations SDG4? Despite strong policies being developed internationally, it seems that the existing structures and systems make it difficult to move forward from the discourse of inclusive education into the implementation of a quality, inclusive education for all.

This 2-part discussion panel will bring together academics working in the area of inclusive education, with a focus on ten different country contexts: Australia, China, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, and Switzerland.

We will use the dimensions of Artiles and Dyson’s¹⁵ Comparative Cultural Historical Analysis framework to structure our discussion, by focusing on: 1) participants (targets and ‘actors’ involved in IE), 2) cultural (models of inclusion, provision taking place; beliefs, values, expectations regarding particular groups or learners), 3) temporal/ historical (development of IE), and 4) outcomes. This framework will allow us to discuss how governments and educators in different contexts define and implement Inclusive Education – how it is defined in public policies, what it implies in practice and who the target populations are in each of the contexts. For example, while in some countries there is still a strong focus on supporting disabled students when referring to IE, others refer to ‘Special Educational Needs’, or ‘Additional Support for Learning’ (Scotland) which include aspects such as poverty, linguistic and cultural background, or being ‘in care/ looked after’. While some contexts have considerable differences between regions (e.g. Germany, Spain), others have rather centralised policies and practices (e.g. Portugal).

The countries represented have a variety of approaches and traditions regarding responding to student diversity, and how ‘inclusive education’ is conceptualised and realised. Reports from several contexts suggest clarifying the meaning of the education policy in practice at all levels and how to implement it as a key lever for moving forward (e.g. the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education audit of the Icelandic system for IE). And so, the aim of this discussion panel is to explore similarities and differences between contexts and to interrogate to what extent education systems are presently places where all learners are experiencing equitable, quality education, where all feel welcome, challenged and supported, and where all learners are able to access, participate and succeed in education. Or whether we value some children more than others¹⁶, namely learners with intellectual disabilities¹⁷.

We will then discuss how we can develop education systems that are based on inclusive: concepts, policies, systems and structures, and practices¹⁸. Systems that truly engage with learners’ voices, that are based on the collaboration between different actors (namely educators, learners, and families; education, health and social work), and where inclusive curricula and inclusive pedagogy¹⁹/ ‘didactics’ are core, rather than an afterthought for a minority of learners.

This panel brings together leading scholars, who adopt an intersectional approach to understanding the complex nexus of race and disability and its impact on multiply-marginalised student populations across Europe. Although the popularity of intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) has increased in recent years in Europe, educational research remains at risk of being colour-evasive (Annamma et al, 2016), of failing to challenge erasures of race with other identity markers (e.g. disability) in policy and practice. This issue is central to education, because racialised minorities continue to be disproportionately identified with particular categories of special educational need or disability and subject to disciplinary exclusion. This panel engages in critical discussion about the possibilities of an intersectional approach to educational research. It does so by exploring the historical, colonial and contextual conditions leading to the erasure of race across Europe. Lastly, the panel hopes to stimulate a wider debate on these issues.

Paper 1 (Peter Hick)

From the early eugenicists and the origins of IQ testing, racism has been fundamentally imbricated in the history of education in the UK. Educational psychology colluded with the pseudoscientific fraud of Cyril Burt, framing a rationale for the postwar tripartite secondary education system. Colonial racism shaped the context for the labelling of children of the Windrush generation as ‘subnormal’; and created the legacy of disproportionate disciplinary exclusion and identification of children from racialised minorities with particular categories of special educational need.

The attempts of successive governments to deny the existence of institutional racism, have all but erased a language for discussing race in schooling. Intersectional analysis has at times been reduced to a fragmentation of categories of ethnicity and special educational need in administrative data. Yet there remains an urgent need to untangle these complex issues and to address these injustices.

Paper 2 (Valentina Migliarini)

The contribution presents biases and discriminatory discourses by Italian teachers, educators and medical professionals operating in educational, health and social services for forced migrants in Rome, in relation to the inclusion of unaccompanied asylum seeking and refugee children. It locates such narratives within the historical invisibilisation of race and racism (Giuliani, 2015) that have characterised Italy since the end of World War II, while showing how they legitimate contemporary processes of disablement and over-representation of Black forced migrant children in the category of special educational needs. This contribution adopts the Disability Critical Race Studies approach to discuss how a colour-evasive racial ideology has seeped into various institutions in Italian society, particularly into education policies and practices. Lastly, it shows how multiply-marginalised communities have been organising to challenge institutional race erasure.

Paper 3 (Girma Berhanu)

The school to prison nexus presents a complex landscape in which special education is commonly characterized by disproportionality – that is, learners from social/cultural groups are found in special education in proportions that are different to the overall school population (Berhanu and Dyson 2012). Connections between race, ethnicity, criminalization and education have been outlined in the ‘school to prison pipeline’ literature (Losen 2011). A number of other identity markers, including disability and gender, also have a distinct role in the 'pipeline' (Gillborn 2015) and their intersections with ethnicity and diverse cultural affiliations make children more vulnerable. Research is therefore required into both intersectionality and special education factors (and their combination) leading to offending and incarceration among young people. In particular, establishing a clear system of early detection and swift intervention, especially among special education students who are at risk of entering the school to prison pipeline, is needed in order to combat the harmful trajectory from trauma/school failure to incarceration.

Discussant (Alfredo Artiles)

A response from an internationally recognised authority

Considering the importance of systemic and process-related change to realize inclusive education, this paper explores the practices that inform assessment processes and in how far these are guided by ideas of inclusion and inclusive education (e.g., Bourke & Mentis, 2014). This paper sheds light on the significance of pedagogical processes and stakeholders informing inclusive assessment in different cultural contexts. Data for this presentation stems from two corresponding projects that are engaged in promoting inclusive education based on inclusive assessment processes. However, both projects approach the issue from different contextual and methodological directions and thus raise diverse perspectives.

Based on focus group discussions and interviews with stakeholders such as teachers, students, and educational administrators from Austria, current challenges, needs, wishes, and requirements for assessment within an inclusive framework have been collected to develop an alternative assessment tool, the Inclusive Assessment Map (Erasmus+ project, I AM). In correspondence to that, a web-based application for inclusive assessment (Inclusive Assessment Map, 2022) has been developed and piloted in four countries. With the application, it is intended to assist practitioners to better recognise and support their students’ needs for suitable learning environments. Thus, it is targeted to stimulate a shift from person- and deficit-centred perspectives towards a classroom- and resource-oriented perspective in educational assessment (Europa Büro, 2021). The I AM project accordingly approaches the issue from the direction of inclusive assessment, steering towards inclusive education.

The second research context (the PhD project Inclusive Schooling Practices of Teachers Worldwide (InSpots)), however, proceeds the other way around and approaches the issue from inclusive education towards inclusive assessment. It explores teachers' solutions for designing inclusive learning environments in diverse contexts around the world. The InSpots project follows a transcultural and grounded theory-based research approach (Charmaz, 2017) in which asynchronous narrative audio-messages of teachers around the world are collected (Kleinlein, 2021). Based on this data, teachers' inclusive education approaches will be systematized alongside suitable and inclusive assessment categories. In line with Ainscow and Sandmill (2010, p. 411), the project is thus built on the belief “that education practitioners in resource-rich countries can learn some very useful lessons for their own practice if they engage with experience of efforts to promote inclusion in the South” - and the other way around. Even though cultural embeddedness must not be neglected or underestimated, the project aims to promote the understanding that it is possible and valuable “to learn in one country from practices and forms of provision developed elsewhere” (Artiles & Dyson, 2005, p. 42)

Europe has played a strategic role in supporting disability inclusion internationally. In the last decade, the European Disability Forum and other European organisations have supported policy development and interventions in disability inclusion in India (EEAS, 2021). This support would continue to be essential in promoting programmes and high quality research on disability-inclusive education in low- and middle-income countries for the foreseeable future.

While there is significant literature on disability-inclusive education in India (Das et al, 2012; Shah et al, 2013; Sharma & Das 2015; Singal, 2019), not much attention has been paid to primary research on inclusive learning assessments in India. Research on disability-inclusive school education conducted by two of the authors of this paper has highlighted this key gap in evidence on inclusive learning assessments and related professional learning in the context of LMICs in the Asia-Pacific region (Chakraborty et al, 2019; Ahmed et al, 2022).

Although India became a signatory to the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action in 1994 and made significant progress in improving the education of students with disabilities (SWD), it still has a long way to go before educational institutions can be called inclusive. While the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act) and Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 establish legal opportunities for advancing disability-inclusive education, the degree of inclusion of SWD is unequal across different types of schools in different regions. The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) proposes further strengthening of India’s commitment to inclusive education.

This paper looks at the role of assessments as a point of interaction between educational policy, school culture, and teachers’ perceptions of ability. Specifically, it focuses on formative assessments which have substantial impact on student learning (Black & Wiliam, 1998). The paper addresses the key question: ‘What is the experience of conducting inclusive formative assessments in classrooms for teachers in India?’. It uses a case study of a private, inclusive, co-educational school in New Delhi to arrive at an understanding of the possible reasons affecting the inclusion of SWD in assessments and studies how changing assessments can help realise the objectives of the RTE Act and the NEP 2020.

In the current system, mainstream examination boards governing the school leaving examinations and the National Institute of Open Schooling confine themselves to a timed, pen and paper examination, with the areas examined largely restricted to prescribed textbooks. This means that students have to memorise large amounts of text/information and complete examinations of five different subjects within a set time period of 20 days. Because of the nature of the examination, it effectively excludes students who cannot perform to a speed or pattern, or those who cannot memorise or retain information for long.

The Board examinations have a tremendous washback effect on the syllabus, classroom methodology, and assessments that percolates to the primary and even pre-primary levels. Children are subjected to ongoing weekly assessments to prepare them to meet the standards of the Board that are intended to be formative but end up becoming summative. Results of the examinations are used to establish popularity and competition among schools.

Against this background, it is important to understand how formative assessments are designed to be inclusive – taking into consideration the special needs of children with different abilities, the time/form, and the overall environment in which assessments are conducted – for improving learning. Since there is no single way of assessing students formatively, this study captures teachers’ experience of conducting formative assessments and assessment methods, as opposed to judging teachers’ ability or knowledge to assess SWD (Trumbell & Lash, 2013).

The use of (social) media can be very entertaining but presents challenges for educators of adolescents that are not that media-literate yet^1,2. How adolescents with an intellectual disability (ID) can benefit from the opportunities of (social) media safely, responsibly, and ethically, is internationally an urgent but poorly studied educational issue³. For these adolescents assessing online information as fake or real often is troublesome, due to deficits in intellectual functioning (e.g., reasoning, problem solving, making judgments, learning from instruction and experience, and practical understanding)^4,5. Consequently, they are often involved in online incidents like fraud, manipulation, sextortion, and cyberbullying, and hence to sense a feeling of online exclusion impacting their education and wellbeing^6,7,8.

The issue of online exclusion of adolescents with an ID is addressed in three consecutive studies, which together aim to answer the general research question of what these adolescents need to benefit from the opportunities of (social) media? First, via 7 peer-to-peer interviews the needs regarding adolescents’ experiences with online incidents were recorded⁹. The adolescents, aged 13 to 20, foremost indicated having difficulty with assessing the authenticity of online information, for example: “I don’t want to believe online fake stuff, but I do”, “I don’t want any more miscommunication with guys”, and “I once won a price, but lost all my money when I wanted to claim it by phone”. In a focus-group meeting about the input derived from the interviewees, they unanimously indicated the need for an application that could help them assess whether online information is fake or real.

In order to meet this need, in a successive study such an application was developed, applying the principles of participatory action research (PAR)¹⁰ with adolescents with an ID and educators that guide them in their media use. The app, named Fake Real! (in Dutch: Nep Echt!^11,12) provides information, actual examples of fake and real information, check lists, user guidelines, and hyperlinks to assess the authenticity of online information that can be found on a broad range of platforms (e.g., WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Messenger, Telegram, Vinted, TikTok, Marketplace, Discord, Omegle, Tinder, and Grindr). The Fake Real! app meets the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)¹³ to make web content accessible to people with an ID.

A final study addressed the experiences of the target group with the use of the Fake Real! app. By using the app, adolescents with an ID are expected to become more media-wise and mentally stronger, suffer less from online incidents, feel more safe online, enjoy media use more, and experience an increased sense of online belonging. Since these adolescents often struggle with standardized tests, resulting in unreliable outcomes¹⁴, and because suitable media literacy tests are not available⁷, a custom made method was needed to bring together their experiences. Again using PAR, two measurements were developed for this purpose: the questionnaire ‘How are you doing online?’ and an art-based evaluation tool.

The presentation at the ECER is intended to address and discuss the process-related as well as the substantial outcomes of the second and third performed studies. These outcomes include: a) the input from the target population and the educators that guide them in their media-use during the app development process; b) an impression of the content and functioning of the app; c) the lessons learned from the PAR process towards the app and the evaluative instruments; and d) the implications of the app for adolescents with an ID for introduction and use in educational settings.

All networks hold a meeting during ECER. All interested are welcome.

Digital technologies have become an indispensable part of the inclusive discourse, in terms of their unexploited potential for improving education for all students (Panesi et al., 2020). The use of digital technologies in formal educational processes can indeed contribute toward increasing learning and participation possibilities for all students and especially for the ones at-risk of exclusion and underachievement (UN, 2020).

The recent experience of the COVID-19 pandemic shed light on several barriers related to distance learning and digital technology use, which resulted in a lowering of education quality and in the exacerbation of pre-existing inequalities for some learners, specifically the ones with disabilities and the ones coming from sociocultural disadvantaged backgrounds (Bešić & Holzinger, 2020; UN, 2020). A reason for this is also that this period of forced distance learning was characterized by the mere transposition of traditional teaching into digital environments, which constituted a substantial obstacle to the learning and participation in class activities for students with disabilities (Ianes & Bellacicco, 2020).

A research project emerged out of the described situation, aiming to strengthen teachers’ profiles in four different European countries (Austria, Italy, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina) by professionalizing them in the field of inclusive digital education. Its main objective is to enable teachers to create inclusive settings able to enhance, through digital technologies use, learning and participation opportunities for all students (with and without disabilities/SEN).

The symposium will discuss the outcomes of the project focusing specifically on the national perspectives of the four countries involved according to three main research questions:

1. How is digital and inclusive education addressed and systematized in the four different national education systems?
2. What are school principals, teachers, and students’ views on digital technologies use for teaching, learning, and assessment practices in inclusive schools?
3. What digital practices do teachers perceive as effective for inclusive purposes (i.e., to foster learning and participation for students with and without SEN) in their classrooms?

For the first research question we refer to a literature review conducted as a preliminary stage of the project for each project country about current definitions and level of implementation of digital and inclusive education within the different school systems at a normative level. Questions (2) and (3) refer to two different phases of the project, respectively the data collected within an online survey and the collection of lesson examples.

The quantitative data was collected by using an online survey tool developed by the European Commission (Castaño Muñoz et al., 2021). This tool enables schools – specifically school leaders, teachers, and students – to self-evaluate their strengths and weaknesses in digital technologies use and inclusive practices. Overall, 19 inclusive schools (primary and lower secondary school level) from the four countries took part in the study, for a total of 68 school principals, 588 teachers, and 3907 students (including students with disabilities/SEN).

The collection of good practice examples, instead, involved 23 teachers, who were asked to describe successful practices on the use of digital technologies to foster inclusive processes in their classrooms. In total 20 examples were created (five per each country), obtained either by means of face-to-face interviews or written descriptions based on specific guidelines developed by the research team.

The project results allow comparisons between the outcomes of the research carried out in the different national contexts to stimulate a scientifically-supported reflection on how inclusive digital education needs to be designed and implemented both at the policy and practice level.

The contribution of digital technologies to inclusive teaching and learning relies on one hand on the user (different actors) at different education system levels (i.e., individual, institutional, regional/national) and on the other on their context (i.e., the conditions under which they are employed). A key factor for shaping digital transformation in inclusive education is the regional/national governance of the education system, which can be considered responsible for guaranteeing the necessary technological and cultural infrastructure to implement inclusive digital education (European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, 2022). For this reason, the current paper refers to the first stages of an international project where a literature review was conducted to explore to what extent inclusive digital education is systematically included in the different strategies and policy documents of the project countries. Considering that both – the policy and practice level – differ with respect to school digitalization and inclusive education, it was crucial to first explore similarities and differences among the four education systems and, therefore, among the respective contexts for digital technologies use in inclusive teaching and learning. Two main areas were thus addressed in the literature review: (1) how digital education and digital competence are conceptualized and regulated in the school policies in the four countries, and (2) if and how inclusive education is considered within national strategies and policy documents tackling digital education (in schools, but not exclusively), that is whether students with disabilities/SEN are specifically mentioned in these documents, what kind of measures are specifically foreseen for this student group, etc. To perform the literature review and draw comparable findings among the four countries, a template with guided open questions was prepared and agreed to by the project team, which allowed the partners to explore more in-depth the most relevant aspects identified. Based on this template, each project team in our partner organizations produced a descriptive report summarizing the policy documents and relevant literature in their country in relation to the two main areas. Through thematic analysis (Flick, 2014) of the reports, it was highlighted that, although the first stages towards digitalization of education across the four countries were made (such as providing the necessary infrastructure), specific indications about measures and strategies to foster inclusive processes through the use of digital technologies are still missing at the normative level.

European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education (2022). Inclusive Digital Education. (H. Weber, A. Elsner, D. Wolf, M. Rohs and M. Turner-Cmuchal, eds.). Odense, Denmark. Flick, U. (2014). An introduction to qualitative research. Oaks: Sage.

In this paper the results from a quantitative study will be presented. Inclusive schools in four European countries (Austria, Italy, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina) were asked to self-reflect on their practices contributing toward digitalization of teaching, learning, and assessment to identify strengths and weaknesses with the goal to improve the wide integration of digital technologies in their schools. The quantitative data was collected with a tool developed by the European Commission as open resource tool, based on the European Framework for Digitally-Competent Educational Organisations – DigCompOrg (Castaño-Muñoz et al., 2018). The tool gathers anonymously the views of school leaders, teachers, and students about the extent to which and the way how digital technologies are implemented in schools. The tool contains core and optional questions structured into eight areas, that are evaluated on a 5-point Likert scale from “1=Strongly disagree” to “5=Strongly agree” (Costa et al., 2021). Three out of the eight areas are referring to teaching, learning, and assessment: “Pedagogy: Supports and Resources”; “Pedagogy: Implementation in the classroom”; and “Assessment practices”. The findings presented within this paper will focus only on these areas. In total 19 inclusive schools (68 school leaders, 588 teachers, and 3907 students) from the four countries, participated in the survey between September 2021 and March 2022. After finishing the survey detailed descriptive analysis was conducted with SPSS. Insights were gained into the practices that were reported as most commonly used as well as about the ones in need of improvement. Furthermore, a non-parametric U-Test on item level was counted with the goal to compare the agreement level of school leaders, teachers, and students to explore if there are statistically significant differences in their perceptions. The results show that in all four countries (independently of the different level of digitalization of the education system) digital technologies are mostly used by teachers for preparation of the teaching and learning activities, and at the least for performing digitally based assessment. Statistically significant differences were mainly found between teachers’ and students’ perceptions.

Castano Munoz, J., Costa, P., Hippe, R., & Kampylis, P. (2018). Within-school differences in the views on the use of digital technologies in Europe: evidence from the SELFIE tool. In EDULEARN18 proceedings (pp. 10417–10426). IATED Academy. Costa, P., Castaño-Muñoz, J. and Kampylis, P. (2021). Capturing schools’ digital capacity: Psychometric analyses of the SELFIE self-reflection tool. Computers & Education, Vol. 162, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.104080

International studies have shown that an increase in the equipment and application of digital technologies in schools does not automatically translate into an improvement of students’ learning processes – when not accompanied by a clear vision of their contribution for achieving the defined learning objectives and corresponding mediation by teachers (Hattie, 2009; Higgins et al., 2016). The same is true for the inclusive potential of digital technologies, that is the extent to which they can create opportunities for enhanced learning and participation for all students. As highlighted by Vivanet (2020), it is a matter of identifying the conditions – e.g., students’ needs, purposes, teaching strategies, etc. – under which digital resources can foster inclusive processes (in this sense the author talks about “effectiveness of the uses of technologies”). On these premises, this paper presents the analysis of 20 lesson examples (directly provided by the teachers who implemented them) on the use of digital tools in class from an inclusive education perspective. These were collected in four European countries (Austria, Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia) to outline promising strategies and identify improvement areas to enhance inclusive teaching and learning through digital technologies. Participant selection was done via personal contacts of the research team and following a snowball procedure. The examples were obtained either by means of face-to-face interviews or written descriptions according to a shared protocol developed by the research team, which also guided the analysis. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. Written reports were collected per email (all necessary information for teachers were included in the template sent), followed up by individual feedback asking for integrations and/or revisions (when needed) to ensure quality. All examples were analyzed through directed qualitative content analysis (Flick, 2014). For the analysis, deductive coding was used and a coding list with explanations of the categories was created before the analysis began. The category system was based on literature addressing different aspects of inclusive and digital education (such as Puentedura, 2013) and on the dimensions included in the collection template. Firstly, each research team coded the examples for their country; the respective results were then summarized in a common matrix for cross-analysis. During the symposium, identified common patterns and divergences emerged from the collected examples for the different countries will be presented and discussed to draw useful indications and outline effective strategies for the creation of inclusive digital learning environments for students with and without disabilities/SEN.

Flick, U. (2014). An introduction to qualitative research. Oaks: Sage. Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning. A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. NewYork, NY: Routledge. Higgins, S. et al. (2016). The Sutton Trust-Education Endowment Foundation Teaching and Learning Toolkit. London: Education Endowment Foundation. Puentedura, R. R. (2013). SAMR: Moving from enhancement to transformation [Web log post]. Available at: http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/archives/000095.html (last accessed 28th December 2022) Vivanet, G. (2020). Tecnologie per l’inclusione: ovvietà, evidenze e orizzonti da esplorare. In A. Calvani (Ed.), Tecnologie per l’inclusione: quando e come avvalersene (pp. 39-69). Roma: Carocci Editore.

This proposal draws upon thinking that has grown out of a research project in Ukraine that examines the views of the parents of disabled children in a time of conflict. Over 400 parents, from all 25 oblasts (regions) of Ukraine, responded to a request from Disability Rights International to share their lived experiences of caring for a disabled child.

For context, in recent years, the Ukrainian government has committed to transforming the national care system for children, as outlined in The National Strategy of Reforming the System of Institutional Care and Upbringing of Children (2017-2026), in line with the requirements associated with the EU Aquis Communautaire This requires practices in accordance with, amongst others, the guiding legal framework of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), the United Nations Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, and, for children with disabilities, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

In 2022, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities published guidelines on Deinstitutionalization, including in Emergencies, which noted that:

“Institutionalization is a discriminatory practice against persons with disabilities, contrary to article 5 of the Convention. It involves de facto denial of the legal capacity of persons with disabilities, in breach of article 12. It constitutes detention and deprivation of liberty based on impairment, contrary to article 14. States parties should recognize institutionalization as a form of violence against persons with disabilities. It exposes persons with disabilities to forced medical intervention with psychotropic medications, such as sedatives, mood stabilizers, electro-convulsive treatment, and conversion therapy, infringing articles 15, 16 and 17. It exposes persons with disabilities to the administration of drugs and other interventions without their free, prior and informed consent, in violation of articles 15 and 25” (2022, p.5).

These guidelines, taken alongside the research undertaken in Ukraine, raised a number of points for discussion about practices in the UK, and possibly other national contexts in the EU.

In the first, an analysis is needed about the adoption and use of terms such as “discriminatory practice”, “detention and deprivation of liberty based on impairment”, “forced medical intervention” and “the administration of drugs and other interventions without their free, prior and informed consent”.

Secondly, consideration is needed about the use of the term ’institutionalisation’. Eurochild describe an institution for children being “any residential setting where ‘institutional culture’ prevails” (2021, p.5), and goes on to identify three aspects of institutional cultures:

a) Children are isolated from the wider community and obliged to live together.

b) Children and their parents do not have sufficient control over their lives and over decisions that affect them.

c) Children are separated from their families and familiar surroundings, which leads to a loss of their sense of identity. Long distances between children’s placements and their immediate families, as well as unaffordable transport costs compound the issue of segregation (2021, p. 6).

Thirdly, consideration is needed surrounding differences between the use of ‘institution’, ‘institutional cultures’, and ‘institutionalisation/institutionalised’, and the value judgements that are entrenched within those usages, by asking whether practices within a setting define the usage, or whether the term defines the practices.

In response, the objective of this paper is to turn a light on practices in the UK that, by these definitions, might be seen to violate a number of articles in the UNCRPD. These include practices such as prolonged periods of isolation for young people with autism, placement in children’s homes located at considerable distances from the family environment, and legally acknowledged practices that do not meet any definition of a basic duty of care.

Western institutions constantly seek to internationalize favour enrolling Chinese International students for the economic, diplomatic, and intercultural benefits they bring to host institutions and communities (Volet & Ang 2012) and are increasingly faced with the challenges of dealing with the diversity in tertiary classrooms. Scholars claim that Western Higher Education institutions are not doing enough in understanding the international student experience and the nuances of Chinese learning practices, consequently, not innovating their services sufficiently to respond to their needs and concerns (Summers & Volet, 2008). Chinese international students reported the lowest levels of satisfaction and experienced a higher level of discrimination by teachers, university staff, and classmates compared with European peers (Glass, Kociolek, Wongtrirat, Lynch, & Cong, 2015); experience academic stress (Heng, 2019) and struggle to adjust to the Western learning environment and to make a successful transition from the Chinese education system and pedagogical practices to Western tertiary classrooms. Western teachers may encounter difficulties when addressing Chinese international students’ learning needs and concerns.

Most research on Chinese international students’ experience tends to hold a view of homogeneity, overgeneralization and otherization of this group (Hanassab, 2006). As a result, Chinese students are categorised as rote learners (Watkins & Biggs, 1996), passive learners with “lacks” or “deficits” and a “problematic” group (Tan, 2011). Not surprisingly, how to include Chinese International students in teaching by focusing on specifics of pedagogy or curriculum and embracing the diversity in Western tertiary classrooms become urgent for institutions, such are the challenges to face but also opportunities to create for both academics and international students (Claiborne & Balakrishnan 2020).

The Confucian tradition has been embedded in Chinese culture for around 2,500 years and influences most aspects of Chinese culture, including the education system (Watkins & Biggs, 1996). Traditional Chinese education is described as “teacher-centred,” “classroom-centred,” and “textbook-centred” and the acquisition and transmission models are often adopted in teaching. In contrast, Western culture often promotes collaborative-based constructivism and fosters critical thinking skills in educational approaches and teaching practices (Kang & Chang, 2016). Asking questions and challenging teachers and peers are seen as signs of deep learning, which leads to group construction of knowledge. In western classrooms, transmission-based, participative, and constructivist models of learning coexist (Prosser & Trigwell, 2014); tensions and contradictions exist between the process of massification and its effects, and the pedagogical requirements for quality control.

There is no simple answer to the complexity of teaching Chinese students in a Western tertiary classroom. Thus, exploring different pedagogical practices and activities and moving beyond a fixed view of pedagogical concepts becomes meaningful in HE (Löytönen, 2017). Yet, a review of the literature shows that a practice-based approach has not been used in this area of study. Through a practice lens, this project aims to investigate what pedagogical practices and institutional arrangements can promote Chinese international students’ engagement to improve their learning experience in the West. By adopting a practice-based approach, this paper disputes the oversimplification and extends existing knowledge of Chinese international students learning to investigate what doings, sayings and relatings (Schatzki, 2019) are in their learning and how western teachers could have a better understanding of their learning practices and what practices they have learned in China continue using in the Western learning environment.

Although a vast majority of teachers in Sweden strive for equal conditions for their students and want to counteract racism (Nilsson Mohammadi, 2021), there are many studies showing that racism occurs among teachers in Swedish schools, both in the form of racist acts towards individual students and as institutional and structural racism (Behtoui et al., 2019). The presence of racism in schools is a problem that is highly relevant in other countries as well (Araújo, 2016; Crutchfield et al., 2020; Kennelly & Mouroutsou, 2020).

Superficial understandings of diversity risk confirming differences due power hierarchies of recognition that tend to split and categorize human characteristics and behaviors, attributing class, race, gender, and sexuality to them (Layton, 2008). Confirming these differences, or normative splits and categorizations, would reinforce social injustices and hinder inclusive education and equal opportunities for students from marginalized groups. Hence, there is a need for active investigations of categorizations linked to social power hierarchies and heightened awareness of normative processes that shape our understandings of ourselves and others.

The aim om this paper is to discuss, with a wider research network with similar research focus, the methodological nature of and the analytic procedures for investigations of teachers’ categorizations linked to social power hierarchies. I would like to discuss action research stance in the planned partnership between me, a former school psychologist and doctoral student, and secondary school teachers for exploring ways of bridging the gap between teachers ambitions to counter racism and the parts of their practice that facilitates the reproduction of racial power hierarchies. By combining postcolonial and psychoanalytic perspectives on subjectivity we will collaborate and actively investigate categorizations and explore deracialization practices. With deracialization practices I mean actions that counteract effects of racism (not to be confused with processes where someone starts to pass as “white”).

Teachers to a high degree avoid touching on controversial topics and often act with silence on racist comments in the classroom. Their intention is neutrality but their actions have a normalizing effect on racism (Rosvall & Öhrn, 2014). The avoidance could also be described as a cases of strategic color blindness (Apfelbaum et al., 2008) or “white” teachers’ inability to recognize and deconstruct racist acts (Sue, 2013).

Racism as a phenomenon is often reduced to only the open racist expressions of certain individuals and many students' experiences of racism therefore fall outside the scope (León Rosales & Jonsson, 2019). Simultaneously with this narrow definition, expressions of racism have since the 1960s, increasingly shifted from open forms to more subtle and hidden, in Sweden (Akrami et al., 2000) as well as elsewhere (McConahay et al., 1981; Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995). If left without further investigations these more subtle and hidden forms of racism will continue to create inequality and hinder diversity to thrive (Bell, 2002; Benson & Fiarman, 2019).

Issues regarding inclusion, diversity and racialization are complex and multifaceted. Teachers often must balance between different competing principles in their practice. Lee Shulman (1986) suggests the term strategic knowledge, which arises solving situations when two principles are in contradiction to each other. The solutions involve showing judgement and require both theoretical and practical knowledge (Shulman, 1986). An actions research stance regarding schoolteachers’ understandings of, their attempts at changing their practice against racism and following reflections on these attempts will target both their theoretical and practical knowledge. This should therefor contribute to the advancement of teachers’ strategic knowledge and their deracialization practices.

This research is set against a background which sees increasing access to mainstream schools among children with disabilities across Europe (e.g., Schwab, 2020). Yet, in spite of this, bias against disabled children is widespread among non-disabled school aged children (e.g., Trepanier-Street et al., 2011).

Research suggests intergroup contact (i.e., interaction between social groups) is beneficial for children since it improves social relations between individuals from different groups (e.g., Bagci, et al., 2014). For example, research shows that reading in a book that someone from your group has a friendship with someone from another group (i.e., extended contact) is enough to improve children's attitudes towards disabled children (see Cameron et al., 2011). This finding has implications for the inclusion and peer acceptance of disabled children in mainstream schools. Specifically, it suggests that increased representation of disability, increasing children’s contact with disabled children will promote positive responses from non-disabled children towards their disabled peers in mainstream settings.

In this vein, previous research has indicated that contact in the form of a brief pop-up exhibition and associated resources and activities in schools could similarly change children’s views and discourse in positive ways around disability (Uytman et al. 2022). These resources have been mapped to the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence Experiences and Outcomes (Education Scotland, 2019) and tested in five Scottish Schools with 312 children aged 7-11 years. Findings were in line with adult-participant research, showing that art exhibitions positively portraying disability can challenge discrimination and marginalization of disabled people and engage learners in an exploration of ableism in our societies (e.g., Eisenhauer, 2007). Along these lines, responses to the exhibition from children showed that even in schools not visited by a disabled researcher, children were significantly more likely to say that they knew someone with a disability after the exhibition and activities. Knowing someone with a disability was associated with more positive attitudes towards disability (for example ‘At school, I would talk to a disabled child I did not know’) Children’s stories also indicated a change in their discourse towards the social model of disability: Ken and I are going to go Go karting! He is so much better than me because he uses his wheelchair everyday. He is so cool. My friend Ken is the best (in writing a story about a disabled Ken doll).

Whilst the resource pack for schools is effective in its current state, discussion and feedback from teachers, children and other stakeholders throughout the project highlighted the need for their further development in order to increase their usability. Co-creation of resources is increasingly recognized as critical in popular media, leading to a shift towards inclusive processes of both exhibition curation and artistic intervention (Sandell, 2007). To enable co-creation, focus groups sought views from a range of perspectives towards enhancing the accessibility of the resources. We account for accessibility from a practical perspective (i.e., the ease with which school staff can access and use the resources within an educational setting) but also from an inclusive education perspective, to ensure that all learners are able to use the resource regardless of any impairment. With this in mind, the current research took the reach of a pop-up exhibition and resources a step further in its evaluation – to look at ways in which the resources themselves may be improved through close consultation with key parties. Our objectives were twofold; to examine (1) responses of children towards the resources and (2) to explore key stakeholders’ perceptions.

School connectedness (SC) has established itself over the past two decades as an important concept in prevention research around adolescent risk behaviour, first gaining a conceptual profile in the 1990s when Resnick and colleagues named it as a protective factor for a range of health-compromising behaviours. Since these studies SC has continued to generate research interest in the fields of education and health, further consolidating its place as a protective factor for young people by decreasing the likelihood of certain health risk behaviours such as suicidal ideation, violence, substance abuse and early sexual debut.

This mixed methods study explored the meanings of being connected to school, how this process was understood by students and staff and shaped by school and individual factors. This approach foregrounded the voices of young people and teachers and their understandings of the experience of connecting to school. Such an approach is unusual in SC research which continues to be dominated by quantitative, survey-driven studies.

Using a qualitatively driven mixed methods approach within a social constructionist epistemology this study was framed by two research questions:

1. What are the meanings of being connected to school?

a) How do students understand their connectedness to school (what makes school a place they want tobe)?

b) How do teachers and other staff understand students’ connectedness to school?

1. What factors are associated with students’ connectedness to school?

Five hypotheses regarding factors associated with SC were also tested. Three hypotheses related to a student’s knowledge of their school prior to commencing their attendance and whether this knowledge or greater familiarity with the school influenced SC. A third hypothesis related to a student’s involvement in the decision to attend the school and whether making the choice themselves or in collaboration with their parents influenced SC. A fourth hypothesis concerned whether starting secondary school with peers from primary school reduced the relational discontinuity that can accompany the transition to secondary school (Coffey, 2013). The final hypothesis related to whether the distance a student lives from school influences SC.

The content of this communication is part of a project that takes as a reference the Goals for sustainable development found in Goal 4 of the United Nations 2030 Agenda. Goal 4 is Quality Education, this means “guarantee inclusive, equitable and quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. At the same time, the Project takes as a reference the UNESCO International Commission on the Futures of Education Report 2021, which states that "we need a new social contract for education to repair injustices while transforming the future" and the document “REIMAGINING OUR FUTURES contract for education TOGETHER” in which five proposals for the renewal of education are specified, some of which are very close to our project. Specifically in the first when it is stated that "Pedagogy must be organized around the principles of cooperation, collaboration and solidarity", the third proposes "Teaching must be further professionalized as a collaborative effort where teachers are recognized for their work as producers of knowledge and key figures in education and society”, and the fifth conclusion “Schools must be protected educational sites due to the inclusion, equity and individual and collective well-being that they support, and also reinvented to better promote the transformation of the world towards more just, equitable and sustainable futures”. The backgrounds to the objective of the study, and theoretical references used in the project, have been the contributions of: Daniels and Parrilla (1998) Support between teachers for teaching with SEN students and other needs. Ainscow's (2016) research on joint reflection on the practices developed. And the research on how it promotes collaborative professional development by Hargreaves and 0'Connor (2018). And some of our work on facilitation to introduce improvements in inclusion. On the other hand, the research by Baines et al. (2015) the Interdependence Theory developed by Johnson and Johnson (2009, 2016), the "Team Model" proposed by Slavin (1991, 2011, 2014) some suggestions from Ashman and Gillies (2013), Lago and Pujolàs (2008 , 2018), Pujolàs, Lago and Riera (2015) in our previous work to develop the program "Cooperate to learn, learn to cooperate". The research carried out by the Research Group on Attention to Diversity (GRAD) of the University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia, since its constitution in 1999, has been oriented towards investigating how cooperative learning can contribute to improving inclusive educational practices. The reports of the different projects developed highlighted the importance of research around two intertwined axes: support between teachers for the development of cooperative learning and support to eliminate barriers for the inclusion of the most vulnerable students in cooperative learning teams. . These two axes give rise to the development of a project of the Ministry of Science and Innovation, entitled: "Collaboration between teachers in the development of Cooperative Learning for the most vulnerable Inclusion" (PID2021-128456NB-I00). In said communication we present a first phase of the project, which consists of the elaboration of a collaborative analysis model between teachers, linked to the first axis of the project previously exposed. The research objectives are the following:

Objective 1. Observe and analyze the collaboration of teachers in the planning of support for cooperative teams for the inclusion of students

Objective 2. Analyze together with the teaching staff the observations and data collected on practices in cooperative teams with students at risk of exclusion

Objective 3. Identify the criteria and strategies for joint work and decision-making

The European Commission (2017) points out that teachers need to be prepared for career-long professional development, collaborative work and for dealing with diversity in their classrooms. According to the Paris Declaration (Council of the EU, 2015), due to the increasing numbers of immigrants entering the EU, the question of addressing the diversity of students is one of the most pressing challenges for educators. At the same time, TALIS results (OECD, 2019) show that teachers across the EU do not feel well prepared for teaching in diverse settings. Teachers are central to addressing a key challenge for schools in the 21st century, which is to teach different students with a variety of abilities, motivations and backgrounds to succeed in school and later in life. Diversity awareness can support teachers’ capacities to meet the needs of diverse classrooms and schools and create more inclusive classrooms. In the symposium, we will explore diversity awareness together with the social and emotional competencies of teachers and principals from several different perspectives as well as several different countries. The symposium brings together insights from two European Erasmus+ projects The HAND IN HAND: Empowering teachers across Europe to deal with social, emotional and diversity related career challenges (HAND:ET) and HEAD: Empowering School Principals for Inclusive School Culture. In the first paper, Odak and colleagues base their discussion of teachers’ role in supporting diversity and social justice in schools on an extensive literature review. The second paper by Roczen and colleagues in addition to the first theoretical paper provide empirical support by focusing on the process of measuring of social and emotional competencies and diversity awareness of teachers across Europe. The following papers bring provide further insights into diversity awareness from individual countries. From Slovenia, Kozina and Vršnik Perše explore the role of mindfulness in fostering social-emotional competencies and diversity awareness of teachers using HAND:ET data. From Sweden, Dahlström and Oskarsson focus on practicing diversity awareness in the classroom by using empathic curiosity.From Austria, Fredericks and colleagues report on teachers' self-assessments of their well-being, and multicultural and egalitarian beliefs in the context of teaching in a diverse environment using data from the HAND:ET project. The symposium ends with a paper of Mlekuž and Veldin focusing on teachers and principals and their role in building inclusive schools in Croatia and the Republic of North Macedonia using the data from the HEAD project.

In this paper, we focus on teachers’ diversity awareness and teachers’ critical consciousness, as these competencies are central for understanding "HAND IN HAND: Empowering teachers across Europe to deal with social, emotional and diversity related career challenges"project’s stance on diversity. A large body of literature illustrates that the way how teachers teach diversity matters. In addition, the role of teachers in minority students’ achievement is well researched from the perspective of social psychology (e.g., Chin et al., 2020). However, there is a lack of research focusing on teachers’ awareness of diversity, inequality and social justice, as well as on their feelings of competence and preparedness for working in culturally diverse classrooms (Kim & Cooc, 2022). Following on Bell’s (2016) notion that diversity and inequality are inseparably connected, we reviewed literature that explored how teachers perceive and react upon diversity and inequality in their classrooms. We aimed at exploring diversity awareness and critical consciousness in education; why teachers’ diversity awareness and critical consciousness are important; and how these competencies can be supported. Regarding the theoretical perspective, we outline a conceptual model based on our understanding of teachers’ diversity awareness and critical consciousness, as an attempt to provide more conceptual clarity in this field. Our approach accentuates the transformative potential of teachers and their beliefs, behaviours and competencies for social justice in education. The majority of papers on teachers’ diversity awareness and critical consciousness that we included in our review has been published within the last few years, indicating a growing importance of the topic for educators. The growing interest in the topic is due to the increase of diversity in classrooms and the recognition of the teachers’ role in addressing diversity and inequality. However, large-scale studies would be a needed contribution to the field, as most of the existing studies are small-scale. Policy recommendations stemming from our literature review will also be discussed. In line with recommendations from recent international policy documents, such as the OECD policy framework on promoting inclusive education for diverse societies (Cerna et al., 2021; Santiago & Cerna, 2020), we argue that, if our aim is to make schools inclusive for all, both diversity awareness and critical consciousness need to be supported through preservice and in-service teacher professional development programs.

Bell, L. A. (2016). Theoretical foundations for social justice education. In M. Adams, L. A. Bell, D. Goodman, & K. Y. Joshi (Eds), Teaching for diversity and social justice, p. 3 – 26. New York: Routledge. Cerna, L., Mezzanotte, C., Rutigliano, A., Brussino, O., Santiago, P., Borgonovi, F., & Guthrie, C. (2021). Promoting inclusive education for diverse societies: A conceptual framework, OECD Education Working Papers No. 260. Chin, M. J., Quinn, D. M., Dhaliwal, T. K., & Lovison, V. S. (2020). Bias in the air: A nationwide exploration of teachers' implicit racial attitudes, aggregate bias, and student outcomes. Educational Researcher, 49(8), 566-578. Kim, G. M. & Cooc, N. (2022). Student immigration, migration, and teacher preparation. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1-23. Santiago, P. & Cerna, L. (2020). Strength through diversity: Education for inclusive societies. Design and implementation plan. EDU/EDPC(2019)11/REV2. Directorate for Education and Skills. Education Policy Committee

The EU Erasmus+ project "HAND IN HAND: Empowering teachers across Europe to deal with social, emotional and diversity related career challenges (HAND:ET)" supports teachers with a mindfulness-based training program that integrates family therapy elements and aspects from diversity awareness and anti-discrimination trainings. The program is implemented in Croatia, Austria, Portugal, Sweden and Slovenia. To evaluate the intervention, we will investigate whether socio-emotional competencies (CASEL, 2013), diversity awareness (Mosley-Howard et al., 2011), and teacher collaboration significantly increase between the pre-test and post-test period in all five countries in the training group (experimental group) compared to a control group that does not receive HAND in HAND: Empowering Teachers training. At the time of the presentation of this paper, only pre-test data will be available. These data will be used to investigate whether the measurement instruments are sufficiently reliable and whether the dimensional structure matches the expectations. In each of the five countries, 12-20 schools (total N = 1000 teachers plus principals and other school staff) were invited to participate in the intervention study. Schools were then randomly assigned to either the experimental group (6-10 schools per country) or the control group (6-10 schools per country). Existing self-report scales were compiled for pre- and post-measurement of socio-emotional competencies and diversity awareness. In addition, participants will be surveyed using focus group interviews at the end of the program. Confirmatory factor analyses will be used to corroborate the assumed dimensionality of the scales, and internal consistency will be used to determine reliability. The effects of the training on socio-emotional competencies, diversity awareness, and teacher cooperation will be examined by variance analysis as soon as data from the post-test is available. In this presentation, the results of the pre-test data are presented. These include information on the reliability of the scales and their structure. The “HAND in HAND: Empowering Teachers” program is a "policy experiment" with intensive involvement of actors from educational policy, so that in case of a positive evaluation of the training, conditions are established for an effective, preferably Europe-wide dissemination. This can make an important contribution in supporting teachers to deal constructively with the challenges of everyday school life, improving the well-being of teachers and students, and facilitating an inclusive school climate.

Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) (2013). The 2013 CASEL Guide: Effective social and emo on- al learning programmes-preschool and elementary school edition. Chicago, IL: Author. Mosley-Howard, G. S., Witte, R., & Wang, A. (2011). Development and validation of the Miami University Diversity Awareness Scale (MUDAS). Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 4(2), 65.

Teachers across Europe face a multitude of challenges associated with the characteristics of their profession, e.g., new skills requirements and rapid technological developments, challenges associated with their teaching and classroom interactions, e.g., discipline and increasing social and cultural diversity. The challenges faced by teachers are adding to the frequency and intensity of their emotional problems. Therefore, teachers’ resilience and well-being need support. One mechanism for supporting teachers lies in promoting their social, emotional competencies and diversity awareness. Possessing and developing teachers’ social, emotional competencies and diversity awareness has proved to be important, both for the teachers themselves and for those they are in close contact with. Much of the work in diversity research has focused on training multi-culturally competent teachers and on transforming the curriculum to embody multiculturalism. Nevertheless, a gap remains between conceptual understandings of diversity and teachers' actual abilities to respond to challenging moments of encountering diversity. One of the possible mechanisms of support for teachers in challenging situations is mindfulness (Roeser et al., 2012). Mindfulness as teachers’ ability to focus and stabilize awareness of the present moment and to be aware of their patterns of behaviour and reactions when under pressure, can be understood as a tool for fostering social and emotional competencies on one hand as well as diversity awareness on the other. In the current paper we are empirically testing this hypothesis by analysing the predictive power of teachers' mindfulness for their own well-being as well as their behaviour in the classroom, e.g., mindful teaching and self-efficacy to teach in diverse classrooms. We will use data from the Slovenian sample of the “HAND IN HAND: Empowering teachers across Europe to deal with social, emotional and diversity related career challenges (HAND:ET)” project (N = 272; 253 females). Implementing the HAND:ET project, teachers were administered with a battery of measurement tools targeting their social, emotional as well as their diversity awareness competencies. In the current study we will use MAAS (Brown & Ryan, 2003) as a measure of mindfulness, WHO-5 Wellbeing Scale (Topp et al., 2015) as a measure of well-being, Mindful Teaching (Frank et al., 2016) as a measure of mindful teaching and PISA 2018 Teachers' Self-Efficacy to Teach in Diverse Classrooms (OECD, 2020) as a measure of teachers' self-efficacy to teach in diverse classrooms. Implications for research and practice will be discussed.

Roeser, R. W., Skinner, E., Beers, J., & Jennings, P. A. (2012). Mindfulness training and teachers' professional development: An emerging area of research and practice. Child Development Perspectives, 6(2), 167-173. Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2009). The mindfulness attention awareness scale (MAAS). Acceptance and commitment therapy. Measures Package, 82. Topp, C. W., Østergaard, S. D., Søndergaard, S., & Bech, P. (2015). The WHO-5 Well-Being Index: a systematic review of the literature. Psychotherapy and psychosomatics, 84(3), 167-176. Frank, J. L., Jennings, P. A., & Greenberg, M. T. (2016). Validation of the mindfulness in teaching scale. Mindfulness, 7, 155-163. OECD (2020), PISA 2018 Results (Volume VI): Are Students Ready to Thrive in an Interconnected World?, PISA, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/d5f68679-en.

The European Commission (2017) points out that teachers need to be prepared for career-long professional development, collaborative work and for dealing with diversity in their classrooms. According to the Paris Declaration (Council of the EU, 2015), due to the increasing numbers of immigrants entering the EU, the question of addressing the diversity of students is one of the most pressing challenges for educators. At the same time, TALIS results (OECD, 2019) show that teachers across the EU do not feel well prepared for teaching in diverse settings. Teachers are central to addressing a key challenge for schools in the 21st century, which is to teach different students with a variety of abilities, motivations and backgrounds to succeed in school and later in life. Diversity awareness can support teachers’ capacities to meet the needs of diverse classrooms and schools and create more inclusive classrooms. In the symposium, we will explore diversity awareness together with the social and emotional competencies of teachers and principals from several different perspectives as well as several different countries. The symposium brings together insights from two European Erasmus+ projects The HAND IN HAND: Empowering teachers across Europe to deal with social, emotional and diversity related career challenges (HAND:ET) and HEAD: Empowering School Principals for Inclusive School Culture. In the first paper, Odak and colleagues base their discussion of teachers’ role in supporting diversity and social justice in schools on an extensive literature review. The second paper by Roczen and colleagues in addition to the first theoretical paper provide empirical support by focusing on the process of measuring of social and emotional competencies and diversity awareness of teachers across Europe. The following papers bring provide further insights into diversity awareness from individual countries. From Slovenia, Kozina and Vršnik Perše explore the role of mindfulness in fostering social-emotional competencies and diversity awareness of teachers using HAND:ET data. From Sweden, Dahlström and Oskarsson focus on practicing diversity awareness in the classroom by using empathic curiosity.From Austria, Fredericks and colleagues report on teachers' self-assessments of their well-being, and multicultural and egalitarian beliefs in the context of teaching in a diverse environment using data from the HAND:ET project. The symposium ends with a paper of Mlekuž and Veldin focusing on teachers and principals and their role in building inclusive schools in Croatia and the Republic of North Macedonia using the data from the HEAD project.

Today’s society is characterized by diversity among students. In school students with different backgrounds, from different cultures and with different ambitions meet each other. Through increased awareness of diversity, we believe that teachers can choose more consciously how to meet and promote student’s diversity in the classroom. Diversity awareness is much about understanding oneself, what prejudices I have, and where this prejudice comes from. To understand and meet other people, you must first understand and meet yourself, your values and your preconceived notions. Further, it is also essential to talk about diversity, norms and privilege in schools and societies. This is one of the reasons to work on increasing curiosity about others. Being curious about others is one of the cornerstones for gaining an increased understanding of other people, their values and actions. We believe that being empathetically curious about yourself and others and willing to work to develop this curiosity is crucial for the program. The HAND IN HAND: Empowering teachers program should be understood as a tool for teachers, when reflecting on their teaching from the perspective of diversity awareness. The concept of empathic curiosity, within the program, is used as a tool to better understand others, in the society and in the classroom. Programs aimed at embracing diversity benefit by working closely with perspective taking and empathic concern of others (Miklokowska, 2018). Empathic curiosity can be directed towards ourselves, towards people in our vicinity or unknown people we meet. Further, empathic curiosity defined by Mattson(2020) means identifying with the needs of other people by trying to understand or perceiving them. Empathic curiosity can be described as a combination of empathic dialogue and empathic listening (Gøtzsche et al., 2022). The HAND IN HAND: Empowering teachers program contains several elements where empathic curiosity is practised. Examples of such elements are empathic dialogue exercises where empathic listening and empathic questioning are practiced. Through exercises designed to practice empathic listening in order to understand another person, teachers in the program practice their ability to listen empathetically, which is part of empathic curiosity. Result from focus group discussions with 120 teachers in Sweden will be presented at the symposium. The topic of the focus group discussions concerned how teachers perceive that empathic curiosity can serve as a tool to embrace diversity in today's classrooms.

Gøtzsche, K, Berg Nielsen, H, Dahlström, H, Norberg, M, Eliasson, E, Oskarsson, M, Wiklund Lind, G (2023). Draft. Hand:et: – A training programme to develop SEDA competences in teachers and other school staff Mattsson, C. (2019). Empatisk nyfikenhet – att bemöta intolerans, hat och extremism i klassrummet. Dembra. (2), 24-33. (In Swedish) downloaded 2019-11-18 from https://gup.ub.gu.se/publication/279238 Miklikowska M. Empathy trumps prejudice: The longitudinal relation between empathy and anti-immigrant attitudes in adolescence. Dev Psychol. 2018 Apr;54(4):703-717. doi: 10.1037/dev0000474. Epub 2017 Dec 14. PMID: 29239638.

Increasing diversity in classrooms poses a new challenge teachers need to respond professionally to (Nishina et al., 2019). Hence, teacher trainings must consider this while promoting social-emotional competencies and providing continuing professional development (European Commission, 2021). To support teachers, eleven partners and thirteen associated partners cooperate in the Erasmus+ project “HAND in HAND: Empowering teachers across Europe to deal with social, emotional and diversity related career challenges” (03/2021 to 02/2024), that develops a training programme enhancing social-emotional competencies and diversity awareness using a mindfulness-based approach, assuming this to impact teachers’ self-care and wellbeing (Ellerbrock et al., 2016; Emerson et al., 2017; Zarate et al., 2019). The training is currently implemented as a whole-school-whole-year support system in five consortium countries (Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Sweden, Portugal). A longitudinal study (before/after effects) investigates the programme’s impact. The pre-assessment was carried out as an online survey (08-10/22) that consisted of socio-demographic questions (age, gender, personal/professional background) and questions aiming to capture participants’ status quo, attitudes, and skills regarding diversity (awareness), social-emotional competencies, mindfulness, and wellbeing. We used standardized scales such as “The Teacher Cultural Beliefs Scale” that has two subscales measuring teachers’ multicultural (6 items) and egalitarian beliefs (4 items) on a 4-point-scale (Hachfeld et al., 2011), the “WHO-5 Wellbeing Index” consisting of 5 items (6-point-scale) assessing a person’s subjectively perceived wellbeing (Topp et al., 2015) and others. In Austria, data from 157 participants (131 teachers, 24 principals and 2 school counsellors from 32 primary schools) were collected. The sample consists of 90.4% (N = 142) women and 9.6% (N = 15) men. The participants were randomly assigned (as whole school teams) to either an intervention (N = 78) or a comparison group (N = 79). Participants’ ages ranged from 25 to 63 years (M = 42.01; SD = 10.77). Teachers had worked at their current schools from 0 to 27 years (M = 6.43; SD = 5.98) and had overall work experiences as teachers from 1 to 40 years (M = 13.06; SD = 10.27). Preliminary findings indicate that participants' wellbeing, multicultural and egalitarian beliefs are linked to their perceptions of being able to teach well in a diverse environment. However, more comprehensive and detailed analyses are still pending at this time. In our contribution we will outline the HAND:ET implementation and accompanying research in Austria and present results from the pre-assessment, focusing on the participants' attitude towards and handling of diversity.

Ellerbrock, C. R., Cruz, B.C., Vásquez, A., & Howes, E. V. (2016). Preparing Culturally Responsive Teachers: Effective Practices in Teacher Education. Action in Teacher Education, 38(3), 226-339. https://doi.org/10.1080/01626620.2016.1194780 Emerson, L. M., Leyland, A., Hudson, K., Rowse, G., Hanley, P., & Hugh-Jones, S. (2017). Teaching Mindfulness to Teachers: a Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis. Mindfulness, 8(5), 1136-1149. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-017-0691-4 European Commission (2021). Teachers in Europe: careers, development and well-being. Eurydice Report. Publications Office. Hachfeld, A., Hahn, A., Schroeder, S., Anders, Y., Stanat, P. & Kunter, M. (2011). Assessing teachers‘ multicultural and egalitarian beliefs: The Teacher Cultural Beliefs Scale. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(6), 986-996. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2011.04.006 Nishina, A., Lewis, J. A., Bellmore, A., & Witkow, M. R. (2019). Ethnic Diversity and Inclusive School Environments. Educational Psychologist, 54(4), 306-321. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2019.1633923 Topp, C. W., Østergaard, S. D., Søndergaard, S. & Bech, P. (2015). The WHO-5 Well-Being Index: A Systematic Review of the Literature. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 84(3),167-76. https://doi.org/10.1159/000376585 Zarate, K., Maggin, D. M., & Passmore, A. (2019). Meta-analysis of mindfulness training on teacher well-being. Psychology in the Schools, 56, 1700-1715. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22308

In terms of inclusion schools nowadays experience growing diversity, not only with students with disabilities but also with students from diverse cultural, linguistic, socio-economic and other different backgrounds (Gollnick & Chinn, 2002). This growing diversity and a multicultural environment spell new challenges and opportunities for schools that strongly impact the work of teachers and principals (Billot et al., 2007). Creating an inclusive school culture is therefore one of the most important elements of leadership in multicultural educational environments, as it promotes social justice within the school (Foster, 1995) by creating a school culture, where consensus for school values on respecting the diversity is reached and the leaders are selected based on their attitudes and support towards inclusive values and their encouragement of collaboration (Dyson et al., 2004). Moreover, principals’ pedagogical vision, goals and leadership style influence the way multiculturalism is reflected at the school level (Keung & Rockinson-Szapkiw, 2013). The “HEAD: Empowering School Principals for Inclusive School Culture” project developed a curricular framework for the professional development of primary and secondary school principals in Croatia (CRO) and the Republic of North Macedonia (RNM) with a view to developing their capacities in establishing an inclusive school culture by creating inclusive school policies and practices through participatory decision-making (NEPC, 2020). In this presentation, comparison of data from the pre-test and post-test evaluation will be used to describe the effectiveness of the developed curricular framework and professional development programmes (four different PD programmes for CRO and RNM and two school settings). Our sample comprised of 90 principals: 39 from primary schools (CRO: experimental group: N = 14; control group: N = 5; RNM: experimental group: N = 15; control group: N = 5) and 51 from secondary schools (CRO: experimental group: N = 22; control group: N = 10; RNM: experimental group: N = 14; control group: N = 5). The programmes’ impact was evaluated using a two-way mixed-measures ANOVA (between-subjects variable - group: experimental, control; within-subjects variable - time of measurement: pre-test, post-test). The results of the impact study showed that the HEAD intervention proved to be very successful for Macedonian primary school principals, where an increase in majority of areas of inclusive school environment was detected. Besides the impact study results the presentation also provides lessons learnt and recommendations for improvement of professional development programmes for principals and for systemic support for principals in creating inclusive school cultures.

Billot, J., Goddard, J. T., & Cranston, N. (2007). How principals manage ethnocultural diversity: Learnings from three countries. Journal of the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration & Management, 35(2), 3–20. Dyson, A., Farrell, P., Polat, F., Hutcheson, G., & Gallannaugh, F. (2004). Inclusion and pupil achievement. Research Report No. 578. Department for Education and Skills. Foster, M. (1995). African American teachers and culturally relevant pedagogy. In J. A. Banks & C. A. McGee (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Multicultural Education (pp. 570–581). Macmillan. Gollnick, D. M., & Chinn, P. C. (2002). Multicultural education in a pluralistic society (6th ed.). Merrill. Keung, E. K., & Rockinson-Szapkiw, A. J. (2013). The relationship between transformational leadership and cultural intelligence: A study of international school leaders. Journal of Educational Administration, 51(6), 836–854. NEPC. (2020, March 3). Professional development on inclusion for school leaders: A pilot project in Croatia and North Macedonia. https://www.edupolicy.net/2019/09/19/professional-development-on-inclusion-for-school-leaders-a-pilot-project-in-croatia-and-north-macedonia/

"We're Always An Afterthought" - Beyond A Curriculum For Most

Throughout developments in curriculum, in many instances has been to form and develop the curriculum for most learners in school education rather the diversity of all.

In Scotland in the 21^st century this was challenged by a process formed among policy makers and a group of special educators and other support staff to formulate a curriculum for all being able to take account of the diversity among learners.

This story tells of the process that contributed to moving from a curriculum that fits most to design a curriculum for all. A story not yet told was how Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence sought to reverse the view of some learners as requiring separate special treatment rather than a holistic approach to planning learning in its totality.

Previous guidance. on the curriculum only took account of diversity of needs in a supplemental way. Practitioners at the time regarded this approach as if such settings were an afterthought.

For instance the national guidelines for 5-14 Curriculum and Assessment for English language were not universal. They had identified “a few varieties of educational needs. It will require to be supplemented and is offered only to promote further discussion.”

Practitioners in special schools or involved in offering support for learning across Scotland viewed this supplementary approach as inadequate in terms of national guidance.

Fast forward to the first decade of 21^st century and developing a new national curriculum subject to general public debate and aimed to address past inadequacies in an universal manner as a curriculum for all. There followed a collaboration at a national level between policy makers , school inspectors and practitioners from across a broad spectrum of special educators to avoid diversity as an afterthought.

There followed a discussion of avoiding divergence in curriculum-making between a curriculum formed toward knowledge- based epistemological approach that lacked relevance for many learners.

A counter view placed a weighting towards a curriculum focused on personal and social development drawing on aspects of individual’s self-development, understanding based on learning from their experiences.

This personal narrative outlines the development of this story of policy-making, considers the role of key actors and highlights the approaches to curriculum policy making undertaken by this group in the development of Curriculum for Excellence.

In 2017 the European Agency drew upon a project considering ways to raise the achievement of all through inclusive education amongst projects from Poland Italy and Scotland. The place of curriculum making aligned to personal development was noted in the project and its follow up work.

Recent shifts in demographics in Greater Vancouver schools have crept up on educators who suddenly find themselves in elementary classrooms with no native English speakers, increasing numbers of refugees and immigrants (taken together, called “newcomers”), have ADHD, autism, physical disabilities, mental health issues and live in poverty, with classmates who are learning above their grade level. As with many urban schools in Europe, superdiverse schools in Vancouver may have 80 different languages. With Trudeau’s announcement that 1.5 million newcomers will arrive by the end of 2025 (Dickson, 2022, Nov.1), teachers must learn not only about students’ culturally and racially diverse backgrounds, but ensure democratic inclusive practices apply to each child (Li et al., 2021).

Fifty years ago in Canada, children with disabilities were excluded from attending school; just 25 years ago, children lacking English were ignored until they began to “catch on”. “Inclusion” and “participation” were gradually developed through the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) and strengthened by the United Nations’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), especially for children with disabilities demanding equal education. For the first time, these rights were linked to inclusive philosophies and even laws that required inclusion (Paré, 2015). Today, newcomers to Canada are seen as a solution to Canada’s labour shortage, yet they must navigate complex challenges. Learning conversational English takes 3-5 years, 4-7 for academic literacy, and 10+ years for disadvantaged students (Garcia, 2000).

This paper focuses on what teachers can do now, not waiting for newcomers to “catch on”, but taking advantage of the energy, curiosity and joy most children exude. Many teachers’ walls are covered by art that reveals an astonishing array of interpretations of objects of interest. Art has been called a universal language (Eisner, 2006); think about paintings in Lascaux and how we still comprehend them. Gadamer (2003) believed that preverbal art induces a transcendental state of mind, even permitting us to re-live past memories. For children with traumatic experiences, the arts “speak” through a symbolic language that gently releases bad memories.

For these reasons, I chose to explore whether art workshops in two highly diverse classrooms would increase inclusion for students with multiple learning needs and advance their academic interests much earlier than their English language levels would normally allow. Therefore, my main research question is the following:

--With considerable barriers to education entrenched for some refugee and immigrant students, will a blended art pedagogy more quickly help them overcome factors that exclude them, in particular, a lack of English language fluency, sense of belonging, emotional processing of migration experiences, and possibly, earlier access to academic areas of the Canadian curriculum?

Three theoretical frameworks support this study. First, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as a legal and philosophical framework, is tied to human rights and upheld across all sectors in Canadian society. A philosophy of inclusion developed through the 1990’s, formally established in Europe with the Salamanca Statement (1994), also strengthened inclusion through the Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006). Two further frameworks that offer support are Mertins’s (2009) disability theory which reverses common thinking about children with disabilities as being “less”, or, “defective”, and instead, describes disability as due to environmental causes, and simply a difference. Lastly, Mertin’s (2003) idea of transformation questions the meaning of inclusion in schools and aims to ensure collective decision-making when the child is not able to communicate their wishes. These frameworks move away from the medical model and work to expand our understanding of the range of learners in schools which results in transforming society’s views of their abilities and rights.

Scotland and Norway have much in common both today and down through the centuries. Though Norway is four times larger by landmass, both populations today are around 5 million. Norway is held up as an example for Scotland to emulate in Education, in upland land use – as SW Norway and the Scottish Highlands have much in common, and as Scotland continues to contemplate independence. Ownership of the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland, have over the centuries belonged to either Norway or Scotland and the Western seaboard of Scotland right down to the Firth of Clyde near Glasgow have many Norse place names reminiscent of the era of the Lordship of the Isles and Viking activity. Even many of our Scottish Clan surnames are Norse in origin.

Over more recent years, Scotland and Norway have both become increasingly multicultural. In Norway – the immigrant population rose from1.5% of the total population in 1970 to 14.7% in 2020. (Statistics Norway 2020). Today in Scotland 7% of the population are non-UK nationals. Our schools, in both countries, are indeed becoming increasingly diverse in population, language, religion and culture. In both Scotland and Norway, by far the largest group of immigrants in 2022 are from Poland, followed by Lithuania, Sweden, Ukraine, Syria and Somalia in Norway and the Republic of Ireland, Ukraine, Italy, Nigeria and India in the case of Scotland.

Those coming from EU/EEA countries have perhaps a greater shared cultural understanding and many immigrants have lived in Norway or Scotland for years and have therefore acquired the local language.

In both countries there is also a presumption to educate all children in an inclusive mainstream school setting rather than educate some children in Special Needs Schools. This often leads to a much greater range of children in the mainstream school, from both the home and immigrant population, who are neurodivergent or have more particular physical or behavioural needs requiring additional attention, and understanding, from the teaching and any support staff in the one classroom.

Today’s classroom teachers need to be well versed in inclusive classroom practice to accommodate the needs and aspirations of all the children in the classroom. Inclusion itself is a problematic term, especially when consideration is given to inclusive pedagogy, inclusive education and inclusive practice. (Florian 2011) In Scotland GIRFEC (Getting it right for every child), a Scottish Government National Guidance Model aims to support teachers as they work to support children and young people. Two of the values in this model are:

• Valuing difference and ensuring everyone is treated fairly.
• Considering and addressing inequalities.

In the current Norwegian National Curriculum for Knowledge Promotion in Primary and Secondary Education and Training’ (Ministry of Education and Research (2017), inclusion has had to broaden out from being about inclusion in a classroom setting, to consider the Sámi people as indigenous people. Within the Core Values section is added, ’respect for and solidarity with the diversity of Sámi culture’.

This paper will consider how inclusive practice in two curricular areas not only aids particular children, with additional support needs, but benefits all of the pupils. The two main areas of consideration are:

1. EAL learners in the music classroom in Scotland
2. Challenges for pupils with Dyslexia accessing EAL in Norway

In the Scottish situation EAL learners are acquiring English as the lingua franca of the country and the language of learning in the school. In the Norwegian situation EAL learners are learning English as an additional second language but it is not the general language of learning in the school.