This paper explores research with pre-service teachers in Scotland about their development of understandings of inclusion and curricular justice. Teachers require the appropriate skills and knowledge to teach diverse pupils, seeing individual differences as opportunities for enriching learning (Ainscow, 2020). Teacher education programmes are one space where interruptions to students’ deeply rooted assumptions about, for example, education, teaching and diversity are made possible. Teachers’ curriculum making work is complex and has been described as a ‘highly dynamic processes of interpretation, mediation, negotiation and translation, across multiple layers or sites of the education system’ (Priestley et al. 2021: 1).  Pre-service teachers need educational experiences which help them navigate this complex work. Knowledge of learners, subject matter, curriculum goals and pedagogy (Darling-Hammond, 2006) have been identified as key foundations for curriculum work. Developing effective inclusive practice begins in the teachers’ professional preparation when pre-service teachers learn about key pedagogical approaches, reflect on their own beliefs about human differences, and develop inclusive practices that are maintained throughout their teaching careers (Rouse, 2010). Inclusive education is linked to a human rights-based approach (UNESCO, 2017) underpinned by the principle of social justice and teacher’s understandings of social justice will shape their pedagogical leadership (Forde and Torrence, 2017). To achieve curricular justice (Riddle et al., 2023), based on Fraser’s (2008) tripartite definition of social justice, commitment to ‘pupil-centred’ education’ needs to be accompanied by understandings of what and whose knowledge (Coker et al., 2024).

Our teacher education programme restructured the second school placement experience so each week students spend 3 days in school and 2 days within the university. This structure is envisioned to enable students to make richer theoretical connections to ongoing practice, whilst also affording opportunities to question their existing horizons of expectation. This is a space where interruptions to students’ assumptions and their practices can be foregrounded on a weekly basis. The Differences and Identity module, taught during this semester at the university, aims to give the opportunity for students to explore the research around inclusion and to begin to think about the relevance of this research to their own practice. Students undertake this module concurrently with the second school placement and it aims to enrich and contextualize student’s experience by giving students the tools and knowledge to think about their practice differently, in terms of inclusion.  The module introduces students to the key theoretical debates in Inclusive education, the principal research, current policy and provokes discussion regarding inclusive pedagogy. The expectation is that students will use this new knowledge to reflect on their practice through this process of interruption, reflection, and supportive discussion, and it is these experiences that this research focuses on.

The study aims to address these research questions:

1. What are student teachers’ (pre-service teachers) understandings of inclusion and social justice before and after having studied a module on inclusion and attending a concurrent school placement. 

1. To what extent has their understanding been developed after this module and attending a concurrent school placement.   

The study will use Fraser’s framework of redistributive and relational social justice as heuristic through which issues of inclusion and exclusion will be discussed and linked curricular justice (Riddle et al., 2023; Dawson, 2017). 

The data collection is in progress. Third year students on an Initial Teacher Education Programme at a Scottish University (137 primary and secondary pre-service teachers) attending a compulsory Differences and Identities module in Spring 2024 are invited to participate. We want to explore how our students' knowledge and understanding of the module’s topics develop during this module and placement. As part of the module, students will complete a questionnaire in the initial and final seminar. This compulsory seminar task helps them reflect on ideas about inclusion and how research literature, their school practice placement and colleagues’/peers’ discussions has interrupted their thinking, enabling them to question their assumptions with regards to inclusion, inclusive pedagogy and curricular justice. The second questionnaire is an online Microsoft form, and students are invited to consent, after reading an information sheet, to allow their data from this anonymous online questionnaire to be included in the research project. This forms one data generation method. Following on from the questionnaire, and after assignment marking is complete (to ensure that students understand participation/non-participation in the research has no impact on their assignment grade), students are invited to participate in a focus group (online or face to face). This approach has been adopted to explore in more depth understandings of inclusion and curricular justice. Four to five focus groups of 4/5 students are anticipated. Working with students in groups of four to six has been found to encourage lively discussion while being manageable (Kennedy et al., 2001). Flipchart paper will be used to record the students’ thoughts in a visual manner and as a reference for the students to use these as prompts for further comments. Students may also draw and annotated a picture of their thoughts as this has been found useful (Kennedy et al., 2001). The questionnaire’s findings will be initially analysed using descriptive statistics. The focus group will be recorded using teams (subject to consent from all students) and transcribed by the researchers. The qualitative data will be analysed using an abductive/reproductive approach (Ackroyd and Karlsson, 2014). This firstly comprises: a grounded approach to developing themes from the data and followed by a thematic analysis, utilising the above theory as a heuristic and lastly the generation of context-specific theory from the data.

We will report on preliminary findings from the questionnaire and some of the focus group interviews, to explore the development of students’ thinking about inclusion and curricular justice as they encounter both practice and theory concurrently. Essex et al (2019) reporting from on a study of teacher education students in England with regards inclusion noted the dominance of the use of ability- related practices to meet the inclusion imperative. This is acknowledged and challenged through research and discussion in the Differences and Identity module. The questionnaire and focus group data will provide more insight into findings from a Scottish perspective. Moreover, this study will contribute to the place of the student placement experience and the conundrum of the theory/practice divide (White, & Forgasz, 2016). Finally, this study will be of interest to an international audience as the findings can invite reflection and inform other ITE programmes.

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