This paper deals with the situation of students in Austrian and German inclusive schools. Since the gradual realization of the programmatic top-down process to implement ‘inclusive education’ in regular schools, multiprofessional teams (e.g. teacher, special ed teacher, guidance team) enlarged (Florian 2015) – for example by the diffuse role of the so-called ‘school assistants’ (Sharma & Salend 2016). Therefore, students’ school and classroom practice are affected by means of differentiation on staff level. While educational research mainly focuses on the role of teachers and on collaboration, the acting of students within this professionalized framework and within the spatial setting of schools stays in the dark. In order to judge, whether (para)professional roles serve as a relevant factor for the students’ learning in school, the perspective of students gains importance within research contexts. Not only are students receivers of support within educational settings, but also are they active producers of social practices within educational organizations. Hence, social action in school is interwoven with and influenced by student’s orientation on school and learning. The implicitly inscripted rules gets visible. In this paper the process of students’ agency in school – before the backdrop of (para)professional measures – is analyzed by using spatial theory. In order to reconstruct agency approaches of spatial theory by Pierre Bourdieu (1992) are consulted. Due to Bourdieu, physical space in its structure is an expression of social space, hence a materialized form of historical and powerful social confrontations. So, appropriated space is one of the sites where power is asserted – in an invisible form. In order to approach the students’ perspective on education and learning in school (and the power structures embedded within this framework, which might lead to inclusion/exclusion), the practices within appropriated spaces are to be reconstructed. For the comparison of the student’s appropriation of space within a framework of assistance in German and Austrian schools, findings of the project “Assistance from the Perspective of Students” are presented. The study has been conducted in Austrian (Linz) and German (Freiburg) schools and contains group discussions, picture-based school tours and interviews with students from primary and comprehensive schools. To analyze the field data the praxeological methodology of the “documentary method” (Bohnsack 2014) was used, in order to reconstruct the orientations which implicitly give insight into the appropriation of space within a professional outline. The presentation shows selected sequences which illustrate students’ agency.

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