Research that seeks to describe how inclusive teaching can be conducted needs to take students' perspectives as a starting point, Kiki Messiou argues that it’s “a manifestation of being inclusive” (Messiou, 2006, p. 9). Furthermore, Messiou and Mel Ainscow (2017) argues that “students’ views can add a distinctive perspective for developing changes in learning and teaching that go well beyond traditional views of effective practice” (ibid, p.5). Hence, they state that students’ perspectives can lead to changes in understandings and practices which in turn can help to facilitate the development of more inclusive approaches in schools (ibid). In line with this argument, students' experiences of inclusive teaching constitute the starting point of this current dissertation project.

Within the field of inclusive education inclusion can be defined as “broad” or “narrow” (Ainscow, et. al, 2020). A narrow perspective focus on inclusion of specific student groups i.e. students in need of special support, in mainstream school education. A broad view, on the other hand, focuses on how schools make use of pluralism among students in a school for all (ibid). This study connects to this broader view. Ainscow & Messiou (2017) state that a broad understanding of inclusion presupposes that the school eliminates exclusionary processes which depend on ethnicity, social class, religion, gender and perceived abilities (ibid). Accordingly, this can be described as an intersectional perspective on inclusion, based on how several forms of inequalities and discrimination are connected over time and in different contexts (UNESCO, 2019).

Inclusive education is in this current dissertation project understood through the lens of didactics. Alexander von Oettingen (2010), who bases his ideas within the continental general didactic tradition (Allgemeine Pädagogik), state that "without didactics there is no opportunity for participation or emancipation because life itself does not teach, it socializes" (ibid, p. 137, my translation). von Oettingen describes school as an artificial place where students can take a step away from "reality" and go beyond taken for granted ideas regarding themselves and the world. Students might be limited by social prejudice and discrimination in everyday life, but through general didactics in teaching students can be offered an inclusive situation in school. Oettingen’s ideas has inspired to the idea that inclusive education needs to be described and understood in didactic terms.

In this study, to be able to study inclusive education from a student perspective, phenomenology is used. According to Edmund Husserl phenomenology is about going "back to the things themselves" (Husserl, 1969). The basic idea within this philosophical way of thinking is that the world can only be understood if it is described on the premises of the things, how they appear pre-reflective, in themselves. The ontological starting point is that the world is lived and that it appears to humans through and within their direct experiences, in actual situations, in an environment which includes other human beings. The epistemological consequence of such an ontology is that the world can be understood only through human experience (Bengtsson, 1998).

To conclude, the aim of the current dissertation project is to describe teachers’ inclusive teaching with a phenomenological approach, from students’ perspectives and to use general didactic theories to analyze these descriptions. The scope is relevant to European educational research as it provides an opportunity to discuss and formulate the work regarding diversity in education and educational research with a “critical edge” (Ainscow & Messiou, 2017) and with didactical language. Hence my ambition is to explore how teachers in teaching can work in new ways and with their professional didactic language for societal change.

A methodological consequence of the study's phenomenological starting point is that methods were chosen based on flexibility, intuitiveness and mobility to provide access to the dynamic, lived worlds of students, where the phenomenon manifests itself (Bengtsson, 1998). Furthermore, a motive was that the phenomenon would be given the opportunity to emerge in varied ways. In the study two methods were chosen; free-text questionnaires (N:547 students) and interviews (individual and focus group). In the interviews, a total of 20 students participated, resulting in 11 hours of recorded audio material. With a phenomenological approach it is central that the phenomenon is given the opportunity to emerge so that its nuances can show themselves in a varied way, therefore strategic selection was made. Four schools were chosen to include a broad variation concerning geographic location of the school (big city, suburb, countryside), composition of upper secondary programs (study and vocational preparation). Furthermore, parents' educational background and migration experience, as well as grades and result levels were considered in the selection of schools. During the fieldwork the free-text questionnaires were conducted in the beginning/end of an ordinary lesson through an online tool. Before visiting the classes, teachers were asked to prepare the students for the visit. During the visit the study was presented, and the students were offered to complete the survey on a computer or their smartphone. At the end of the survey the students could sign up for an interview. Most students signing up were girls in study preparation programs, one explanation to this might be that I as a researcher reflected the same identity which resulted in student self-exclusion (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). Comprehensive efforts were made to reach boys in vocational preparation programs, but without success. In total, 16 girls and 4 boys participated in the interviews, all from study preparation programs. The material was analyzed using Speigelberg’s (1982) seven steps phenomenological analysis. Speigelberg's method should not be seen as a fixed analysis model but as a description of the various steps that are prominent in a phenomenological analysis. It enables both researchers and the (critical) reader to follow how the phenomenological approach is applied. The analysis program NVivo was used to sort and thematize the material as well as to try out and retry the different themes emerging.

Three overarching themes emerged in the analysis: Person, Interaction and Action. The first theme, Person, is constituted by descriptions of how the teacher presents their personalities, as it was expressed by one of the students: "if the teacher is a human being, then I can also be a human being". Teachers who for example talk about themselves, can admit mistakes, and have a strong commitment to their subject creates an open and committed atmosphere. Teachers can be seen as a didactic subject who, through their being, are part of both the didactic content and of the didactic method with the aim to create inclusion. Within the second theme of Interaction, aspects emerge that relate to the interaction between the teacher and the students (Bingham & Sidorkin, 2004). Within this theme, students emphasize the importance of an ongoing communication, that the teacher listens and understands, and that students are given the opportunity to have influence over the teaching. The importance of teachers seeing all students, for example by learning their names or saying “hello” in the corridor was a common description. The third theme Action includes conscious actions that the teacher does to create inclusion. Such as actively stopping violations, an aware use of language, broad representativeness in the teaching content, choices regarding group divisions, varying teaching methods and extra help for students in need of special support. Actions like these are often traditionally described as didactic work that contribute to inclusion, this study suggest however that didactic work concerning inclusive teaching also needs to include the teacher’s person and interaction. In my paper and in the presentation, I will elaborate on these themes and relate them to earlier research regarding inclusion theories on general didactics.

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