Since the 1990s, inclusion has been present in the international discourse as a guiding concept for the development of educational systems (Biewer & Schütz, 2016; Powell 2018; Zahnd, 2017). It first appeared prominently with the Salamanca Declaration (UNESCO 1994). Inclusive education in the sense of international law takes "its starting point from the rights of vulnerable and marginalized people [...], [argues] for their participation in all areas of life [...] and [aims] at a structural change of regular institutions in order to meet the diversity of conditions and needs of all users" (Biewer 2017, 204). Thus, valuating diversity and finding forms of teaching and learning sensible to all forms of diversity without excluding students is at the core of inclusive education. 

Although the demand for inclusive education has already been on the international agenda for several decades, its implementation has so far been insufficiently accomplished worldwide (Köpfer, Powell & Zahnd 2021). The (insufficient) implementation can be observed on different levels of the education system, e.g. on the level of legal and educational policy requirements, in the design of schools or also on the level of teaching. This also applies to Switzerland, which has taken up the international demands, but has not implemented inclusive education with the utmost consistency. It is evident that despite prioritizing inclusive solutions, Switzerland still adheres to the separation of mainstream and special schools (Powell 2018). Beyond these fundamental problematics in the educational system, however, fundamental problems also emerge in the implementation of inclusive teaching and thus in the creation of learning spaces that welcome all forms of diversity and enable all students to learn together – inclusive publics schools remain a desiderata in Switzerland (Moser Opitz, 2014). 

In the context of this broad problem area, this contribution focuses on first results of my field work as a PhD-student. The presented data was collected in a research project, entitled "Primary schools in the tension between inclusion and educational standards" (Wagner-Willi & Zahnd 2019), which aims to further develop inclusive teaching in Switzerland. The project is founded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and uses – besides other methodical approaches – a participatory research framework. Following the insight that the students perspective is crucial to the development of inclusive education (e.g. Buchner 2018, Florian & Beaton 2018), my dissertation is focusing on the student-perspectives collected in this project. In this context, the question is addressed to what extent the perspectives of the students can be used to identify  good practice for (inclusive) teaching. This good practice should on the one hand allow all students to participate in the learning process and on the other hand enable the social inclusion of all students. 

The project started with a research workshop for all students. During this workshop, the students are introduced to the different research methods (research diary (Wöhrer et al. 2017) and photovoice (von Unger 2014)). Likewise, the following research questions - with the dual focus of learning process and social participation – were introduced to the students as guiding questions for their research process: - Are there any situations in which you have especially enjoyed learning or in which you have especially enjoyed learning something? (focus on learning together) - Are there situations in which you especially feel comfortable in the class? (Focus on social participation) - In which situation did you have difficulties or did you not understand what you had to do? (Focus on learning together) - When are you not able to participate even though you would like to? (Focus on collaborative learning & social participation) - What learning material (assignment sheets, tasks in the book, etc.) was not clear for you to understand or was difficult for you to figure out? (Focus on collaborative learning) After the introduction to the project, the students were asked to collect data during the school day over the time span of one school year. On the basis of this data, regular (once a week to every two weeks) reflection meetings took place in small groups of 5-6 students each. In these, possible problems and irritations were worked out and the data was summarized together with me as researcher. The reflection meetings were recorded and then transcribed. In the dissertation project, the transcripts of these reflection meetings with the students are used as data for the analysis. In addition, I was engaged in participant observation in the field. The field notes from these observations were also used as data. Both – field notes and transcripts – were afterwards analyzed with Grounded Theory Methodology (Strauss & Corbin 1996). The focus, though, will be on the narratives of the students.

Based on empirical material from two classes which I accompanied during one school year each, I will show which irritations and problems are mentioned by the students and how these can be included in the further development of inclusive teaching. In particular, the data shows that the students experience a certain "lack of orientation" in everyday school life, which leads to mutual misunderstanding between students and teachers. Following Florian and Beaton (2018) as well as Buchner (2018), the first available data of the dissertation project shows the importance of students' perspectives in the further development of (inclusive) teaching. As a consequence, the dialogue between students and teachers seems to be of central importance for students to feel understood (Zahnd & Oberholzer 2022).

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