This paper presents preliminary findings from a Participatory Action Research (PAR) in progress which involves principals, teachers and students from five public secondary schools of Spain. The main aim of this research is to understand how secondary schools endorse educational change through bottom-up initiatives, in order to become more inclusive (Booth & Ainscow, 2002; Rambla, Ferrer, Tarabini & Verger, 2008) and improve the relationship between young people’s lives in and out-of-school (Erstad & Sefton-Green, 2013; Hyvärinen, Kangas & Krokfors, 2016). The primary environment the fieldwork is taking place in, is a working group created by an educational adviser and composed of 4 school principals, 6 teachers and occasionally 120 students of compulsory secondary education (12-16 years old). This group was created by the educational adviser because he detected that a number of teachers and principals from these schools were stimulating deep changes in their educational culture, with the objective of including every student in the schools. The participants of the group share a methodological concern on how activities based on memorization, pre-designed curriculums and hierarchical relationships between teachers and students are not successful to engage every youth in school activities. Therefore, they decided to implement changes in their organization, materials, spaces, curriculum and methodologies. However, their visions of educational inclusion are quite different and consequently they are using different mechanisms to engage students. The preliminary analysis indicates that some of these mechanisms might be reproducing or questioning the social order (Bernstein, 1995) related to social class and gender. In terms of methodology, the group has been meeting once a month for two years, participating in long-term reflexions and dialogues about why and how they implement changes. They are also carrying out common project-based learning activities and using strategies such as observations and focus groups to understand the process of educational change in their institutions better. One of the strengths of PAR is that “those involved in education can investigate their practice in order to improve it. Action research emphasizes the capacity of those outside the academy to come to understand their contexts, and to direct those understanding towards actions that will improve them” (Nofke, 2013, p. 19). Concurrently, as a researcher I am participating in the design and application of activities and strategies with the group, collecting data through interviews and participatory observations in the schools and conducting the analysis by using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

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