The ideology of an inclusive school for all is clearly embedded in Norwegian legislation and in the national curriculum. This means that every child, including those with special needs, has the right to attend school in her or his local community and that all teaching is to be carried out according to individual ability and interests.

Inclusive education at the classroom level could be described in in terms of membership, mastery, togetherness, involvement and learning (Moen, 2008) The first characteristic, membership, implies that all children, whatever their needs may be, are members of a class and natural parts of the class environment. Furthermore the children should also master the membership, something that leads to the second characteristic, mastery. School is an important institutional setting. In Norway children become part of this setting at the age of six, and they continue to be part of it for at least ten years. It is crucial that they come to master this setting. Being members of the class and mastering this membership is not sufficient. The pupils should also experience a sense of togetherness, something which is  the third characteristic. Togetherness is important in both a short-term and a long-term life perspective. The togetherness characteristic leads to the fourth, which is involvement. The involvement characteristic implies that the children are active participants, involved in their own learning by being active, committed and involved participants in on-going school activities. The concept of involvement leads to the fifth and final characteristic of inclusive education, learning. Learning here points at both social and academic skills.

In this paper presentation the focus is on the involvement characteristic. The starting point is data from a math lesson in a Norwegian primary school classroom. The data, transcribed from video-recordings, is a conversation between a teacher and her 22 pupils in her second grade class on what the number eighteen could be. The pupils offer various answers. Some are simple such as 1+1+1 and up to eighteen and other are more sophisticated such as 30-12. Parallel to offering suggestions the children also explain their answers. Within the overall theoretical framework of sociocultural theory, the conversation is interpreted in light of the notion of intersubjectivity. The research question is how can theories on intersubjectivity be helpful when it comes to understanding the involvement characteristic of a  teacher’s inclusive education?

According to Wertsch (1984), intersubjectivity exists between participants who act in the same setting when they share the same definition of the situation and they know that they share it. In literature (Matusow 2000) three levels of intersubjectivity is presented, primary, secondary and tertiary intersubjectivity.The last one focuses on semiotic medation as a tool to achieve a joint understanding. In line with this, it is claimed that intersubjectivity is achieved between people in communication (Rogoff 1990), or through a process of negotiation (Kouzilin 1990; Putney 1996). Intersubjectivity is also described as a space where the participants connect and create mutual understanding (Wink & Putney 2002). In research on intersubjectivity in education it was found that there has been a focus on intersubjectivity in teaching and learning in writing (Beck, 2006), in teaching and learning in mathematics (Lerman, 1996), and intersubjectivity between teacher and students in higher education (Murphy & Brown, 2012).. 

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