Arnoves (2012) decribes a dialectical relationship between the global and local practice: “what would appear to be increasingly similar education agendas – regional, national, and local responses also vary” (Arnove, 2012). This dialectic might be one of the reasons why inclusive education is described as "traveling", "fuzzy" or "slippery concept" (Artiles & Dyson, 2005, p. 43). Such concepts are characterized by the fact that they have to be taken up at the national and local level in different historically developed, culturally distinct and normatively and legally based educational systems and translated and transformed into practice. This paper is going to focus on the intertwining of international, national and local level in the specific and complex situation of governing the development of inclusive school systems on local level. To analyse this complex situation, I draw on the theory-method-package of Situational Analysis by Clarke (2005) which combines concepts of social worlds/arenas, discourse and power and non-human agents with the Grounded Theory Methodology. With this approach questions were raised for example about involved and silenced actors, elements of the discourse about inclusion, subjectivation of students and (special education) teachers and the processes of governance as negation in these situations. I conducted semi-structured interviews with actors of administration in two different federal states in Germany at state, local and school level as well as a number of documents. The interpretation of data followed the classic GTM as well as the mapping strategies of Situational Analysis. The results highlight the very different strategies to develop inclusive education systems in the two federal states as well as the necessity to develop possibilities for actors on local level to negotiate, develop and implement solutions for the arising problems while promoting inclusion in so far highly segregative school systems. Concluding remarks will highlight possibilities for further research regarding the situational analysis approach in comparative inclusive education research.

Arnove, R. F. (2012). Introduction: Reframing Comparative Education: The Dialectic of the Global and the Local. In R. F. Arnove, C. A. Torres & S. Franz (Ed.), Comparative Education: The Dialectic of the Global and the Local (S. 1-26). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Artiles, A., & Dyson, A. (2005). Inclusive education in the globalization age. In D. Mitchell (Ed.), Contextualizing Inclusive Education. Evaluating Old and New International Perspectives (S. 37-62). London, New York: Routledge. Clarke, A. E. (2005). Situational Analyses: Grounded Theory Mapping After the Postmodern Turn. Thousand Oacks, CA: Sage.