Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 19th Aug 2026, 21:27:57 EET
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Daily Overview |
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04 SES 12 A: Who is Segregated Within School Systems? - Methodological Challenges and Opportunities in Comparative Research
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04. Inclusive Education
Research Workshop Who is Segregated Within School Systems? - Methodological Challenges and Opportunities in Comparative Research 1: Inland Norway University, Norway; 2: University of Sydney; 3: University of Cyprus; 4: University of Almeria Presenting Author:This workshop will explore a methodological framework for undertaking a comparative analysis of segregated school provision across nations. This is a key issue for research into inclusive education and special education, if we wish to understand the experiences of children who face segregation and the local and global causes of segregation. Segregation can be seen to have been growing across Europe and beyond for many years (Rix, 2023), whilst at the same time, it is evident that there is no agreement (locally or nationally) about placing these segregated children based on their particular needs (Sheehy et al., 2023).
The European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education (EASNIE) defines segregation as being in separate special classes or special schools for the largest part (80%) or more of the school day. According to EASNIE, across the four recorded levels of education in Europe over 4.2% of learners have a formal diagnosis of “special educational needs” and over 34% of these spend all or most of their time out of mainstream classrooms (EASNIE, 2024). However, formal statistics do not present a full picture of the incidence rates (Weedon & Lezcano-Barbero, 2021). This is partly because of endemic national and regional variability in relation to fundamental understandings, terminology, policy and practices of “special needs”, inclusion, diagnosis and effective support (e.g: Cameron et al, 2024). They also ignore a huge number of undiagnosed children and fail to represent the millions of children experiencing segregation for a wide range of other reasons (such as language, ethnicity, gender and socio-economic background). In addition, they do not engage with the lived experience of children within these different systems. The issue of segregation and the shortcomings in data collection approaches are particularly important given that children most in need are more likely to experience segregation in the education systems, including children with disabilities, children in alternative care, children from other minorities, and children with parents who are not in employment and are facing poverty (Eurochild, 2024).
Given the chaotic nature of our understanding and of our practices, it seems appropriate to explore how we can better understand who is being segregated within our education systems and their experiences of this segregation. At the same time, we need to be aware of the limitations of comparative research and the tendency to rely upon descriptive statistics and case studies (Ferragina & Deeming, 2022). Through this workshop we wish to explore how we can bring together stakeholders in different contexts, whilst confronting the ethical and conceptual challenges of identifying comparable data when working with statistics and understandings that are not equivalent across countries (e.g: Janmaat, 2013). We also need to explore how we can engage with diverse perspectives and encourage knowledge exchange across academic, political, and practice divides so that we can counter reductionism (Powell, 2020).
This workshop will be the fourth in a series of events at ECER undertaken by this network of researchers (RiSE). The participants have run 2 symposia, a panel discussion and a workshop at ECER 2023, 2024 & 2025. We have established a special issue in the European Journal of Inclusive Education and submitted a COST application to fund our ongoing work. As a result of these early endeavours, we recognise the need to involve people and organisations from a wide variety of economic and political contexts to provide the range of perspectives needed to solve this problem. We want, for instance, to consider these issues from post-soviet, scandinavian, neo-liberal, anti-colonial and indigenous perspectives, and to work with languages other than English. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used The workshop will begin with a brief overview of the challenges outlined in the abstract and the nature of the network who have submitted the COST application. This will include providing a working definition of segregation as our starting point for the workshop and examples of formally collected data from across Europe. We will explain how as a network we wish to develop collaborative working to enable voice and create change so that we both focus upon national uniqueness (Hantrais, 1999) and learn from different national systems. The workshop participants will be divided into groups of 3-6, depending on the numbers who attend. The presenters will serve as moderators for these groups. Each group will spend 15 minutes considering 3 challenges (defining segregation, appropriate data, collecting personal experiences) each based on some preliminary questions. They will have access to online software (e.g., Padlet) to record emerging ideas and thoughts about possible opportunities and barriers, and how these can be engaged with. The groups will use questions to guide the discussion but participants will have control over the overall direction of the conversation, so they can share and compare ideas (Morgan, 2012). The moderators will not seek to be centre-stage to the conversation but to enable the inter-relational dynamics of the groups (Parker & Tritter, 2006). After the 15 minutes, there will be 10 minutes to share ideas before moving onto the next guiding question. Our guiding questions will be: ● How do we reach agreement about a definition of segregation? ○ Is the EASNIE definition suitable? If not, what? ○ How do we agree on the groups to whom the term is applied? ○ How do we apply such a definition across contexts? ● How do we collect data nationally that is equivalent across contexts? ○ How do we avoid the methodological challenges of working with this data, in particular oversimplification? ○ How do we surface and problematise assumptions underpinning data from different contexts? ● How do we gather personal experiences and at what scale? ○ To what extent is ethics applicable in the context of gathering and sharing personal information and experience? We will spend the last 15 minutes collectively discussing lessons learned from the discussions, whilst considering opportunities to publish around this topic, and potential engagement with the emergent network. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings We anticipate three clear outcomes for the workshop. ● We will explore the development and use of methods of data collection across conflicting contexts. ● We will broaden the RiSE network and engage with new voices interested in the process of examining the nature of segregated provision and the roles it continues to play. ● We will develop a range of topics, questions and approaches to enable us to engage with the wider field about the nature of segregated provision. Notes and findings from the workshop will be made available to all participants. References Cameron, D. L., Herlofsen, C., Jensen, C. R., Lindqvist, G., Molbæk, M., Ström, K., & Sundqvist, C. (2024). The special education profession in four Nordic countries in light of evolving policies on inclusion and special needs education. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 39(6), 849-865. Eurochild (2024). Children’s Realities in Europe: Progress & Gaps. Belgium: Eurochild. European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education (EASNIE), (2024). European Agency Statistics on Inclusive Education: 2021/2022 School Year Dataset Cross-Country Report. (P. Dráľ, A. Lenárt and A. Lecheval, eds.). Odense, Denmark. Ferragina, E., & Deeming, C. (2022). Methodologies for comparative social policy analysis. In K. Nelson, R. Nieuwenhuis & M. A. Yerkes (eds.), Social Policy in Changing European Societies, 218-234, Edward Elgar Publishing. Hantrais, L. (1999). Contextualization in cross-national comparative research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2(2), 93-108. Morgan, D. (2012). Focus Groups and Social Interaction in J. Gubrium, J. Holstein, A. Marvasti & K. McKinney (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Interview Research: The Complexity of the Craft. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Janmaat, J. G. (2013). Subjective inequality: A review of international comparative studies on people’s views about inequality. European Journal of Sociology/Archives Européennes de Sociologie, 54(3), 357-389. Parker, A. & Tritter, J. (2006). Focus group method and methodology: current practice and recent debate. International Journal of Research and Method in Education, 29(1), 23-37. Powell, J.J., (2020). Comparative education in an age of competition and collaboration. Comparative Education, 56(1), 57-78. Rix, J. (2023). In search of Education, Participation and Inclusion. Routledge, London. Sheehy, K., Rix, J., Fletcher-Campbell, F., Crisp, M., & Harper, A. (2023). Using vignettes as a research method to investigate placement and provision for children with special educational needs in different countries. Athens Journal of Education, 10(4), 559-574. Weedon, E. & Lezcano-Barbero, F. (2021). The challenges of making cross-country comparison of statistics on pupils with special educational needs. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 36(5),854-862. | ||