This paper will describe the background of an empirical study on core aspects of the implementation of educational inclusion or integration, the methodological approach of the study concentrating on the analysis of interviews, and it will present typical findings. The challenges of inclusive education demand well prepared teachers with positive attitudes towards the aims of integration, with a profound knowledge about the necessities and possibilities of integration, and able to cope with the intricacy to realize them. These goals are promoted by the UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid) that offers an international Master course on "Educational Treatment of Diversity." As part of their methodological training, the participants in this course have to administer a questionnaire assessing the opinions and attitudes of people as regards the educational approach of inclusion. Afterwards each of the students has to interview one person ready to offer relevant information on the issue of inclusive education, who previously had filled in the questionnaire. Thus, the quantitative questionnaire results (more than 6000 data sets from Spain) can be complemented by the results of a computer-supported qualitative analysis of 50 interviews available for analysis at the present time. Since these interviews were semi-structured by a guideline following the main topics of the questionnaire, the design allows to differentiate the questionnaire results in terms of frequency information by more profound information about the following seven main themes: - Attitudes towards educational inclusion - Possibilities of inclusion - Suitable types of inclusion - Advantages of educational inclusion - Possibilities/Necessities of improvement of inclusion - Educational treatment of students of different cultures (immigrants) - Educational treatment of gifted students This approach reverses the usual sequence of qualitative and quantitative components in the design of empirical social studies, that is, here a representative quantitative study is followed by a small-scale, case-centered qualitative study.

The interview data (1) offer information that helps to better interpret the meaning of the rating and frequency findings from the questionnaire data. The findings from the interviews (2) supply new aspects of educational inclusion from the interviewees' point of view. In addition, (3) in the interview situation the respondents are free to point out clearly inter-relations between the main themes, that is to express how their opinion as regards one particular aspect depends on the actual state of affairs in other areas of the educational domain, whereas the questionnaire format limits them to rate the item statements as they are and in the given order.

The presentation of results will show the respondents' opinions about the main themes of the interview ordered into categories and compare these findings to the results from the questionnaire analysis. The focus will be on the additional value of qualitative data determined by the profoundization design described above. We expect to receive information no only as regards the rating of critical issues, for instance positive or negative attitudes of teachers towards inclusive information, but additionally descriptions of the nature of these attitudes and reasons for them. These aspects would be of particular importance for future teacher training and interventions in inclusive school settings.