Drawing upon some of our data and discussions in a number of European projects on inclusion and intercultural education and on empirical studies on the development of innovative collaboration working towards inclusion in recent years this paper will discuss some of the conditions especially for the development of more reflective tools to enhance the development in practise and for the practitioners. The responsibility for learning and well-being in school is first relying on the professions especially when pupils are in transition between learning environments and in danger of exclusion. Hence, inclusion, as education can be seen as “… contributing to and organising the transition of children, young people and adults from one psychosocial status to another”.

No doubt many researcher are met with the demand for tools, especially hands-on tools or devices to show how to organise inclusive, intercultural schools, classrooms and communities. I our Danish National Centre for Inclusive (NVIE) for as well as in other centres, such as Centre for Inclusion and Exclusion in Manchester such reflective tool development has been organized since the first guidelines and handbooks set up already by UNESCO following the Salamanca Declaration. This paper discusses some of the important experiences and findings that can be summarized in general from tools serving as reflective media for the development of practise. We will have a special focus upon our own developed tools in DNCIP/NVIE, some of which have already been presented to and discussed within Network 20 and upon one of the most comprehensive tools, the Index of Inclusion, by Mel Ainscow and Tony Booth.

The study includes empirical studies using the tools from many perspectives from surveys as well as a narrative approaches. Attention is given to the aspects of the relation between professional innovative development of competences and professional change collaborating towards inclusion in its wider sense encompassing the school, preschool, families and local communities. The perspectives will be discussed further at the presentation using the concept of ‘ tools for innovative professional collaboration on pupil participation in communities of practise’ (Wenger)  as a way of interpreting and evaluating the practise development of the teachers’ and other professionals’ and its effects on the pupils’ and other actors’ participation in social and cultural communities and as a possible framework for understanding how future reflective tools for  teachers, preschool teachers, parents and governors may be developed in and around the pre-school, school, and after school activities with perspectives to the European context.     

Booth, T and Ainscow, M: Index for Inclusion, developing learning and participation in schools, (3rd Edition) CSIE, UK 2011 Andy Højholdt: Den tværprofessionelle praktikker, Hans Reitzels forlag 2009 Bent Madsen: Inclusion as a risky business for the professionals and the excluded, conference paper 2005. John Quicke: Curriculum for life, Schools for a democratic learning society, Open University Press 1999. Etienne Wenger: Communities of practise, Cambridge University Press, 1998. Yvonne Csányi and John Willumsen et al.: Curriculum and Manual on Inclusion for Teacher Education in Hungary, Ministry of Children Ministry of social affairs, Hungary, Budapest 2009 John Willumsen: Innovative inclusive and intercultural Education and thedevelopment of competences within Teacher Education? Paper 2006. Christian Quvang &John Willumsen: Challenges for the inclusive teacher? Report. DNCIP 2007. Christian Quvang &John Willumsen: Innovative co-operation between teachers and experts promoting inclusion, report DNCIP 2009. John Willumsen: Cross professional competences for inclusion, diversity and urban education, Berlin 2011. Quvang, Christian & Willumsen, John: Cross professional competences for inclusion, diversity and sustainability towards Education and Development for All, Paper ECER 2012. Quvang, Christian & Willumsen, John: Promoting innovative and creative cross professional Competences for Inclusion, Diversity and Sustainability – challenges to educational research, Paper ECER 2013Quvang, Christian & Willumsen, John: Promoting and developing innovative cross professional collaboration for Inclusion, Diversity and Sustainability for the future? Paper ECER 2014