As the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) suggests, “inclusion involves a process of systemic reform embodying changes and modifications in content, teaching methods, approaches, structures and strategies in education to overcome barriers with a vision serving to provide all students of the relevant age range with an equitable and participatory learning experience and environment that best corresponds to their requirements and preferences” (UN 2016, p. 4). Yet, a “sign of absence of clear guidance on how teachers should behave in order to create an inclusive environment for all students” has been reported (OECD, 2020, p. 216) calling for clear guidance on how to create an inclusive environment for all students that is informed by research.

The International Forum on inclusion and equity in education that took place in Colombia, in 2019 reinforced the role of “educational leaders, families, teachers and students” in “build[ing] a climate of trust, fair treatment and non-discrimination” (UNESCO, 2019, p. 15). Inclusive education as a process involving the entire school was previously supported by Ainscow and Miles (2008) who conceptualised schools as organisations with “internal complexities” that constrain inclusive education (p. 26), reinforced by Mr Álvaro Marchesi, “meet[ing] the needs of each and every student…is not just a matter of teachers, but … a process involving the entire school” (UNESCO, 2019, p. 12). Therefore, it is suggested that inclusive education can be promoted when “increasing the capacity of local neighbourhood mainstream schools to support the participation and learning of an increasingly diverse range of learners” (Ainscow, 2020, p. 125), which is also supported by UN (2016) and UNESCO (2017). It is important to promote inclusive school communities in which “every learner matters and matters equally” (UNESCO, 2017, p. 12). This includes working together to further foster the participation of students with disabilities “in learning experiences and the learning environment with their same-aged peers” (Graham, 2020, p. xxi), whilst enhancing the autonomy of local schools in becoming “leaders of change” (Bills & Howard, 2021, p. 13).

In addition to advocating for a systemic lens, the CRPD also supported the potential lens of architecture as an approach to advance inclusive education, through removing architectural barriers. UN (2016) called on States parties to ensure “accessibility” of “any future education infrastructures” including safe and accessible school transport, toilet facilities and recreational school spaces (p. 8). Within the policy context, the role of school spaces and environments in students’ inclusive education were further raised by UNESCO (2019, 2020), with research studies beginning to emerge to explore the role of architecture in inclusive education. This presentation shares a case study exploring the role of architecture in inclusive education whilst informing a whole school approach to promoting inclusive education.

The following research questions guided this case study:

• What role does architecture, inclusive of physical, social and semantic space, play in students’ inclusive education?
• What do school community members perceive to be the enabling and/or challenging arrangements to students’ inclusive education?

The study employed a qualitative case-study participatory co-design approach with its epistemological and ontological premises informed by a practice architectures (PA) lens (Kemmis et al., 2014; Mahon et al., 2017). A practice architectures lens enabled the study to explore practices consisting of certain sets of arrangements in three dimensions of space intersecting with inclusive education: cultural–discursive (semantic), that is arrangements “that make possible the language and discourses used in and about this practice”; material–economic (physical), that is arrangements “that make possible the activities undertaken in the course of the practice … the physical set-ups and the activity structures of work and life at the site”; and social–political (social space) arrangements “that make possible the relationships between people and non-human objects that occur in the practice” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 32). Aiming to provide evidence of how inclusive school communities can be created through the aforementioned arrangements, a participatory co-design methodology was employed. Ten students from Reception (aged 5-6) and 21 Year 4 students (aged 9-10) including nine students with disabilities, three parents/carers, and 34 educators from a primary school community in South Australia participated in the current study. Data was collected through document analysis, surveys, focus groups and visual participatory co-design methods, including auto-photography, digital and hand-made storybooks, and digital construction models using Tinkercad. Data sets in this study included document analysis of the school’s website along with 19 school policies, 37 surveys, data from auto-photography with nine PowerPoint presentations and 124 photos of school spaces, 50 storybooks, 47 Tinkercad designs, six focus groups, and nine recordings. Data was then imported into a user-friendly qualitative computer software, NVivo. The coding process followed a thematic content analysis. Themes were analysed under the PA analytical lens.

Informing a whole school approach to promoting inclusive education, “in the dimension of physical space-time and in the medium of work/activity” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 34), school architecture can enable students’ inclusive education through open plan spaces, co-located early learning centres, seating arrangements, natural elements and classroom décor. “In the dimension of semantic space and in the medium of language” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 34), promoting practices of metalanguage in schools by inviting educators to use “an explicit language of inclusion” (Bristol, 2015, p. 817) seemingly promoted reflective and proactive inclusive practices. Educators being trained in inclusive education and pedagogies as part of professional development courses offered by their school can enable them to critically engage with their sayings, having an impact on their whole school collective discourse. “In the dimension of social space and in the medium of solidarity and power” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 34), the enabling role of relatings between school and home, students and educators, students and students in inclusive education clearly emerged in this study. Students’ relatings with their teachers can foster a caring and safe learning environment, enhancing their sense of inclusion in schools. For a school community inclusion to be promoted, school leadership needs to support community members in interacting, working together and building relationships. Of significance are relatings with psychologists, architects, occupational therapists and university researchers, thus an interdisciplinary collaboration of working together and work[ing] closely. Incorporating “simultaneously a call to action and an analytic framework” (Slee, 2018, p. 3), this presentation will discuss the implications of these findings for the field informing how students, educators and parents/carers can work together to identify and purposefully employ material-economic, cultural-discursive and social-political arrangements present in their whole school context, to further enable students’ inclusive education globally and locally.

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