Since the international Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities came into force in Germany in 2009, inclusion has become increasingly relevant in vocational education and training. What is missing so far is a foundation of inclusive VET, namely concerning the micro level of the teaching-learning situations in classrooms.

Joint (inclusive) teaching-learning processes represent action situations that depend on comparable interpretations of the situation by the actors involved. A starting point for enabling joint teaching-learning processes are the lifeworlds (Lebenswelt) of all those who are involved in this process. An important prerequisite for teachers at VET schools to deal with the heterogeneity prevailing in VET, especially from the perspective of inclusion, is therefore to recognise and understand the life worlds of the students. It needs to be clarified how teachers can access these lifeworlds and how learners can (learn to) understand them among themselves. While in relatively homogeneous groups it is comparably easy to understand and often accept another one’s lifeworld, this process becomes more difficult with the increase of the distance of one’s lifeworld from others. Therefore, one important question that needs to be explored in order to foster inclusive teaching and learning is how teachers (and pupils) can gain access to the understanding (in the sense of comprehension) of disparate lifeworlds.

Teachers usually attempt to classify their pupils on the basis of reports, diagnostic instruments etc., which is necessarily subjective. Often this leads to labelling and stigmatisation, which impedes the process of inclusion. Another way that could facilitate the pedagogue’s access to the process of understanding are critical situations in the sense of situations in which teachers and learners perceive a lack of comprehension towards others and their intention. In these moments, consciously or unconsciously - according to the assumption - a process of reflection on each other's access to the world begins

The presentation shows the results of an empirical study within the framework of the BMBF project InklusiBuS "Inclusive vocational education and training and situation definition", in which the possibilities and limits of inclusive teaching and learning in vocational school teaching situations were investigated. To this end, inclusion is first explained on the basis of system-theoretical and action-theoretical approaches as well as with the help of a phenomenological concept of lifeworld and situation. The first survey phase followed a Grounded Theory oriented approach. Codes were developed which include on the one hand basics of recognizing and interpreting other lifeworlds, the externalization of one's own lifeworld and the perception of its limitations as well as recognizing and creating common situation definitions. Those codes were operationalized and investigated in a nationwide questionnaire survey with vocational school teachers. The presentation will show results on how teachers and pupils understand and externalise their lifeworlds to support inclusive teaching and learning, and what can be done to facilitate the understanding of others lifeworlds to support inclusive teaching and learning.

The empirical study is devised in two parts. In the first part a grounded theory approach was used to collect qualitative data on self-perception and perception by others, on defining the situation and exploring subjective theories of the actors in inclusive learning and teaching settings in vocational education in the German federal state of Thuringia. Following the principle of theoretical saturation, the sample includes 53 interviews: 24 teachers from vocational institutions, 6 members of in-company training staff and 23 trainees with and without disadvantages / disabilities. Codes were developed which show different approaches of recognizing and interpreting other lifeworlds, the externalization of one's own lifeworld and the perception of its limitations as well as recognising and creating common situation definitions. The second survey phase focussed on the question, how these approaches can be combined to strategies by the teachers. Therefore the codes were operationalised and investigated in a nationwide (Germany) online questionnaire survey with 866 vocational school teachers. According to the topics and the scales of the questions, the data was structured in separate principal component analyses (PCA). After the dimensional reduction of the data, the components that were extracted show the combinations of different approaches to different strategies. The data was simultaneously checked by T-tests to investigate how often the different aspects are used in the respective strategy of each component.

The procedure of how teachers in vocational schools arrange inclusive learning settings can be described in three phases. Before teachers can act as a mediator between the life worlds of their pupils, they must first decipher the lifeworlds themselves. Therefore, the teacher first needs access to the life worlds. Direct communicative access takes place in classroom situations through direct questioning, like in familiarisation rounds, but also in the form of short conversations before or after the lesson. The observational approach is less obtrusive. This focuses primarily on the body language of the students and pays attention to mood swings. Communication with third parties is a characteristic of the indirect-communicative approach. Teachers have, depending on the educational institution, various documents related to their students at their disposal, which they can use to obtain information. This is described as access via documents. Sometimes, however, teachers do not want to spend energy on understanding the students' lifeworld, which is described as procrastination. The results of the different variants of access to lifeworlds must be processed in the second step, i.e. reconstructed, in order to then create situations that are conducive to inclusive teaching-learning processes. In the process of understanding, it often becomes clear that one's own limitations can hinder access to the lifeworld of the other and must be overcome. After the teacher has identified and interpreted the students' lifeworlds, the next step is to transfer this to the level of action. The teacher supports the pupils in going through a similar process of identifying and interpreting. Either the framing of the learning situation takes place through the teacher, the group or a set of rules. This is followed by lifeworld exchange through the support of communication at the individual or group level and the exchange of lifeworlds through communicative or experiential approaches.

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