This symposium is based on the Integrated Project from the Framework Programmes dedicated to the analysis of schooling: INCLUD-ED. Strategies for inclusion and social cohesion in Europe from education (2006-2011). The consortium is composed by 15 universities and research centres from 14 European countries. Under this project, successful schools have been analyzed during 1 year in 6 countries, and at the moment, 6 four-year case studies are being conducted in 5 countries. The theoretical framework is based on the most relevant theories of education and social sciences, which help to explain the relationship between educational exclusion/inclusion and social exclusion/inclusion. The project acknowledges the contributions of the reproduction theories (Baudelot & Establet, Bourdieu 1979, Bowles & Gintis) which state that educational systems contribute to reproducing social stratification, but it is also based on more recent theories of social sciences (Beck 1992, Giddens 1984/2007, Habermas 1984, Sen 1995/1999, Castells et al. 1999) and education (Apple 2007, Bruner 1996, Giroux, Vygotsky) that provide elements which contribute to explain how the social agents can overcome inequalities through the definition of inclusive practices. One of the tasks of this project is the analysis of the inclusive educational practices performed by successful schools in Europe. In the last decades, the scientific community has accumulated important researches clarifying the different results between homogeneous and heterogeneous grouping. Now, international statistics are providing large scale evidences. Nevertheless, among those schools classified by international statistics as no ability grouping we have found very different practices and results that should be classified in different categories. In this project, inclusion is defined as those schools which develop the types of heterogeneous grouping and other inclusive practices that obtain successful academic achievement and coexistence. For mixture, those schools which mix students with different abilities in the same groups, but which do not have success on academic achievement or coexistence. In those schools, we have found students who are allocated in heterogeneous classrooms (without streaming), but who are marginalised from learning. The proposal responds to the question: Which inclusive educational practices are shared by inclusive successful schools? It is focused in the analysis, reflection and debate about these educational practices. We have selected successful schools with high rates of educational attainment and follow three criteria: low SES, students with minority background and good academic results comparing to other schools with the same characteristics. The results consist in the identification of 9 inclusive practices.

Includ-ed follows the critical communicative methodology, based on present developments of social sciences (Habermas 1984, p. 118), which has been successful in previous researches of the European Framework Programmes (Touraine et al 2004). A constant intersubjective dialogue takes places where researchers contribute with the knowledge of the scientific community, while the subjects bring their own voices from the beginning to the end of the research process. The analysis of successful schools has been done through 20 one-year case studies in 6 countries (Finland, Spain, Latvia, Cyprus, Hungary and the United Kingdom), 4 in each educational level (pre-primary, primary, secondary, vocational training and special education inclusive programmes) and now through 6 case studies which are conducted during 4 years in Malta, Spain, Finland, Lithuania and United Kingdom through the following techniques: 356 standardized open-ended interviews, 112 communicative observations, 32 communicative focus groups and 156 communicative daily-life stories.

This research identified nine different types of inclusive practices in successful schools selected throughout eight different EU countries. These schools had been selected because they demonstrated better academic performance when comparing to other schools with similar characteristics (low SES and culturally diverse students). Some of these practices involve inclusive forms of organization of all available human resources in the classroom and other learning spaces with heterogeneous groupings. They also involve inclusive forms of participation of families and community in their own education, school decision making, curriculum and evaluation, and children’s learning spaces. None of these successful schools implemented streaming and none of them implemented what we have defined as “mixture”. Instead, they had developed the different types of inclusive practices that have been here classified, and which can contribute to future research on educational performance.