The discussion about improving school education focusses on support for students' individual learning processes. In this context, related concepts such as individualized education, individual support of students or adaptive teaching are discussed internationally as a way to encourage students in accordance with their skills and to provide a learning culture at school that is oriented towards the individual (Carlgren, Klette, Mýrdal, Schnack & Simola, 2006; Corno, 2008; Dimenäs, Andresen, Cruickshank, Ojala & Ratzki, 2006). An individualized education is considered as a way to implement commitment to an inclusive education system following the international Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Fischer, 2014). Furthermore, in this paper, the term inclusion is used in the sense of a broader conception that refers to all dimensions of heterogeneity, such as gender, cultural and social background, and language, in addition to the inclusion of students with special educational needs (Boban & Hinz, 2008). In some federal states in Germany, individual support of students at school is required by law (Fischer, 2014; in Germany the term “Individuelle Förderung“ is used). During the implementation, the single school is of major importance and can be characterized as a "core area of quality development in education" (Fend, 2008, p. 232, emphasis in original). Accordingly, single schools were granted a certain scope of action within the frame of their autonomy, which they can use to improve their own school quality. This scope of action is intended to enable schools to react more appropriately to school-specific characteristics (ibid.).

However, empirical findings show that from an international perspective insufficient research on the implementation of individual support in schools in Germany can be observed (Dimenäs et al., 2006; Sonnenburg, in press). Existing studies explore for example teachers' perspectives on their understanding, their attitudes towards individual support, and the prerequisites for its implementation (Solzbacher, 2016; Wiebke, 2011) or focus on individual measures and instruments. In addition, there are some self-reports by schools, which only allow a school-practical insight into the realization at single schools. In this regard, it can be stated that there are hardly any studies to date that focus on the development of inclusive school concepts for individual support and can provide information about development processes of schools in this regard (see also Wischer, 2012). This article is intended to address this lack of research.

Following on from this, this study examines the school development process of a single school in Germany in the creation and implementation of an inclusive school concept for individual support. The secondary school studied is characterized by a high heterogeneity among students (e.g. a large number of students with a migration background, new students from abroad, students with diverging language skills, students with educational needs; see Hornberg, Sonnenburg & Buddeberg, 2013) that require individualized and inclusive education. First, this study investigates how the individual learning requirements of students can be taken into account within the framework of a school concept for individual support and inclusion. To this end, the core elements of the school concept are identified and research is conducted on how the school concept was adapted to the students. Second, the development of the school concept and the conditions necessary for it are examined because the analysis of school development processes is particularly important in this context. Thus, with reference to the relevance of the single school outlined above, Fend (2008) recommends "qualitative process analyses" (ibid., p. 153) at single schools.

In the following, selected results of a research project named IFoS are presented. The IFoS research project was designed as a longitudinal study over a period of four years (school year 2012/13–2015/16). The project aimed to scientifically research and accompany the development and implementation of a school concept created by an all-day school as well as the associated school development process (Hornberg et al., 2013). In line with the importance of the single school in the realization of individual support and inclusion, the project was designed as a case study at a secondary school. Due to the multi-year study period, it was possible to continuously follow and empirically accompany the school development process. Based on Scholz and Tietje (2002), the case study was designed as a multimethod study, including both quantitative and qualitative surveys. Furthermore, different perspectives were included in order to get a comprehensive picture of the case in this way: First, students from two grades (beginning with the fifth and sixth grades in the 2012/13 school year) were surveyed in writing using paper questionnaires a total of nine times at six-month intervals. In the following, only findings from the first (n=68 students) and last survey (n=166 students) are used to examine the students‘ development. Because the particular secondary schools is responsible for accepting newly arrived students from abroad, there has been a considerable increase in the number of new students in the grades studied. Second, qualitative semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with nine selected teachers of that school. In line with Meuser and Nagel's (2009) understanding of experts, teachers participating in the development school process at the secondary school investigated are due to their experiences understood as experts. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis, which is a well-known procedure to evaluate qualitative data by being transparent and by following strict rules. According to the standards of the qualitative content analysis, the relevant text passages of the expert interviews to categories were assigned using the software MAXQDA (Kuckartz 2014; Mayring, 2014). The categories were created in a deductive-inductive way, which means there were also categories formed inductively from the interview material. In addition to the other surveys, this qualitative interview study provided a comprehensive insight into the entire school development process.

The results show that the school's students are characterized by constant changes, especially a high fluctuation. This illustrates the necessity of continuous educational diagnostics for the realization of individual support and inclusion. Furthermore external impulses (e.g., social developments, legal requirements, observation in another school) had an influence on the school development process investigated. In summary, based on the interviews the following important elements of the school concept can be identified: 1) A digital tool for the documentation of the students’ learning development was developed at the school and successively implemented in all grades. In the documentation, teachers describe the competences of all their students in the core subjects (math, German, English) of classes 5 to 10 as well as their interdisciplinary competences continuously (in the lecture, further results will be presented on the instrument especially with regard to the digital use of that tool). 2) Organizational changes in teaching were implemented (e.g. 'support and challenge bands' across classes as a form of flexible differentiation in selected subjects). 3) A language support center was set up to provide targeted support for newly immigrated students without sufficient German language skills. 4) The school introduced measures for the targeted promotion of interdisciplinary skills. In summary, the developed concept was adapted to locally interlinked conditions by the school, and continously adapted to changing of the students. An essential condition is that the developed documentation tool is not used by single teachers alone, but is embedded in a pedagogical school concept and linked to other components of the concept. This proves to be beneficial for the realization of individual support and inclusion at the school level. This paper aims to discuss the implications of these findings, while also incorporating its limitations from an international perspective.

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