Inclusive education is not dead, it just articulates differently. approaches and pitfalls to the international comparison.

Abstract

CONTEXT: Over the past three decades, inclusive education has evolved into a global paradigm embedded in the policies of international organizations and reflected in major agreements such as the Salamanca Statement, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), or the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While aiming to combat discrimination, marginalization, and foster participation for all, inclusive education faces increasing political resistance and varying interpretations across cultural and national contexts. This diversity of interpretations has rendered inclusive education a fuzzy concept, posing significant challenges to international comparative educational research. APPROACH: This special issue addresses these conceptual and methodological complexities and engages with the further development of the methodology and conception of international comparative research on inclusive education. The selected contributions engage in differing ways with the question of how such research can be conducted appropriately and, thereby, focus on a specific challenge in international research on inclusive education. FINDINGS: The challenges addressed by the included contributions include the following topics: The problematisation of knowledge production regarding the dominance and unequal power relations between the Global North and the Global South, as well as the question of how participatory, dialogical, and postcolonial research approaches can manage these power relations methodologically. The use of ‘culture’ as a concept in research, considering the rarely explicitly addressed role of culture as a methodological reference point in international inclusion research. The use of ‘participation’ to measure inclusion in early childhood education, and the need for, but also the difficulty of achieving, a shared understanding in international research. The challenge of translatability in systematic reviews and the need for transparent and critically reflexive review processes embedded therein. The terminological ambiguity in ‘diagnostics’ and ‘assessment’ (as central concepts in the context of inclusive education), and the challenge of translating terminologies in other languages without losing their local and language-bound context. CONCLUSION: The included contributions give a detailed insight into research practices and highlight the complexity of doing international comparative research on inclusive education. On the one hand, comparative research should be aware of topic-specific issues such as the challenge to deal with normative debates surrounding inclusive education, its impetus for social change or the change of power relations. On the other hand, awareness of general challenges in international comparative research is needed, such as translation of terminologies between different contexts, or varying methodologies and research practices.