European student populations are becoming increasingly socioculturally diverse due to globalizing processes (Forghani-Arani et al., 2019). These evolving classroom compositions call for the development of practices that cultivate a sense of belonging for all students (Louie et al., 2022). The notion that teachers play an important role in developing these practices caused an influx of policies calling for teachers to develop as ‘agents of change’ (Pantić & Florian, 2015). The question at hand is what is necessary for teachers to (further) develop their sense of agency over practices that intend to foster the sense of belonging of all students within the educational community. 

We adopt an ecological perspective of teacher agency that hinges partly on teachers’ ability to intentionally choose a specific course of action within their environmental options and constraints, and partly on their personal belief system driving their actions (Priestley et al., 2015). Agency is thus a condition that is experienced over something that individuals do, and is “a result from the interplay of individual efforts, available resources, and contextual and structural factors as they come together in particular and, in a sense, always unique situations” (Biesta & Tedder, p. 137). However, how teacher beliefs and personal goals of action interact in relation to agency over inclusive practices is sparingly depicted. Therefore, this study aims to shed light on the following question:

How do teachers justify their inclusive educational practices, and how do these beliefs relate to their sense of agency in implementing these practices? 

Teacher beliefs: teacher’s diversity models

Previous work stresses how teacher’s beliefs on education seem closely related to policy discourses and generation effects, and personal experiences have a significant role in shaping teachers’ views on education(Biesta et al., 2015). Thus, contexts play a crucial role in shaping teacher beliefs. It is important to get more insight into how teachers make sense of the concept of inclusive education and how they consolidate this with their personal notion of a just educational practice, as this is a crucial preliminary process for what happens into practice regarding inclusive education. From previous research we know that variations in teacher beliefs regarding educational equity exist among teacher education institutes (Hosseini, 2021; Jenks et al., 2001), between individual teachers (van Vijfeijken et al., 2021) and among evolving inclusive education policies (Kozleski et al., 2014).

Teacher Diversity Models (TDMs) offer a theoretical framework for examining teacher beliefs on inclusive education. TDM’s represent “implicit and explicit systems of ideas, meanings, and practices that suggests how groups should include and accommodate one another and how to best organize a diverse society” (p. 85, Plaut, 2010). This paper adopts the distinction between a conservative, liberal and critical model towards thinking about student diversity as theorized by Jenks et al. (2001). Conservative multiculturalism is characterized by the belief that cultural differences need not play a significant role in academic achievement within the way that schooling and curriculum is currently organized. The liberal multiculturalism model is characterized by the main idea that equal educational opportunities are attained when differences between learners are accepted and celebrated. Critical multiculturalism asserts that knowledge is culturally, historically, and linguistically shaped, taking a critical stance towards the curriculum and organizational aspects of education and seeks for the transformation of elements that impose standards on children that reinforce power relationships and social stratification.

To explore teacher beliefs on inclusive practices, we studied teachers’ justifications for their inclusive practices through the laddering method (Janssen et al., 2013). Seven Dutch secondary school teachers, recognized as experts in inclusive education, engaged in a laddering interview. Their students’ ages range between twelve to eighteen years old and the subjects they taught varied. All teachers were teaching at urban schools with a culturally diverse student population. The laddering method is part of Teacher Agency Personal Project Analysis, an ecologically valid way of exploring teacher agency through the consideration of projects as the unit of analysis (Hendriksen et al., under review). TA PPA entailed a three-step procedure: 1) teachers describe three educational practices that they consider to be inclusive (inclusive projects), 2) complete a survey on their sense of agency over these projects using the subscales meaningfulness, manageability, and connectedness (Little & Coulombe, 2015), and 3) engage in a laddering interview. In the last step, teachers were asked why each project was crucial for inclusion. After formulating an answer, the teacher was repeatedly asked why this was important until the highest goal was formulated according to the responding teacher. Thus, the process of laddering enables the visualization of goal system representations (GSRs) (Janssen et al., 2023), elucidating the interconnectedness among inclusive projects and justifications in goals formulated by the teacher. During the interview, the primary researcher documented the GSR for each project. The data collection involved three types of data: 21 project GSRs, seven surveys on the degree of agency experienced in these pojects, and audio recordings of the laddering interviews. The laddering interviews were transcribed, and the GSRs were digitized. Transcripts were coded deductively through Jenks’ framework of conservative, liberal, and critical multiculturalism. The GSRs were digitized, and the analysis categorized project goals as conservative, liberal, or critical justifications for inclusive practices based on the coded transcripts.

This study provides new insights into the role of teachers’ justifications in their experienced agency in inclusive education. It does so in an ecologically valid way and reveals important mechanisms influencing teachers’ agency and considerations to be involved with inclusive practices. Preliminary results show that in most projects, teachers use a mixture of both liberal and critical goals to justify their inclusive educational projects. For example, in Gerard’s (geography teacher) project 'Assignment on migration and culture' we identified liberal justifications, such as "compassion" and "mutual understanding: why do people do this? Understanding each other", but also critical justifications such as "making space for stories from the classroom that the book doesn't accommodate". Moreover, goals that refer to more general didactical or pedagogical core practices of being a teacher were also frequently present. For example, in the same project, Gerard mentions his pedagogical goal "Identity development of students: allowing them to experience that there is space to confidently take their place in the world". These goals could not be coded as either conservative, liberal, or critical, yet they are important justifications for teachers’ inclusive practices. These expert teachers did not mention any goals that could be labeled as conservative multiculturalism. This implies that for this group of expert teachers, a sense of agency in inclusive practices is linked to either a liberal or critical stance towards multiculturalism. The empirical analysis of this data allowed for the refinement of Jenks’ primarily theoretical framework of conservative, liberal and critical multiculturalism. Furthermore, and more importantly, these findings hold important implications for teacher development trajectories. Thinking in conservative, liberal, and critical approaches to diversity could help teachers 1) in developing a language to talk about inclusive practices; 2) making them aware of the different ways in which diversity could be addressed; 3) guiding them towards thinking about the possible implications of these approaching styles.

Biesta, G., Priestley, M., & Robinson, S. (2015). The role of beliefs in teacher agency. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 21(6), 624–640. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2015.1044325 Biesta, G., & Tedder, M. (2006). How is agency possible? Towards an ecological understanding of agency as achievement. In Learning lives: Learning, identity, and agency in the life course. Working Paper Five, Exeter: Teaching and Learning Research Programme. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228644383_How_is_agency_possible_Towards_an_ecological_understanding_of_agency-as-achievement Forghani-Arani, N., Cerna, L., & Bannon, M. (2019). The Lives of Teachers in Diverse Classrooms. In OECD (Issue 198). https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/8c26fee5-en%0Ahttp://www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=EDU/WKP(2019)6&docLanguage=En Hosseini, N. (2021). Beschouwend artikel Kansengelijkheid in het onderwijs: een social justice perspectief voor de leraren¬ opleiding. Tijdschrift Voor Lerarenopleiders, 42(4), 15–25. Janssen, F., Westbroek, H., & Borko, H. (2023). The indispensable role of the goal construct in understanding and improving teaching practice. Professional Development in Education, 00(00), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2023.2217426 Janssen, F., Westbroek, H., Doyle, W., & Driel, J. Van. (2013). How To Make Innovations Practical. In Teachers College Record (Vol. 115). Jenks, C., Lee, J. O., & Kanpol, B. (2001). Approaches to Multicultural Education in Preservice Teacher Education: Philosophical Frameworks and Models for Teaching. The Urban Review, 33(2). Kozleski, E., Artiles, A., & Waitoller, F. (2014). Equity in Inclusive Education: A Cultural Historical Comparative Perspective (pp. 2–30). Little, B. R., & Coulombe, S. (2015). Personal Projects. In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed., pp. 757–765). International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.26100-X Louie, N., Berland, L., Roeker, L., Nichols, K., Pacheco, M., & Grant, C. (2022). Toward radical belonging: envisioning antiracist learning communities. Race Ethnicity and Education, 00(00), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2022.2106879 Pantić, N., & Florian, L. (2015). Developing teachers as agents of inclusion and social justice. Education Inquiry, 6(3). https://doi.org/10.3402/edui.v6.27311 Plaut, V. C. (2010). Diversity science: Why and how difference makes a difference. Psychological Inquiry, 21(2), 77–99. https://doi.org/10.1080/10478401003676501 Priestley, M., Biesta, G., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher Agency: An Ecological Approach. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. van Vijfeijken, M., Denessen, E., van Schilt-Mol, T., & Scholte, R. H. J. (2021). Equity, Equality, and Need: A Qualitative Study into Teachers’ Professional Trade-Offs in Justifying Their Differentiation Practice. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 9, 236–257. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2021.98017