This paper reports on a research project which considers the teaching and learning that takes place in all classrooms, including teachers’ understandings of their practice. It builds on our previous research (Black-Hawkins, Florian and Rouse 2007) in which we examined ways in which some schools are able to develop strategies to raise the achievement of all their children, whilst safeguarding the inclusion of those who are more vulnerable to exclusion and other forms of marginalisation. This second stage of our research makes classroom activities the focus of our work, whilst maintaining attention on understanding the relationship between achievement and inclusion for all children. Its key concern is with pedagogy, and specifically on the development of a deeper knowledge of inclusive pedagogy. Our understanding of pedagogy draws on Alexander’s (2004: 11) definition as, ‘the act of teaching together with its attendant discourse’ which involves ‘what one needs to know, and the skills one needs to command, in order to make and justify the many different kinds of decisions of which teaching is constituted’ (ibid.). Our conceptualisation of inclusive pedagogy sets out to challenge traditional notions of teaching children, identified as having special educational needs, which argue that such children necessarily require something ‘different from’ or ‘additional to’ that which is ordinarily available. Rather, our concern is ‘less with what is “different from” or “additional to” […], and more on challenging complacency about what is “generally available”’ (Florian and Kershner, 2009). Similarly, our work suggests that teaching strategies that are considered to be successful for children identified as having particular categories of special needs and/or disabilities also often assist the learning of many other children who have not been so identified, (Florian, 2007). Hence we would argue that teachers who use an inclusive pedagogy as the framework in which they ‘make and justify’ their classroom decisions provide not only a more just and equitable approach, but also a more effective one, to support the achievements of all children in their classes. Three main questions shape the study. • What teaching strategies are effective in supporting the achievement of all children, including those identified as having special educational needs? • What are the effects of these selected teaching practices on the participation and achievement of all children? • How can examples of inclusive pedagogy in action be articulated in ways that are useful to other teachers and supportive of their practice?

We have spent extended time in two primary schools: both are highly inclusive in terms of their pupil intake. We have built on our previous methodological approaches to expand the Framework of Participation (see Black-Hawkins, et al., 2007) to enable us to focus on classroom practice. To do so we drew on earlier work (Rouse, 2008) which considers what teachers ‘know’, ‘believe’ and ‘do’ in terms of their inclusive classroom practices and the nature of the interconnections between each of these three key aspects of their day to day classroom activities. The modified Framework guided the collection and analysis of evidence from observations of fourteen classes. These in turn shaped subsequent extended interviews with the teachers concerned. Our interest throughout has been to examine in detail examples of the teachers’ inclusive pedagogy in practice: that is, how and why they make the decisions and take the actions that they do.

Hagger and McIntyre (2006: 33) argue that, whilst over time teachers develop a vital ‘craft knowledge’ to supports these complex and multi-faceted decision-making processes, it is not straightforward for teachers to articulate this ‘craft’ to others. The purpose of our research is to encourage teachers to articulate their inclusive pedagogy in their own words (and not ours) by drawing on their successful classroom experiences. Thus, in this paper we present a preliminary analysis of the observations and interviews and consider the extent to which we have successfully identified and ‘captured’ examples of the teachers’ craft knowledge of inclusive pedagogy. We consider the relationship between this emergent craft knowledge and the literature on inclusive practice as a way of articulating what counts as evidence of an inclusive pedagogy and an inclusive approach to teaching from the ethos, culture, practices and artefacts that characterise the classroom.