7.02% of students are diagnosed as having special educational needs (SEN) in Europe (EASNIE, 2020). Germany thus represents the European average with 7.2% of students with SEN. Austria is below the average at 5.3%. This ranks both countries in the middle of the field. Nevertheless, the evaluation of the national action plans show that inclusive structures are neither comprehensively implemented in Austria nor Germany yet. Data as well as the evaluation results indicate that the ratification of the CRPD – by Austria in 2007 and Germany in 2009 – is thus not synonymous with the actual implementation of the right to inclusive education.

As all European countries, Austria and Germany operate with assessment strategies to categorize students regarding their abilities. The organization of (inclusive) education and learning in both countries indicate that school type and curriculum are determined based on categorizing students by disability. The procedure to examine SEN itself is an administrative act operated by the school authorities. Classification systems like ICD-10 are used that are primarily medical and deficit-oriented diagnostic instruments (Buchner & Proyer, 2020; Gasterstädt et al., 2021). Thus, the organization of education and learning is shaped by traditional disability categories rather than an inclusive understanding guided by fostering participation, empowerment, and self-determination (Florian, 2014; Prengel, 2016). Based on an inclusive understanding, both scholars and practitioners proclaim the organization of assessments that consider environmental factors, are conducted by multi-professional teams, and include inclusive classifications like ICF (Moretti et al., 2012; Sanches-Ferreira et al., 2014). This requires shifting the focus from diagnostics to pedagogics and thus organizational measures with bottom-up rather than top-down approaches.

It results in the trilemma of organizing (inclusive) education and learning regarding the impact of (1) (inter)national policy conditions, (2) the bureaucratically located top-down approach at the exo and macro level, and (3) inclusive bottom-up approaches at the micro and meso level. Researching this trilemma opens the following questions:

1) To what extent do SEN assessments organize inclusive education (in the German and Austrian school systems)?

2) To what extent is the idea of inclusive education reflected in the educational policy agendas for the organizational implementation of inclusive education in Germany and Austria?

The paper contributes to the broad debate on policy-making to implement inclusive education and resulting from this organizational implication to foster social inclusion and diversity, using Austria and Germany as examples.

Theoretically, Lipskys’ (1969, 2010) Street-Level Bureaucracy (SLB) Theory frames desk research. The theory deals with “how people experience public policies in realm that are critical to our welfare and sense of community” (S. xii). It is investigated by researching the micro level of how bureaucratical procedures are contextualized within the interaction of street-level bureaucrats (teachers and educators) and their clients (students). The research topic focuses on the SEN procedure and its impact on inclusive education and teaching. On this basis, Brodkin (2011, 2016) developed another perspective of SLB theory by focusing on the meso level and “those organizations and agencies that directly bring policies and programs to people” (p. 444). Both theoretical approaches are relevant for my work in order to triangulate the findings of the desk research against the background of a holistic systemic view.

The paper presents the central findings of my Ph.D. desk research. The desk research consists of a (1) Narrative Literature Review (NLR) and a (2) policy impact analysis. (1) The NLR is an innovative method in educational research but and provides a suitable method for an overview of a wide range of interdisciplinary research (Baumeister & Leary, 1997; Halász, 2019). It aims to map the research field rather than limiting on specific aspects. This allows a systemic overview on the nexus of inclusive and organizational research. The methodological focus lies on the existing narratives and theoretical implications that shape the interdisciplinary research topic. I used the database Scopus to start the review procedure. The search strategy aimed to review the intersection of inclusive education and organizational education across all levels of the school system. The search presented 292 papers. Following the research purpose, the selection criteria included a) English or German language, b) publishing date < 2007, c) theoretical, empirical, and methodological approaches on inclusive and organizational education, d) abstract. 57 papers met the inclusion criteria and were scanned by their abstract and full availability. Then, nine papers suit the research purpose. The research strategy switched to snowballing to identify further literature. The NLR does not limit to scientific literature but includes working papers, grey literature, etc. (Boyle et al., 2014). The literature corpus was expanded by 105 documents and now includes 114 relevant works. (2) The policy impact analysis provides insights into policy-making for the implementation of (inclusive) assessment (Bandelow et al., 2022; Tatto, 2012). It constitutes school organization and frames pedagogic and didactic approaches as well as the understanding of inclusive education. The data set build ca. 75 policy papers from international, EU, national and federal states level from Austria and Germany. It includes key policy papers such as the CPRD, the SDGs, the EU Commission paper, national action plans, national school laws, and education laws to examine the legislative base for the implementation of (inclusive) assessment. It aims to uncover the social discourses and paradigms that underlie policy and administrative decision-making. The triangulation of both methods provides a comparative overview of the current state-of-the-art across Europe, but also the two countries Austria and Germany. It builds a solid base to continue the research process with empirical data in the future.

Initial results show that the theoretical nexus of inclusive and organizational education is very promising in terms of inclusive educational assessments. The NRL proved to be a suitable method for reviewing the state of the art. First identified narratives indicate that various perspectives frame the contradicting state of the art with overlapping top-down and bottom-up approaches. These perspectives are shaped by different ontological, epistemological, methodological origin that results in the crossover implementation of different approaches. It depends on the levels of implemenatation, the disciplines, but also individual actors and stakeholders. The domination of a perspective or an approach seems to be a question of politics but also depends the individual actors. Such ambiguous results reflect on the trilemma of implementing inclusive educational assessments in highly bureaucratized school systems in Austria & Germany. The policy analysis verfiy the assumption. It was found that neither Austria nor Germany have inclusive policies, as the laws date from the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, the central revisions also narrows the special education understanding instead of opening up to an inclusive understanding of CPRD. In a nutshell, the lean agreement is that the implementation of inclusive education depends by ideologically driven individuals or institutions, but better not risking a fat lawsuit aimed at systemic transformation.

Bandelow, N. C.; Hornung, J.; Sager, F. & Schröder, I. (2022): Complexities of policy design, institutional change, and multilevel governance? European Policy Analysis 8 (4), 366-369, doi: 10.1002/epa2.1164 Baumeister, R. F.; Leary, M. R. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews. Review of General Psychology 1 (3), 311-320. DOI: 10.1037//1089-2680.1.3.311. Boyle, E. A.; MacArthur, E. W.; Connolly, T. M.; Hainey, T.; Manea, M. Kärki, A. & van Rosmalen, P. (2014). A narrative literature review of games, animations and simulations to teach research methods and statistics. Computer & Education 74, 1-14. DOI: 10.1016/j.compedu.2014.01.004. Brodkin, E. Z. (2016). Street-Level Organizations, Inequality, and the Future of Human Services. Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance 40 (5), 444–450. DOI: 10.1080/23303131.2016.1173503. Buchner, T. & Proyer, M. (2020). From special to inclusive education policies in Austria – developments and implications for school and teacher education. In European Journal of Teacher Education 43 (1),83–94. DOI: 10.1080/02619768.2019.1691992. EASNIE (2020). European Agency Statistics on Inclusive Education: 2018 Dataset Cross-Country Report. Odense, Denmark. Florian, L. (2014). What counts as evidence of inclusive education? In European Journal of Special Needs Education 29 (3), 286–294. DOI: 10.1080/08856257.2014.933551. Gasterstädt, J.; Kistner, A. & Adl-Amini, K. (2021). Die Feststellung sonderpädagogischen Förderbedarfs als institutionelle Diskriminierung? Eine Analyse der schulgesetzlichen Regelungen. In Zeitschrift für Inklusion (4). https://www.inklusion-online.net/index.php/inklusion-online/article/view/551 Halász, G. (2019). Doing Systematic Literature Review - `Net Fishing´ or `Whale Hunting´? M. Honerød Hoveid, L. Ciolan, A. Paseka & S. Marques Da Silva (eds.). Doing educational research. Overcoming challenges in practice (91-113). London: SAGE Publications Ltd. Lipsky, M. (2010). Street-level bureaucracy: dilemmas of the individual in public services. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Moretti, M.; Alves, I. & Maxwell, G. (2012). A systematic literature review of the situation of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health-Children and Youth version in education: a useful tool or a flight of fancy? American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation 91 (13), 3-17. DOI: 10.1097/PHM.0b013e31823d53b2. Sanches-Ferreira, M.; Silveira-Maia, M. & Alves, S. (2014). The use of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, version for Children and Youth (ICF-CY), in Portuguese special education assessment and eligibility procedures: the professionals’ perceptions. European Journal of Special Needs Education 29 (3), 327-343. DOI: 10.1080/08856257.2014.908025. Tatto, M. T. (2012).Learning and Doing Policy Analysis in Education. Examining Diverse Approaches to Increasing Educational Access. Rotterdam: Sense Publisher.