As a result of Germany's accession to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2009), the federal states have committed to ensuring that all students have the opportunity to attend regular schools. Recognition of the UN-Convention also provides a framework for changing the learning environment of schools. The trans-disciplinary project "Environment and Inclusion" (supported by the German Ministry of Education and Montag Stiftung Jugend und Gesellschaft, Bonn) is dedicated to this challenge.

Inclusion presents many new challenges to a school. The diversity of the children and young people and their various needs need to be reflected in new learning arrangements that require new concepts of the physical environment. In the future we will need learning environments, which are able to support very different ways of learning and creating. A basic assumption of the project is that each child should find room for individual personal growth in terms of learning, life, and movement development.

The pedagogical approaches and changes that make up the framework for the future development of inclusive school buildings have been well described. A key task is currently the determination of the resulting requirements and their translation into concrete inclusive learning environments. That is the focus of this trans-disciplinary research project. The environmental requirements for an inclusive school are investigated in the context of new and renovated buildings from the perspective of education and architecture. Thus we will focus on quantitative surface requirements as well as on qualitative development criteria for inclusive environment models.

Cohen, L., Manion, L. and Morrison, K. (2007) Research Methods in Education, 6th edition, London and New York: Routledge. Montag Stiftung Urbane Räume gAG, Montag Stiftung Jugend und Gesellschaft, Bund Deutscher Architekten BDA, Verband Bildung und Erziehung (VBE) (Hrsg.) (2013): Leitlinien für leistungsfähige Schulbauten in Deutschland. Bonn und Berlin.