Higher education (HE) becomes more accessible for a student population with diverse identity characteristics due to the heightened attention in (inter)national legislation, research, and debates (Ainscow, 2020). The growing diversity in the student population begs the question on how to provide quality education for every student in HE: how to design inclusive higher education (IHE) (Rendon, 2006). This is shown in our general definition of IHE as providing high-quality education for every student: giving everyone the opportunity to thrive, realize their capabilities, engage, and contribute to the learning journey of others (Ainscow, 2015), aka full participation (Sturm et al., 2011). To create IHE, HE-teachers play a crucial role (O’Shea, 2016). However, according to Stentiford and Koutsouris (2020) and Shaeffer (2019) the variation in conceptualizations of inclusion that exist impacts HE-teachers unclarity about what inclusive learning environments and inclusive teaching practices are. Furthermore, HE-teachers are unaware about the necessary didactical skills to implement inclusion (Cotàn et al., 2021). To empower HE-teachers in having self-efficacy to teach inclusively, researchers and policy-makers need knowledge on HE-teachers understanding of, and needs for implementing, inclusion. A systematic literature review on HE-teachers’ understanding of inclusion as researched in academic studies between 2011 and 2021 underlines the lack of knowledge on HE-teachers’ understanding of, barriers for, and approaches to inclusivity (Korthals Altes et al., …). Additionally, it concluded that the HE-institution’s structure and policies heavily influences the space HE-teachers have to enact inclusive practices, which makes it important to conduct research in specific contexts. The importance of the (HE-institution) context, was reiterated in a study at one HE-institution in the Netherlands, here HE-teachers’ understanding of inclusion was analyzed through data from a survey, individual interviews, and focus group interviews (Goei et al., 2021). In this presentation we will present the results from these two studies, and a third study on HE-teachers’ and students’ understanding of and experiences with inclusion at four respective HE-institutions in the Netherlands and Flanders. In this last study, we conducted a document analyses on the D&I policies at the HE-institution and spread a survey on experiences with inclusive practices using CIT. CIT focusses on specific incidents (Flanagan, 1954), which lends itself to the subjective, and broad topic of inclusion. The collection of these three studies gives an overview of HE-teachers’ understanding of inclusion in general and of HE-teachers’ understanding of and experiences with inclusion in the specific context of the Netherlands and Flanders.

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