Conference Agenda

Relationships are a crucial aspect of schooling and are particularly important for student groups that have been traditionally marginalized, such as students who receive special education services. Positive peer relationships are essential for enhancing a sense of belonging and academic and social well-being for all students, particularly those with disabilities. This paper introduces the concept of ‘relational inclusion’ in the context of special and inclusive education and provides an example of how to explore it using a Social Network Analysis (SNA) Toolkit. The authors argue that schools and educators should be more systematic in understanding and promoting relationships, thus developing more inclusive, caring, and just communities.

The paper has two main purposes. First, it aims to introduce and define the term ‘relational inclusion’ in the context of special and inclusive education. Second, it presents a tool that enables educators to directly examine the nature of inclusivity in their classrooms: a Social Network Analysis (SNA) Toolkit. The authors show how teachers can make use of this tool to explore and transform relational inclusivity in their classroom communities, with a particular focus on students with identified disabilities.

Inclusive education or inclusivity has gained international momentum over the last few decades, but there remains much ambiguity in defining the term (Lindsay, 2003). In this paper, the authors use these terms interchangeably to refer to various models of school organization that promote the involvement of students with disabilities in the general education environment. Despite the ambiguities of inclusion, there are a few generally agreed upon tenets of these models. First, that disability is a social creation. Inclusive education stems from the social model of disability, which posits that it is not the differences themselves that cause someone to be disabled, but rather the social institutions around individuals which are unable to accommodate these differences. Second, that educational settings can be designed to meet the needs of all students. Third, that policy agendas should explicitly demand that students have access to equitable learning environments, prioritizing access to general education settings.

One of the main justifications for including students with disabilities in general education settings is for opportunities to engage in social interactions with peers (Mamas et al., 2021). Inclusive pedagogy aims to provide students with opportunities to experience meaningful social interactions and develop peer relationships (Freitag & Dunsmuir, 2015). The success of inclusion is often measured by the extent to which these students are accepted by their mainstream peers (Lewis, 2002). Unfortunately, as Connor and Berman (2019) argue, much of what is happening in educational practice in the name of inclusion has been a technical response to change rather than meaningful integration.

In this paper, the authors argue for the concept of relational inclusion as a fundamental ethical, moral, and pedagogical component of larger conceptualizations of inclusive education. By relational inclusivity, they mean the degree to which all students are connected into the social fabric of their educational environments. This rests on the belief that students’ sense of belonging and community are integral to both their academic and civic success. The authors call it out as a separate term to emphasize that programmatic models of inclusion do not necessarily result in actual inclusion in all senses of the word. Instead, relational inclusion needs to be actively monitored, developed, and maintained to ensure that students, particularly those with disabilities, are able to fully engage and actively participate in their educational contexts.

Education carries a considerable responsibility when it comes to improving global inequality, and while not everyone thinks this is as it should be (for example, see Muller, 2018), it must be acknowledged that education matters. Educational attainment has been shown to improve a broad range of life outcomes (OECD, 2022) and equitable access to education enhances ‘social equity’ (Harber 2014, p. 20). It is unsurprising therefore to find ‘Quality education’ (Goal 4) identified as one of 17 goals described within the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2015). It has been argued that for education to be considered ‘quality’ it must be inclusive (Anderson & Boyle, 2020). If enacted successfully, inclusive education can reduce inequalities more broadly, including in the areas of physical and mental health, income and employment, and social connectivity. It is these wider benefits that position inclusive education as a construct of consequence within the global discourse, not just within the realm of education.

Inclusive education has been the prevailing philosophy globally for the education of students with a disability for more than quarter of a century, and in more contemporary times, for all students. In 2016 the committee responsible for the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) described inclusive education as follows:

a process of systemic reform embodying changes and modifications in content, teaching methods, approaches, structures and strategies in education to overcome barriers with a vision serving to provide all students of the relevant age range with an equitable and participatory learning experience and environment that best corresponds to their requirements and preferences (United Nations, 2016, para. 11).

Captured within these words is the scale of change required for inclusive education to prevail. The enormity of change may explain in some part both why inclusive education has struggled to gain traction in recent years and why the ‘substantial distance between the conceptualisation of inclusive education and its implementation’ has persisted (Artiles & Kozleski, 2016, p. 7). In many countries, such as Australia and England, there is evidence to suggest segregation and exclusion of some groups of students, particularly those from minority groups, is again on the rise (Anderson & Boyle, 2019; Norwich & Black, 2015). Reasons for this are varied and complex, yet one notion that requires further exploration is the role special education, and those working in the field, have played. While the notion of inclusive education has been lauded globally by many policy makers, researchers, and practitioners, it has faced unrelenting criticism and resistance (Artiles & Kozleski, 2016) with much of this coming from the field of special education (Slee, 2018).

Inclusive education emerged from within the special education debate, and much of the discourse around it still attaches itself to residual ideas from each of the exclusion, segregation, and integration eras (Mac Ruairc, 2020). Having grown out of the field of special education, inclusive education consistently gets entangled in the politics of disability and education. The challenges from special educators to protect what has traditionally been their educational space are real (Slee, 2018). Advocates of special education have fought to maintain separate provisions for students with disability in the form of segregated classes and special schools. The argument is based on the premise that segregation is needed - it's for their own good. Full inclusion has been positioned as the enemy of special education and the debate has become on centred on inclusive verses special education.

This study sought to understand the impact of the inclusive verse’s special education debate on those entrusted with providing an education to all children – principals of public primary schools.

The school as an institutionalized place of education and socialization is constantly reviewed to see if it meets its requirements: inclusion demands that all pupils can fully participate in the learning environment that is designed for all students. This goes hand in hand with minimizing discrimination and maximizing social participation and educational opportunities. The ongoing digitalization of living- and working environments implies the modernization of school. Designing the school of tomorrow, in which all pupils learn with new media, is a global challenge, as shown in international documents (UN 2006; UNESCO 2022). Here the interdisciplinary joint research project „DiLernProfis“ (Formative Assessment and teaching methodology - incremental scaffolds as a concept for professionalization for adaptive teaching), funded by the BMBF, is located. It focuses on the use of a digital incremental scaffold (as an app for tablets) for biology experiments in secondary inclusive science classes.

In differentiated school classes, the scientific experiment challenges teachers as well as pupils. While incremental scaffolds (Leisen 2010) already offer a good solution for such complex situations (Kleinert et al. 2021) digital media provides new opportunities for handling diversity in school: the app was designed as an instrument to face diversity in classes to support the independent work process. We use an extended construct of inclusion, which covers all forms of diversity, which lead to exclusion in school and society and contribute to social inequalities (Löser & Werning 2015, p. 17).

“DiLernProfis” offers a possible answer to the question of the challenging handling of diversity in inclusive science classes and experiments. Our qualitative subproject uses an ethnographic approach to analyse inclusive and exclusive practices in classes with the digital scaffold and aims to evaluate this solution. This includes individual, as well as classwide uses of the app.

There are many international studies about the use of tablets in school (see Aufenanger & Bastian 2017). The use of digital media is often seen as a catalyst for inclusion, although simultaneously pupils digital skills are strongly related to socio-economic backgrounds (Senkbeil et al. 2019). Many studies focus on the compensating tablet-use for pupils with disabilities (Cumming & Draper Rodriguez, 2017) and less on the integration in a general teaching concept for diverse classes. Another focus lies upon learning outcomes: those studies show a slight positive trend in the tablet-use (Haßler et al. 2016). The potentials of tablets for science classes are highlighted (see e.g. Cotič et al. 2020). Furthermore, qualitative studies are needed for a deeper understanding on changing classroom practices with digital media. So far, there is no evidence for innovative teaching practices, but incremental adaptions: Regulation practices by teachers for the use of tablets as well as new forms of publicity of learning products in connection to smartboards can be found (Thiersch & Wolf 2021). The use of digital devices leads to an acceleration of workflows and fosters the expectation to share learning products (Herrle et al. 2022). The research of the precise use of digital incremental scaffolds in inclusive science classes is a desideratum, which our project addresses. In our subproject we use a praxeological approach (Schatzki 2003) and therefore locate the social within practices. This enables us to analyse the ensemble of human actors and material artefacts (Röhl 2015). The use of artefacts is embedded in normative orders (e.g. teaching, performance) (Rabenstein 2018). The specific use uncovers different subject positions and can stabilize or destabilize normative orders. A praxeological approach therefore allows us to analyse social differentiations in practices with the app and gain findings about their inclusive and exclusive potentials.