Conference Agenda

Inclusive education is an issue that is becoming increasingly relevant in everyday school life, with the range of ways to deal with it being wide. Teachers and other experts in schools are trying to figure out what works best but are faced with challenges on different levels since inclusion – in its different understandings – is a topic which is discussed controversially within educational politics (Ainscow 2024; Ainscow and Messiou 2025). The obligation to develop inclusive education (UN 2015) is reconstructed differently at the level of nation-states as it is contextualized by divergent policies, regulations and structures of educational systems which are meaningful for the institutionalization of (inclusive) school cultures (Douglas, 1991). Here research comes in and plays a crucial role in how to handle these demands, providing evidence-based data (Ainscow 2020). This data can in the best case be a relevant factor to influence school practices but not automatically (Knigge 2020) which is why we ask: How can research contribute to foster inclusive education?

In this symposium we present different research projects on inclusive school improvement. We focus on different approaches to how research can be used to foster inclusive education.

On a meta-level we address the following questions: How does research contribute to inclusive school improvement? Which functions can research take on in inclusive school improvement? What is the motivation to apply different accesses to investigate inclusive education? What are the consequences for methodological realization? What kind of results can be created and how can they be used?

We will discuss how results of research are used to stir dialogue with decision-makers and practitioners and what impact the different approaches can have.

The presented research projects stem from Italy, Finland and Switzerland. They all focus on inclusive education but are based on different legal backgrounds when it comes to inclusion. Currently there exist different legal foundations and approaches for inclusive education, which lead to varying implementations, such as integrative approaches, which include children in mainstream schools as far as possible, but often still allow special school (Switzerland), to truly inclusive systems (e.g. USA, Canada, Finland, Italy) that promote joint learning for all children in mainstream schools from the outset and abolish special schools.

Also, the individual main foci are different:

The Italian concept of a formative process evaluation focuses on how inclusive teaching can be realized. The contribution from Finland investigates the role of leadership in inclusive education. The Swiss project evaluates the implementation of Learning Support Teams in schools.

This contribution reflects on how research can support school development within an inclusive education system, generating both knowledge and transformation amid changing conditions of academic knowledge. Building on perspectives on inclusive school cultures (Ainscow, 2020) and informed by transnationality in education governance (Lawn & Lingard, 2002), it addresses the Italian case—often portrayed as an education system structurally oriented towards inclusion. Yet the normative frame of the inclusive education system does not guarantee enactment: contradictions within (current) policies and political discourses lead to ambivalences which underly everyday social practices, shaped within professional cultures (Helsper, 2021), organisational routines and pedagogical arrangements. Against this backdrop, the paper asks how inclusive education is produced, negotiated and legitimised in everyday school practices, and what kinds of knowledge become authoritative in these processes. Empirically, the analysis draws on GOODWILL (Researching School Development: Pathways to Inclusive and Quality Education, 2023–2026), a mixed-methods study (Kolleck, 2017) designed as scientific research of a school development initiative promoted by local institutions in Northern Italy, in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano (Seitz et al., in press). Oriented at the Educational Design Based Research approach (Mc Kinney 2012), the research design combines an initial quantitative baseline with successive qualitative data collection and analysis, e.g. ethnographical observations and group discussions. Through dialogic feedback loops, empirical traces are turned into discussable and actionable knowledge for informing pedagogical and organisational decision-making (Seitz & Consalvo, 2025). Qualitative analyses follow an approach inspired by Grounded Theory to reconstruct interpretive frames, routines and (in)equity dynamics emerging from the materials. Analytically, we foreground “doing difference” (Machold & Wienand, 2021; Merl, 2019) as a mechanism through which inclusion and inequality are co-produced. Findings highlight three interrelated dynamics: (1) “inclusion” is re-interpreted within contextual frames and routines, often reduced to compensatory interventions targeted at individuals; (2) categories (e.g., need, diagnosis, language) are frequently employed performatively, thereby rendering difference governable while reproducing hierarchies of belonging and ability; and (3) a misalignment between accountability-driven demands and what is required to address individual children’s learning.

Ainscow M. (2020). Promoting inclusion and equity in education: Lessons from international experiences. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 6(1): 7–16 Helsper, W. (2021). Professionalität und Professionalisierung pädagogischen Handelns: Eine Einführung. Verlag Barbara Budrich. Kolleck N. (2017). Mixed methods: Kombination und Integration quantitativer und qualitativer Methoden in wissenschaftlichen Begleitstudien. In M. Heinrich, M. Rürup, H. Ziegler (eds.), Forschungspraxen der Bildungsforschung (pp. 69–86). Münster: Waxmann. Lawn, M., & Lingard, B. (2002). Constructing a European Policy Space in Educational Governance: The Role of Transnational Policy Actors. European Educational Research Journal, 1(2), 290-307. Machold, C., & Wienand, C. (2021). Die Herstellung von Differenz in der Grundschule: Eine Langzeitethnographie. Beltz Juventa. McKenney, S., & Reeves, T. C. (2012). Conducting educational design research. Routledge. Merl, T. (2019). un/genügend fähig. Zur Herstellung von Differenz im Unterricht inklusiver Schulklassen. Klinkhardt Seitz, S., & Consalvo, G. (2025). Dialogic approaches and school development: The World Café in research on school cultures and practices. Pedagogia Oggi, 23(2), 113–119. Seitz, S., Consalvo, G., Auer, P., Berti, F. & Baroni, S. (in p.) Inklusive Schulkulturen: Schulentwicklungsprozesse in einem inklusiven Bildungssystem. In Bächler, L., Fränkel, S., Goldan, J., Schroeder, R. & Ziemen, K. (Eds.), Inklusive Bildung als Transformation. Klinkhardt.

Increasing diversity in Finland, in line with broader European trends, has introduced new demands on school leadership and prompted principals to reassess their understandings of inclusion (Jantunen et al., 2022). This shift has underscored the need to reconceptualize inclusion, particularly given its long tradition regarding association with special education (Carpelan & Lahtero, 2025; Jahnukainen, 2015; Schuelka et al., 2019). Consequently, over the past decade, Finnish discourse on inclusion has gradually started to shift from narrow special education frameworks toward broader understandings of diversity. Research indicates, however, that while principals commonly express support for inclusion, their more detailed descriptions of their everyday practices or deeper understandings expose constraint‑driven realities in which pragmatic judgments about feasibility tend to override ideological commitments or be elusive by their nature (Jahnukainen, 2015; Jantunen, Sormunen et al., 2025). To understand this landscape, this paper demonstrates how discourse analysis can reveal the complex ways principals navigate inclusion, providing actionable insights for school improvement and principal training (Jantunen, Carpelan et al., 2025). Thus, examining discourse rather than just practices help educators and policymakers understand the underlying value constructions that enable or constrain inclusive development. We discuss a study focusing on how Finnish comprehensive school principals construct the meaning of inclusion and manage tensions between ideological commitment and practical implementation. The study drew on a discourse theory (Laclau & Mouffe, 2014) to analyse focus group interviews with 21 principals, revealing three major discourses: constructing value foundations for inclusion, defining teachers' roles in promoting inclusion, and assembling the inclusive school community puzzle. Our findings demonstrate how principals actively bridge competing discourses: justice and equality, individual needs, and pragmatic realism. In addition, reoccurring discussion topics included managing resource constraints and teacher resistance. We aim at enlightening, first, how principals frame teacher resistance as competence concerns rather than ideological opposition; we reveal opportunities for targeted professional development. Second, we identify professional identity as a critical nodal point showing where interventions can be most effective. Third, our analysis of leadership groups as spaces for negotiating competing perspectives offers a concrete model for distributed leadership in practice. Our study provides practical implications for principal training, suggesting that effective inclusive leadership requires understanding inclusion comprehensively (beyond special education), reconstructing teachers’ professional identities toward collective responsibility, and implementing gradual change strategies that respect teacher readiness while maintaining clear value-based direction.

Carpelan, R., & Lahtero, T. J. (2025). Leading education for inclusion. In M. Wicki, & M. Törmänen (Eds.), Bildung für alle stärken – Improve Education for All: Ein Handbuch für die evidenzbasierte Entwicklung inklusiver Schulen – A Handbook for Evidence-Based Development of Inclusive Schools (pp. 119-128). Verlag Julius Klinkhardt. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/101348 Jahnukainen, M. (2015). Inclusion, integration, or what? A comparative study of the school principals’ perceptions of inclusive and special education in Finland and in Alberta, Canada. Disability and Society, 30(1), 59-72. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2014.982788 Jantunen, A., Carpelan, R., Loukomies, A., Lahtero, T. J., Kallioniemi, A., & Sormunen, K. (2025). Intersecting Discourses: How Finnish Principals Construct Meaning and Value Foundations for Inclusive Leadership. Studia paedagogica, 30(3), 72-97. https://doi.org/10.5817/SP2025-3-3 Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (2014). Hegemony & socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics. Verso Books. Schuelka, M. J., Johnstone, C.J., Thomas, G. & Artiles, A.J. (2019). Introduction: Scholarship for diversity and inclusion in education in the 21st century. In M. J. Schuelka, C. J. Johnstone, G. Thomas, & A. J. Artiles (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook on Inclusion and Diversity in Education (pp. xxxi-xliii). Sage Publications.

One approach to promote inclusive education that has been recently introduced in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, drawing on experiences from Canada (Katz, 2012), is the implementation of Learning Support Teams. In the Swiss decentralized education system, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is applied since 2014, guaranteeing that “persons with disabilities can access an inclusive, quality and free primary education and secondary education” (UN Behindertenrechtskonvention 2006 2014 Art. 24.2b). Despite this commitment and due to the federal structure, schools for special needs still exist and the quote of inclusion differs within the country, with teachers and regular schools searching for solutions to deal with a growing heterogeneity among students. The project “Learning Support Teams” aims to provide schools which need support in dealing with challenges of high heterogeneity among their students with fast and uncomplicated on-site assistance. The assistance is provided by Learning Support Teams which consist of highly qualified external experts, being present during days or weeks within the schools, aiming to collaboratively develop strategies to bundle and utilize existing resources in a way that challenging situations can be addressed so students can remain in their school. A multidisciplinary team from Zurich University of Teacher Education and The University of Teacher Education in Special Needs, Zurich conducts research for the project. This presentation introduces an accompanying research approach (Defila and Di Giulio 2018; Christensen et al. 2016), that considers the following general key objectives: • To examine how Learning Support Teams enhance inclusion and collaborative practices in schools. • To generate findings about school development processes that support inclusive education. • To provide data-based support for the effective development and deployment of Learning Support Teams in schools. To meet these objectives, data on the effectiveness of LST is collected to adapt support services continuously to practical needs and provide evidence-based feedback to decision-makers. Additionally, the practical implementation of the project is examined. This allows for ongoing quality monitoring and the adaptation of the concept, if necessary. We present results from both quantitative and qualitative data analysis that stem from the first project year, where we investigated how the members of the new Learning Support Teams design their role within the schools, how extensively schools utilize the services offered and describe the areas in which the Learning Support Teams are deployed. Finally, we discuss how in such an accompanying research approach acceptance, quality assurance and impact research can be reconciled.

Christensen, Dorthe Refslund, Louise Ejgod Hansen, Ida Krøgholt, und Carsten Stage. 2016. „The participatory researcher: developing the concept of ‘accompanying research’“. Nordisk kulturpolitisk tidsskrift 19 (1): 116–36. https://doi.org/10.18261/ISSN2000-8325-2016-01-07. Defila, Rico, und Antonietta Di Giulio. 2018. „What Is It Good For? Reflecting and Systematizing Accompanying Research to Research Programs“. GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society 27 (1): 97–104. https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.27.S1.17. Katz, Jennifer. 2012. Teaching to Diversity: The Three-Block Model of Universal Design for Learning. Portage & Main Press. UN Behindertenrechtskonvention 2006, Legislation No. AS 2014 1119 (2014). https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/2014/245/de.