With the growing heterogeneity of student populations in contemporary classrooms across diverse international contexts, inclusive education has emerged as one of the most visible concepts on both the policy and research agenda (Ainscow, 2020). Recently, a broader political framework has emerged promoting inclusion as providing for the educational needs of all learners (“all means all”; UNESCO, 2020). Some authors point out that although there is an increasing emphasis on meeting the individual educational needs of all students in global political discourse, in academic discussions, most attention is still devoted to the needs of only some groups of students, typically those with SEND and/or sociocultural disadvantage (cf. Messiou, 2017; Nilhom & Göransson, 2017). More specifically, even where the authors adhere to the “inclusion for all” approach within the theoretical sections of their studies, in the methodological and empirical parts, the idea of “inclusion for some” tends to predominate (Kielblock & Woodcock, 2023). Therefore, in line with current conceptual discussions, we adhere to a more “broad” definition of inclusive education (cf. Ainscow et al., 2006), specifically to the “C” category of definitions as identified by Göransson & Nilholm (2014), where inclusive education is understood as meeting the social/academic needs of all pupils. We believe that inclusive education can rely on approaches such as differentiated instruction or universal design for learning, which are increasingly recognized as effective pedagogical models in terms of addressing student diversity (Gritful-Freixenet et al., 2020). Such approaches are based on the assumption that diversity among students exists in every group of learners, and students can differ in terms of readiness, interest and/or learning profile ranging from individual learning preferences to diverse family backgrounds (Tomlinson, 2022). Teachers can respond to this complex student diversity by using inclusive practices, i.e. any strategies ensuring that all students who have different individual needs can effectively learn in heterogeneous classrooms (Finkelstein et al., 2019).

Our study is based on several research gaps in international literature. Firstly, emphasis is predominantly placed on teachers’ attitudes toward inclusion rather than their practices. Thus there is a lack of observational data (Finkelstein et al., 2019; Sharma et al., 2021). Secondly, although students are the primary beneficiaries of the (non-)inclusive practices of their teachers, research capturing students’ perspective on inclusion in a broader sense (cf., Subban et al., 2022) as well as students' views on teachers’ (non-)inclusive practices (Schwab et al., 2022) are lacking. Thirdly, research typically focuses on primary education, with fewer studies conducted at the lower-secondary level, where differentiation could be even more challenging for teachers (Stollman et al., 2019; Schwab et al., 2022). To address these research gaps, the aim of our ethnographic research is to explore how lower-secondary school teachers reflect on and implement inclusive practices to address student diversity and to investigate the perspectives of all students on their teachers' inclusive practices.

In this paper we ask two research questions: 1) In what ways do teachers address and reflect on addressing the individual needs of each student in the classroom? 2) How do individual students perceive their needs being addressed by teachers’ inclusive practices? To answer the research questions, we used an ethnographic methodology, which is characterised by studying what people do and say in everyday contexts while combining various techniques of data collection and putting emphasis on long-term participant observation (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). Participants involved in this research are 6 teachers, 42 students, and 2 teaching assistants in two different lower-secondary schools in the Czech Republic pseudonymised as Sunflower School and Tulip School. More specifically, 18 students, 3 teachers, and 1 teaching assistant from 1 classroom at Sunflower School participate in this study, and 24 students, 3 teachers, and 1 teaching assistant from 1 classroom at Tulip School participate in this study. Data collection spans one school year (September 2023 - June 2024), with weekly gatherings over 40 weeks. Our data corpus comprises: 1) Fieldnotes from 400 hours of school observations, including 240 lessons taught by the 6 teachers and 160 hours of other school activities (such as informal interviews and breaks); 2) 126 interviews with teachers, including 90 reflective interviews about observed lessons, 30 interviews focusing on individual student needs, and 6 semi-structured interviews; 3) 52 student interviews, consisting of 42 individual semi-structured interviews and 10 focus groups. At the time of writing this conference abstract, we are analysing all the data collected from the first half of the school year, which constitutes approximately half of our data corpus. Analytical procedures are conducted in accordance with the ethnographic design (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007), involving 1) close reading, i.e., detailed and repeated examination of the data; 2) coding, i.e., systematic labeling of data snippets; and 3) theoretical memos, i.e., notes that review and develop the researchers' analytical ideas.

Our preliminary research findings indicate that each student has a unique profile of learning needs, which manifest in different ways during the learning and teaching process. These student profiles are to some extent stable but also vary situationally depending on factors such as the type of educational activity, the topic under discussion, or the student's level of engagement. Teachers adapt their teaching to these unique student profiles by flexibly switching among various inclusive practices, such as offering choice or supporting peer learning. Based on the triangulation of various data sources, we will present a model that illustrates the relationships between each student's unique profile and the inclusive practices teachers use in response to these specific needs. A significant contribution of this model is that it portrays addressing learning needs through inclusive practices as a dynamic process, thereby revealing the complexity of inclusive teachers' work. Additionally, we uncover students' perspectives on the inclusive practices employed by their teachers.

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