Teaching students with intellectual disabilities involves supporting subject learning and fostering participation in classroom life, yet little is known about how these aims are negotiated in teacher-student interaction. This article presents a systematic review comprising a qualitative meta-synthesis of research on classroom communication for students with intellectual disabilities in compulsory and upper secondary education. Systematic searches were conducted in ERIC, Education Source, APA PsycINFO, Scopus and SwePub, identifying 15 studies which met the inclusion criteria. Using an interpretive approach, we examined how participation and learning were constituted in interaction and what opportunities and barriers emerged. Two overarching communication patterns were identified: vertical, teacher-led exchanges which prioritise task completion and correct responses, and horizontal, reciprocal dialogues which open space for initiative, negotiation and shared meaning-making. The synthesis also highlights the importance of teachers' attuning to students' subtle communicative expressions, particularly for students with limited or non-verbal speech, and outlines key supportive strategies, including open-ended questioning, modelling, scaffolding and the use of visual and concrete supports. We conclude that high levels of structure remain important for learning, but they need to be flexibly combined with reciprocal communication to promote participation, agency and deeper understanding for students with intellectual disabilities.
This research focuses on agency in educational decision-making from the point of view of students receiving intensive special support in vocational education and training (VET) in a Finnish vocational special education college (SEC). Agency in educational decision-making was examined according to three modes: individual, proxy and collective. There is little prior research on the agency of VET students receiving intensive special support in relation to their educational decision-making. Therefore, the aim of this research was to deepen understanding and encourage critical examination of students' genuine and equal opportunities in educational decision-making and to gain further knowledge about how agency is manifested in educational decision-making among VET students receiving intensive special support. The data consists of 20 student interviews. In the analysis, it was of paramount importance to detect specific features in the realisation of agency in making educational decisions. Identifying features of agency in educational decision-making reveals how it is enacted or constrained in practice. The results indicate that the agency of students is constrained by structural barriers within the education system, and their future aspirations are not always adequately considered in educational decision-making. Nevertheless, the students reported experiencing themselves as active agents in crucial decision-making situations.
This study critically examines dominant constructions of inclusive education in T & uuml;rkiye, foregrounding children's perspectives through a participatory approach. While inclusive education policies have been influenced by international frameworks, implementation has largely prioritised access, placement, and support for students with special educational needs, often overlooking broader dimensions of participation and belonging. Teachers are positioned as the primary agents of inclusion, marginalising students' voices. Addressing this gap, the study asks: How do children conceptualise inclusive education when conducting their own research? Six middle school students formed a Child Advisory Group at a socioeconomically disadvantaged school. Through training and collaborative inquiry, students became researchers, designing and conducting a study on how schools could become places they 'want to run to every morning'. Findings reveal that inclusive education is a relational and participatory process grounded in four themes: respect, belonging, voices, and enjoyment. Respect was redefined from hierarchical obedience to mutual recognition; belonging emerged through shared ownership and participation; children's voices developed into collective advocacy; and enjoyment was linked to engagement and agency. The study demonstrates that inclusive education cannot be reduced to technical practices or placement alone but must recognise children as active contributors to the shaping of democratic and participatory school environments.
This study aims to comparatively investigate the predictors of reading comprehension in children on the autism spectrum (AS) and neurotypical (NT) children within the framework of the Simple View of Reading (SVR). The study sample comprised 88 children in total, including 44 children on the AS (8 girls, 36 boys; M = 8.60, SD = 1.07) and 44 NT children (23 girls, 21 boys; M = 7.53, SD = 0.48). During the data collection process, the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS), the Test of Nonverbal Intelligence-3 (TONI-3), the Turkish School-Age Language Development Test (TSALD), and the Literacy Assessment Battery (LAB) were administered. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted with reading comprehension as the outcome variable, and decoding and language comprehension as predictor variables. The findings revealed that decoding accounted for 72.8% of the variance in reading comprehension among children on the AS. When listening comprehension was added, the explained variance increased by 5.7% (total = 78.5%). In the NT group, decoding significantly predicted reading comprehension (65.8%), whereas language comprehension did not contribute significantly. Decoding was identified as a significant predictor of reading comprehension in both children on the AS and NT peers.
Despite a growing interest in taking a participatory or co-research approach to research with young people with a learning disability and/or autism, there is little written about navigating the institutional processes as a doctoral researcher. This paper reports on a PhD study that embraced a participatory action research approach with young people with autism and/or learning disability. It examines and critiques the possibilities of participatory and co-research approaches and the constraints of institutional ethical processes. Drawing on the philosophical framework of epistemic injustice, it offers a reflective account of how university processes and ethics procedures could undermine the co-researcher roles held by the young people. Ethical frameworks rely largely on deficit views of young people with learning disabilities and/or autism, often positioning them as vulnerable, incapable and in need of protection. This paper argues that while ethical procedures are there to keep everyone in the research safe from experiencing harm, sometimes they result in exclusions, reinforcing of stereotypes and distorting power dynamics in participatory research. This paper contributes to debates on research governance and promotes the reimagining of ethics processes which recognise young people with autism or learning disabilities as capable and epistemically competent contributors to knowledge.
Inclusive education is widely established as a normative principle across European education systems. However, its effective implementation remains uneven when schools encounter forms of diversity that fall outside stabilised diagnostic categories. Drawing on qualitative analysis of narratives from 224 families of students aged 3-18 with rare diseases in Spain, this study examines how low prevalence and high heterogeneity function as a systemic stress test for inclusive education. Using a Delphi-validated questionnaire and reflexive thematic analysis of 2,093 textual fragments, the study focuses on organisational conditions shaping school responses. Findings reveal recurring tensions, including contingent inclusion dependent on individual actors, diagnostic invisibility linked to limited organisational consolidation, divergence between curricular adaptation and relational belonging, and the role of family-mediated advocacy. Families also articulate an implicit model of an 'ideal school', characterised by stable, anticipatory, and structurally embedded support systems. The study proposes conceptualising rarity not only as an epidemiological condition but as a political-organisational category enabling evaluation of the structural embeddedness of inclusive principles. Advancing inclusion requires organisational infrastructures capable of sustaining complex diversity without repeated negotiation or family-driven activation of rights.
Given the growing need perceived by Physical Education (PE) teachers and future PE teachers for specific training to implement inclusive education, this systematic review aims to assess the influence of inclusive education training programmes for current and future PE teachers. Following the PRISMA guidelines and the PICO design, a search was conducted in four major databases in Social Sciences and Education (ERIC, Web of Science, ProQuest, and Scopus) to identify articles published up to 10 August 2024, selecting relevant studies that addressed the effects of different inclusive education training programmes on self-efficacy, attitudes, and/or perceptions towards inclusive teaching. The results indicated that participation in training programmes, workshops, and courses significantly improved, in most cases, the self-efficacy, attitudes, and perceptions towards inclusive education of active and future PE teachers. More specifically, training programmes with contact or direct experiences with individuals with disabilities appear most successful in enhancing competence in inclusive educational settings. This study emphasises the importance of incorporating specialised training along with practical and pedagogical experiences into teacher education programmes to enhance preparedness for inclusive PE.
This study, part of the international ScopeSEND study, addresses the limited comparative research on how divergent SEND policies in England and Ireland are experienced by stakeholders. Using key policy indicators from the ScopeSEND framework and framed by Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Model and the Input-Process-Output framework, thematic analysis of 14 semi-structured interviews with practitioners, caregivers and children with SEND revealed that both systems are perceived as high-demand and difficult to navigate, limiting equitable support. Outcomes in both countries were found to often depend on the capacity of individual staff and schools to enact policy effectively. The comparative analysis yielded two specific key learnings for policy reform. First, lessons from Ireland suggest that mainstream placement alone does not guarantee inclusion, emphasising that policy initiatives risk failure when in-school processes and supports fall short. Second, while centralised, needs-based funding models, like Ireland's Special Education Teaching Allocation, may successfully reduce bureaucracy and improve responsiveness compared to England's Education Health Care plan process, the study also highlights that process-level challenges in Ireland underscore that flexibility must be coupled with skilled, well-supported staff. Overall, the study suggests that England should consider adopting centrally allocated, needs-based funding while strengthening the human infrastructure of inclusion across the SEND continuum.
The field of special education faces many challenges related to unclear professional roles, limited professional visibility, and difficulties in translating research evidence into practice. While special educators in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina are relatively well integrated into the education sector, their role remains insufficiently recognised within health and social welfare systems. This study examined how special educators in these countries perceive their professional roles, competencies, and key challenges. Using a mixed-methods approach, data were collected from 237 special educators through an online survey distributed via professional associations. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and Kruskal-Wallis tests with post-hoc comparisons, while qualitative responses were examined using thematic and content analysis. Findings indicate substantial role ambiguity, despite participants emphasising the importance of their contributions across the lifespan and within educational, health, and social care settings. Although participants generally perceived themselves as competent, they reported insufficient knowledge in specific areas, particularly assistive technologies. Qualitative findings also revealed limited recognition and professional visibility within institutional systems. These results highlight the need to strengthen and better define the professional identity of special educators within multisectoral service systems.
International and national education policies emphasise special education as a key strategy to foster inclusive education for all. In 2024, Norway implemented its new Education Act aimed at reshaping special education to foster a more inclusive educational community. This paper compares how special education is described in the Education Act of 1998 and 2024, and examines who sets the premises for how it takes form within school settings. To conduct this analysis, Basil Bernstein's theoretical and methodological framework is applied, particularly his concept of classification. The findings suggest that pupils and parents have less influence over how special education takes form in schools, whereas municipalities and the Educational-Psychological Service play a more significant role in setting these premises. Based on these findings, the paper discusses how an awareness of distribution of power, as characterised in the Education Act of 2024, can be used to support the realisation of inclusive education for all.
Special education practice involves high emotional and relational demands, and research shows that special educational needs teachers (SEN teachers) are at particular risk of stress, burnout and attrition. Despite this, occupational strain and self-care receive limited attention in SEN teacher education in Norway. This article examines how these themes are addressed through a document analysis of course descriptions and intended learning outcomes from 16 universities and university colleges, comprising 250 courses. The findings show that occupational strain, burnout and self-care are largely absent from formal course documentation, and that no courses explicitly address these issues. Even in courses focusing on professional role enactment, supporting literature related to self-care is minimal. The article discusses these findings and argues that SEN teacher education should place greater emphasis on preparing future practitioners for the emotional demands inherent in their work.
This report examines a semester-long English as a Foreign Language (EFL) intervention involving nine neurodivergent adult learners (aged 22-40) enrolled in a specialised education programme. Over twelve two-hour sessions, the course combined multimodal, digitally supported instruction with a final creative task in which students synthesised semester topics into personal narratives that served as lyrics for original songs. Using the generative AI tool Suno, these lyrics were transformed into songs in learners' preferred musical genres. Drawing on classroom observation, researcher field notes, and informal feedback from the classroom support professional, the report explores how AI-assisted audio generation may support expressive language development, engagement, and self-representation in neurodivergent adult learners with complex support needs. Observations suggested that the structured sequence helped students move from isolated vocabulary to short, personalised statements, while the final musical output appeared to increase participation, ownership, and motivation. Although linguistic production remained highly scaffolded and context-dependent, the intervention indicates that generative AI may function as an expressive bridge between limited language resources and more socially relevant forms of communication. The study highlights the potential of AI-assisted audio generation to facilitate English expression in specialised adult education contexts.
Special educational didaktik* is a relatively recent and still underexplored concept - a didaktik voice situated at the intersection of special education and general didaktik theory. First introduced in 2020, the concept has since been further developed. Special educational didaktik is defined as the didaktik approach that is applied in a qualified and ethically responsive manner when general didaktik is considered insufficient to ensure children's right to both support and challenges within preschool teaching. In this regard, special educational didaktik should be understood not as separate from, or fundamentally different to, the general education and didaktik of preschool, but rather as complementing and working in close relation to them. The present article seeks to conceptualise special educational didaktik by delineating it from related concepts, exploring boundary crossings, clarifying its core dimensions, and discussing implications for future research and theory development. *We use the German word 'didaktik' (with use of the letter k), which is common in the didaktik tradition in continental Europe and the Nordic countries, and not the English word 'didactics'.
This study explores how children with intellectual disabilities, ADHD, or autism spectrum disorder, together with their parents, experience schooling shaped by persistent gaps in support. Drawing on interviews with eight children (aged 9-12) and their parents, the analysis draws on symbolic interactionism to explore how meaning is constructed in relation to everyday school practices. Two overarching patterns were identified: (1) recurring struggles to access and maintain adequate support across schooling, and (2) insufficient disability-specific accommodations. These gaps undermine both educational and social inclusion, producing instability and shifting responsibility from schools to families. Children emphasised the need for predictable structures, comprehensible routines, and supportive teacher relationships, while parents describe continuous advocacy, emotional strain, and organisational barriers. The study highlights the importance of inclusive practices that are stable, responsive, and co-constructed through ongoing dialogue with families. By analysing these perspectives jointly, the study offers a relational understanding of how support gaps shape everyday school life and highlights the need for stable, responsive, and co-constructed forms of support that are developed collaboratively with families.
Investigations into the inclusivity of national educational systems are of uttermost importance for three major reasons: 1) As an alternative to compare the quality of national educational systems in terms of educational achievement alone, 2) In providing opportunities to study how educational discourses interact with global changes and the local context and 3) To analyse facilitators and hindrances to inclusion. The investigation of the inclusivity of national educational systems is a complex endeavour in need of a thorough methodological discussion. Methodology is defined as involving both theoretical points of departure as well as concrete methods. The paper discusses such issues at the level of national educational policies and practices. A tentative investigation of the inclusivity of the Swedish educational system is used as an illustration. Several conclusions are drawn, e.g.: 1) Explicit definitions of inclusion are necessary, 2) The choice of policy to study is crucial, 3) It is important that national and cross-national agencies (e.g. OECD), gathers data about inclusivity but researchers have to analyse their work critically, 4) It is hard to find reliable and valid data regarding several aspects of inclusion, especially when inclusion is understood as the building of communities.
Inclusion as a concept is still under debate. Since there is no established consensus among researchers about the definition of inclusion, the concept merits further exploration. As key stakeholders, special education teachers are often assumed to be committed to inclusive education. Their definitions, values and attitudes regarding inclusion are described as a prerequisite for successful inclusive education. While there are studies exploring different school professionals' perspectives of inclusion, research specifically pertaining to special education teachers is still scarce. The aim of this study is to investigate the definitions of inclusion from students studying to become special education teachers, with a particular focus on the dilemmas inherent in these definitions. The study is based on an abductive approach in which the dilemma perspective serves as the overarching theoretical framework. In this qualitative study, we collected 86 self-reports on students' definitions of inclusion. The reports were analysed with thematic analysis. Three themes were identified regarding how students studying to become special education teachers defined inclusion: pupils' experiences of belonging, teachers' understanding of pupils' needs and differences as decisive, and participation and equity. The findings show that students studying to become special education teachers hold a varied and expansive view of inclusion.
Ableism, defined as societal expectations of ability that foster the idea of the able body as the norm against that of disability, shapes dominant standards influencing all areas of life, including educational institutions. At classroom level, these standards can be in rigid expectations of ability in lesson planning. This study investigates ableist thinking which emerges from class and support teachers' arguments regarding the (im)possibility of connecting lesson planning for the class and individual education plans (IEPs) for students with disabilities in 17 primary-school classes in Italy. Teachers' arguments were categorised into three types (i.e. ableist, accommodation, and universal argumentation) through a type-building qualitative content analysis, and then related to secondary information (e.g. type of objectives defined in the IEP, parents' arguments). The types are illustrated in detail through exemplary classes, while the role of IEPs as central tools for providing the necessary support to students identified as having special educational needs (SEN) within the context of inclusive education is discussed in relation to the reproduction of ableist thinking.
Feeling included at school influences a child's development positively. Inclusion encompasses the aspects of emotional inclusion, social inclusion and academic self-concept. While these three aspects of inclusion influence students' engagement, self-esteem, learning and academic performance, research lacks clarity on inclusion concerning special education needs (SEN). Therefore, this study aimed to examine possible differences in the perception of inclusion due to low and high SEN from the students' and teachers' perspectives. Data from 74 inclusive classes, with 1374 students (3rd to 6th year, 279 low, 49 high SEN), was analysed, using the Perception of Inclusion Questionnaire (PIQ). Structural Equation Modelling revealed significant differences between students with high SEN and their peers without SEN across all aspects of inclusion (both perspectives). Teachers rated all aspects of inclusion of high SEN students significantly lower compared to low SEN students and students without SEN. High SEN students themselves rated their social inclusion significantly lower compared to low SEN students. Low SEN students rated their academic self-concept significantly lower compared to students without SEN. Students and teachers differed in their perceptions based on the SEN level. Effects ranged from r. =-.056 to r. =-.513. The study contributes to understanding disparities in inclusive education.
Thirty years after the Salamanca Declaration, teachers' attitudes remain a key factor in the success of inclusive education. Research indicates that inclusion is often perceived as a greater challenge in secondary education compared to primary education, particularly in terms of institutional implementation. This study systematically reviews 28 articles to examine secondary school teachers' attitudes towards inclusive education and the predictors shaping these attitudes, following the PRISMA guidelines. The findings reveal that secondary school teachers hold diverse and often ambivalent attitudes towards inclusion, with many perceiving it as an entitlement for certain student groups rather than an unconditional human right. Key predictors include systemic and professional challenges, such as resource availability, teacher training, and the type of student needs. These insights inform practical strategies and research directions aimed at fostering inclusive communities in secondary education.
