Valuing learner diversity, supporting all learners, working with others and personal professional development are the four core values for all teachers and education professionals especially those working in inclusive education (European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, 2012). The European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education (2022) emphasizes the importance of these values and highlights that attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and understanding, as well as skills have to relate to concepts of inclusion (European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, 2022).

Problem-based learning (PBL) appears well-suited for imparting these core values, as PBL has become an essential approach used in teacher education due to its positive impact on knowledge retention and application, attitude change, and diagnostic skill improvement of future teachers (Snyder & McWilliam, 1999; Wedel et al., 2022; Yew & Goh, 2016). PBL, which originated from the medical field, empowers students to take responsibility for their own learning by using realistic cases to develop solutions to patient problems (Barrows, 1996). Through the use of PBL, students can develop their research skills, integrate theory and practice, and apply their knowledge to create practical solutions for defined problems (Savery, 2006). Throughout the independent development of solutions and strategies for real-world problems, students perceive themselves as active learners and take responsibility for their own learning. This approach is especially effective when students are presented with a complex problem scenario to which there is more than one adequate solution (Hmelo-Silver, 2004).

This article focuses on the application of PBL in the field of inclusive and special education and the integration of its essential components into the training of future teachers in Germany. To this end, realistic depictions of children and young adults with learning difficulties, based on the experiences of experts in special and inclusive education, were created to be presented to students who study special and inclusive education.

Three realistic portrayals of children and young adults with learning difficulties were developed and presented as digital cases. Following the model of resilience research, inhibiting factors and difficulties are referred to as risk factors, while supportive aspects, strengths, and resources are assigned to protective, supportive factors (Werner, 2020). As amplified in the Methods section, a number of students will be tasked with identifying protective and risk factors in connection with the case presented and its environment. Each case includes individual risk and protective factors related to the child, such as school performance, social skills, motivation, emotional state, motor skills, cognitive skills, and language skills, as well as risk and protective factors related to the family and environment. It is important to observe the interactions and connections between the child, the school, and the broader environment while collecting this information (Doblinger & Becker-Stoll, 2020; Lauth et al., 2014). The social model of disability highlights the importance of social risk and protective factors in supporting children at school, in addition to individual factors. To optimally support children with learning difficulties, future teachers must be aware of various disability concepts (Gebhardt et al., 2022).

The study seeks to address the following research questions by having students work through the cases using PBL:

Q1. To what extent are students able to identify protective and risk factors in the given cases?

Q2. What additional information about the child and family or environment do the students request that was not mentioned in the cases?

Q3. What possibilities and approaches do students develop to support the child described in the case using PBL?

From May to July 2024, 33 special and inclusive education students in Germany, during their second semester, will participate in a casuistry seminar to work on digitally presented cases. Based on the specifications in the case-by-case framework for educational assessment (Lutz, 2023), the students will present information about individual, family, and environmental factors in a structured and objective manner. They will collect additional information required for case processing and develop approaches and strategies to support or encourage the child in the classroom. The case-by-case framework for educational assessment tool enables the evaluation of the identified outcomes. We expect the students’ findings to reveal whether they have a competence-oriented perspective, which identifies protective factors in the child and its environment, or a deficit-oriented perspective that focuses on risk factors. Additionally, it will be possible to determine whether students are more focused on individual-child-related factors or family and environmental factors.

The study investigates the impact of problem-based learning on knowledge application and diagnostic skills of special and inclusive education students by using realistic cases. Previous studies suggest that students prioritize individual-child-related factors over environmental factors. This finding is also supported by Gebhardt et al. (2022), where first-year students tended to view disability from an individual-medical perspective. The problem-based learning (PBL) approach aims to enhance students' awareness of valuing learner diversity and supporting all learners. To achieve this, students must focus on social-systemic factors while considering individual child-related factors. Any potential improvements to both the tool and the PBL approach will be discussed.

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