The education of children with disabilities has been one of the most controversial educational issues. Going back in time, children with disabilities were generally excluded from schooling. Even when their right to education was recognized, they were educated in special rather than mainstream schools. A number of historical developments, for example the rise of the social model in the UK, the Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration of the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1948; 1959) initiated the move against segregation on the basis of disability. Integration emerged to respond to the increasing calls for educating children together in the mainstream school, while at the same time meeting their individual ‘special educational needs’. This new orientation enabled a significant number of children with disabilities to be educated alongside their peers in mainstream schools as long as they were considered, by specialists, able to do so (Lipsky & Gartner, 1997).

Soon, the policy of integration was forcefully criticized by sociologists (Tomlinson, 1982). It was clear that integration was just spatial; schools did not change substantially (e.g. teaching approaches, curriculum). Children were now being excluded inside the school premises (Dyson, 1997). Alongside came the debate regarding the rise of new kinds of disabilities under the guise of ‘special educational needs’, sentencing to failure children on regards of gender, race, religion and social status (Gillborn & Mirza, 2000). Theorists, researchers and parents argued that integration did not meet the needs of all children. Within this context, the ideology of inclusive education emerged, and it was initially defined in the Salamanca Statement (UNESCO, 1994).

Since 1994, inclusive education has been central in debates among theorists, researchers, and practitioners. Its proponents suggest that inclusive education is about equity (Gale, 2000), respect to diversity (Ainscow & Sandill, 2010) and citizenship (Vlachou, 2004). They argue that inclusive schools follow flexible curricula and provide quality education to all students, without excluding them on the basis of disability. Although inclusive education is a radical approach, promising progress for all children and combating exclusion, the legacy of individualized special education, provided in special schools and in settings implementing integration policies, is still guiding policy making and generates a number of counter-arguments to the ideology of inclusive education. Farell (2000) informs us of the argument that inclusive education is an unsustainable educational ideal on the grounds that research under inclusive lenses has not given convincing results.

Thirty years after the Salamanca Statement, inclusive education is now at the international, and European proclamations (e.g., United Nations, 2006; European Commission, 2010), but policy and practice at national level is often far from inclusion. Literature on inclusive education has increased substantially over the years, covering both theoretical and practical aspects, albeit the debate of ‘inclusionists’ and ‘special educationists’ (Allan, 2014) still prevails. This is why it is crucial to examine how researchers have approached the issue, whether the focus of research has changed at all over the years, and if future research could add more to our understanding and praxis of inclusive education.

Within this framework, our research questions were formulated as follows: (a) how has the rhetoric on inclusive education developed over the years? (b) to what extent does inclusive education research inform inclusive education theory and practice?

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