While inclusion is part of the international agenda (e.g., Sustainable Development Goal 4), it remains a challenge to ensure that all learners can access, participate, and succeed in education. Barriers to inclusion arise at various levels: teacher (e.g., teacher’s implicit view of learners; Sturm & Wagener 2021), school (e.g., school ethos; Kovač Cerović et al., 2016), and local and national levels (e.g., organisation of educational provision and policy; Jovanović et al., 2022). However, the response to the question “Why are we failing some learners?” depends on the context in which learners' education takes place. From a system perspective (Senge, 1990), obstacles to inclusive education are not isolated events but part of established patterns evolving over time, underpinned by system structures and assumptions that perpetuate the status quo. Therefore, to address these obstacles, we must understand the socio-cultural-historical context in which they emerge. Response measures should address not individual obstacles but the system as a whole. As Senge (1990) notes, "low leverage" activities aiming to bring large-scale changes may alter appearances but not functionality. While such initiatives may contribute, they often do not lead to changes in thinking and practice (Fullan, 1991).

The panel aims to discuss, from a cross-national perspective – Scotland, Serbia, and Germany – the various issues presented at different levels as obstacles to removing barriers for all learners to be included and participate in education. Empirical cases will be presented to illustrate the relationship between obstacles to inclusion and the specific context in which these obstacles emerge. Moreover, we will avoid the tendency to perceive inclusive education as uniform across and within national contexts, emphasising the importance of contextually situated research on inclusive education and dialogue between different (levels of) contexts. 

For that the panel will aim to answer the following questions:

1. What barriers to inclusion are identified in the different contexts?
2. What steps can be taken to remove those barriers and progressively guarantee that all learners are able to access, participate and succeed in education?

We will illustrate the discussion along empircial data, that has been gathered in the three countries; starting from these, we will investigate in the different forms of context, in which “images of normal/deviant students” are generated.

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