Icelandic education policy has a strong focus on inclusive education (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2012) and the Icelandic education system is regarded as highly inclusive with few segregated resources for students. In the project presented here, inclusive education is understood as a democratic approach to equity in education for all children where active participation of diverse students  is at the forefront (Allan, 2012). In inclusive schools, each student should feel as if they belong, take part in learning and social interaction and develop their knowledge, skills and competence (Skoglund, 2019). 

Inclusive education builds on the vision of, and the hope for, better schooling for all. The goal is to reduce segregation that excludes minorities or that groups people by gender, sexuality, social class, disability, nationality, family background or learning abilities (Ainscow, 2021). Participation, community, equity and equality are important and serve as a guiding light for teaching and learning (Artiles et al., 2011).  

Embedded in this understanding of inclusion is a shift from emphasising the source of learning difficulties or difficulties pupils encounter in school as coming from within the pupil or stemming from his/her social circumstances, to viewing the influence of the system of education or the environment as influential (UNESCO, 2017). According to this perspective, schools must be active in identifying hindrances to participation and use available resources to remove them (Loreman, 2017). The practice of teaching diverse groups of pupils  integrates professional knowledge about teaching, learning and child development, and involves an ethical and social commitment to children (Guðjónsdóttir & Óskarsdóttir, 2016).  

Transforming practice for inclusive pedagogy and practice is therefore a continuous task of school leaders and teachers to meet the diversity present in every school. Teachers are the key in this task as they are the ones who, based on their beliefs and knowledge, decide and develop the learning environment where pupils are meant to learn and work within the structures of the school system (Ainscow, 2021; Fullan & Hargreaves, 2016). 

Peder Haug (2017) maintains that all countries seem to have a gap between formulations and realizations of inclusive education. Referring to Julie Allan (2008), Haug states: “There appears […] to be deep uncertainty about how to create inclusive environments within schools and about how to teach inclusively” (Haug, 2017 p. 10).  

An Audit of the system of inclusive education in Iceland and several recent in-depth studies have shown that there is a gap between policy and practice; a lack of consensus on what inclusion means in practice; an overreliance on clinical diagnosis of students’ impairments as a precondition for the allocation of school resources, and (d) teachers are insecure about how to develop their practices towards inclusion. However, the Audit highlighted number of innovative and successful school-based examples of inclusive practices (European Agency, 2017). 

As teachers are insecure in how to implement the policy of inclusion and call for support (Gunnþórsdóttir, 2021) it is important to identify the practices that are inclusive and serve to accommodate for diverse groups of pupils for others to learn from. An important question is how these schools and teachers work, how they are supported and what is needed to transform the knowledge, beliefs and practices for inclusion. Gary Thomas (2013) emphasizes that there is a need to move outside the modes of thinking that still construct and define failure at school and in line with this Kristine Black-Hawkins (2017) has stated that there is a reason to stress the value of a shared vison and the creation of a learning community at school for the development of inclusive teaching practices.

The project is qualitative in nature as our aim is to understand a multiple and complicated reality (Schwandt, 2007), that is, schools and their work towards inclusive education practices. Our approach is based on the assumption that social reality is not singular or objective but is rather shaped by human experiences and social contexts, and therefore best studied within its socio-historical context by reconciling the subjective interpretations of its various participants (Creswell, 2009). The project is organized as action research in three stages (Mills, 2018). The first year, reconnaissance, is dedicated to data collection in two compulsory schools in Iceland and their support services. Our aim for the first part of the project and what we present in this presentation is to generate knowledge about what characterizes successful practices in Icelandic schools (regarding teaching, learning and infrastructure) that have contributed to establishing inclusive education, and build a theory of successful development of such practices. We seek to answer following research question: How do exemplary schools, as regards inclusive education, organize their practice to meet the diversity of students’ needs and take account of their voices, and to what extent do their arrangements accord with the policy of inclusive education? This first year will give us a set of examples of effective inclusive practices which will lay the groundwork for the next set of data collection in the second year, the enactment stage, where we will work with teachers in three different schools based on the results from year one. The focus at this stage will be on the development of inclusive practices. The third year, dissemination, is dedicated to disseminating findings from year one and two. For the current presentation we will use focus and individual interview data from two schools gathered between May 2022 and January 2023. Altogether, we conducted 20 interviews, 10 in each school with directors, teachers, other professionals and support staff. We plan to finish the last three interviews in January (when this abstract is written) and data analysis will start. We will use thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) searching for common themes and contradictions across the interviews to create answers to the research question. Ethical issues. We will adhere to the general rules on research ethics involving humans (Christians, 2000) and comply with principles in the Data Protection Act (Act on Data Protection and the Processing of Personal Data No. 90/2018).

Preliminary findings show that the two schools are in different places regarding how actively the term inclusion is used in the teachers’ and staff dialogue. Common descriptor between the schools is the emphasis on collaboration, team teaching and creating a learning community in the school. Teachers’ and other staff’s beliefs about inclusion, their openness towards pupil diversity and willingness to collaborate to find ways to accommodate to their needs is evident in both schools. Furthermore, the findings reveal the importance of the role of school leaders in creating and sustaining inclusive practices and cultures in the schools. The inclusive pedagogy generated in the schools is exemplified by the notion that teaching and learning is planned for all pupils, by the use of innovative strategies in teaching and by emphasising learner centred education and group work.

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