The symposium engages with the perspectives of teachers involved in various educational levels regarding inclusive education. Although every country has its cultural, social, political idiosyncrasies, which lead to different structures and practices of inclusive education (Kozleski/Artiles/Waitoller 2011), the legal obligation of the UN-Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability sets a common normative framework of expectations for the successful implementation of inclusive education in schools.

Therefore, the presentations consider the teacher training concepts and different school systems of different countries (Austria, Germany, Spain) regarding the implementation of inclusive school practice.

A multi-level perspective is generated in that some papers of the symposium consider the first phase of teacher education, while others investigate the perspectives of practicing teachers. In this way, the symposium offers an overview on actors in training and professional life. While the projects share common thematic focal points, the methodological frameworks differ.

The first paper deals with a study called PROFIL^IP(PROFILE^{For Inclusive Education}) which is a long-term study based on a mixed-methods-approach. It takes into account pre-service teachers from Austria who can choose to become a teacher either for primary education or secondary education. Inside this groups, the presenters compare two types of students, namely those who choose a training focus in inclusive education and those who chose another educational field, e.g. science.

By considering motivational aspects and relevant traits and interests of pre-service teachers, the presenters aim to identify profiles of students with a universal-diverse orientation.

The second part of the symposium also concentrates on students’ perspectives but uses a different methodological approach.

Based on the assumption that especially students in the field of special education support the idea of inclusive education on the surface, the study tries to work out the implicit structures of attitudes towards inclusive learning. Therefore, in-depth single interviews with students of special education are being used and analysed by the reconstructive method “objective hermeneutics”. The results show different aspects which influence teacher students’ attitudes towards inclusive learning and especially towards disability (Junge, Lindmeier 2017).

The third paper considers support teachers who already work in schools. The presented study concentrates on the inclusion process of this support teachers and wants to work out barriers and challenges in the work of support teachers in regular class rooms. Focus groups are used for data collection. Results show that especially a lack of time to establish ways of collaboration with colleagues and insufficient topics related to inclusion during teacher training pose a risk for barriers in the inclusion process (Sanahuja et al. 2018).

The last presentation of the symposium traces the student teachers´ attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs towards inclusive education from the beginning of teacher education until entering in the profession by a long-term and mixed-method study (Hecht et al. 2016). It illustrates those trajectories and connections over time by using a cross-sectional analysis of data. The results of the qualitative data indicating the relevance of teamwork as possible impinging factors are discussed.

Hecht, P., Niedermair, C., Feyerer, E. (2016). Einstellungen und inklusionsbezogene Selbstwirksamkeitsüberzeugungen von Lehramtsstudierenden und Lehrpersonen im Berufseinstieg – Messverfahren und Befunde aus einem Mixed-Methods-Design. Empirische Sonderpädagogik, 1, 86-102. Junge, A., Lindmeier, B. (2017). Die Entwicklung einer pädagogischen Haltung im Kontext inklusionssensibler Lehrerbildung. Zeitschrift Für Inklusion. https://www.inklusion-online.net/index.php/inklusion-online/article/view/442 Kozleski, E.B., Artiles, A.J., Waitoller, F.R. (2011). Equity in Inclusive Education. Historical Trajectories and Theoretical Commitments. In: Artiles, A.J., Kozleski, E.B., Waitoller, F.R. (eds.). Inclusive Education. Examining Equity in Five Continents. Cambridge: Harvard Education Press, 1-14. Pickl, G; Holzinger, A.; Kopp-Sixt, S. (2015). The special education teacher between the priorities of inclusion and specialization. International journal of inclusive education. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2015.1115559 Sanahuja, JM., Mas, O. & Olmos, P. (2018). El rol del profesorado de apoyo en el aula regular de un instituto de educación secundaria. Revista complutense de educación, 29(4), 1041-1057.