Session Information
04 SES 02 C, Multistakeholder collaboration for Inclusion in Education
Paper Session
Contribution
Building national states after World War 2, both Austria and Germany reorganised their school systems and established separated school types for students with(out) disabilities. The CPRD (2009), ratified by Germany and Austria, intends to establish a common understanding of inclusive education in order to guarantee the right to inclusive education for all. The SDG 4 (2015) proclaims a wide understanding of inclusive education considering all students in all diemensions of heterogneity and aiming to institutional changes adapting mainstream learning environment for all and closing special schools.
Unless there are no fundamental systematic change towards one common inclusive education system within the last 15 years in both countries (Klemm, 2022). Both Austria and Germany still operate with assessments producing a school-specific disability category referred to as special education needs (SEN). The SEN labels are clustered by eight to nine different categories of disabilites, impairments, or handicaps in both countries. Compared to Germany, a medical-psychiatric orientated diagnosis is mandatory for the SEN assignment in Austria (Schwab et al., 2015). This claim poses a fundamental dilemma for the Austrian and German school systems that still differentiates between separate organizations of mainstream and special schools.
The decentralized organization of the education systems leads to different implementation ideas and very different progress in inclusive education depending on the federal state. Bremen (GER) relies on an inclusive school system with individual support centers (Senate Bremen, 2014), Lower Saxony relies on a cautious introduction of inclusive education by initially only phasing out the special school for learning since the 2013/14 school year (Nds. KM, 2012). All other forms of special schools still persit any reformation. In the German context, data shows an increasing trend towards diagnosing pupils with an SEN label and placing them in special schools instead of a mainstream schools (Kultusministerkonferenz, 2021). In comparison, Austrian data show a stagnating trend of SEN labels but a slightly increase of placing them in a special school instead of mainstream schools (Statistik Austria, 2023). Austria implemented so-called inclusive model regions in 2013, which tried to build best practice examples but were never implemented comprehensively (Feyerer, 2016). In Vienna special schools were opened for all students regardless SEN label or not.
All this reorganisation effects educators´ work and professionalisation in (pre-service) teacher training, which is already highly differentiated regarding the regular subject teachers and SEN categories (Buchner & Proyer, 2021; Sansour & Bernhard, 2018). There are mainstream school teachers, special needs teachers, school assistants. Based on the different pedagogical professions operating in the field of special and inclusive education, multiprofessional cooperation became a central issue for implementing inclusive eduction after the ratification of the CPRD (Lütje-Klose & Urban, 2014). Researchers promote multi-professional cooperation and collaboration as the central keys to providing inclusive education in mainstream schools for all pupils (Hollenbach-Biele & Vogt 2016; Massenkeil & Rothland, 2016). Multi-professional collaboration comprises a "diffusely used concept" (Fabel-Lamla & Gräsel, 2023, 3) in school eduction research, but describes the cooperation of different groups of actors in inclusive settings and distinguishes between various forms of cooperative collaboration (Prengel, 2020; Serke & Streese, 2022).
Nevertheless, the SEN label still determines the staff resourcing, which implies that the special educator has the responsability for the SEN student and multi-professional collaboratiaon is only possible to a limited extend. This leads to the following research questions: What demands and challenges hinder the multi-professional collaboration to implement inclusive education from a transnational viewpoint? The paper aims to describe the demands and challenges of multiprofessional cooperation in two central European school systems with similar stuctures, which still persists and strenghthen the separation into mainstream and special schools.
Method
The paper uses the two different heuristics to theoretize the multi-professional collaboration for inclusive education of from a transnational perspective, using Austria and Germany as two central European countries with a similar structure of the school systems. As inclusive education can only be understand as a holistic approach across different levels (Prengel, 2022), for example the macro, meso, and micro level (Fend, 2008), we use the ecology of inclusive education (Mitchell, 2018) to analyse the challenges of multiprofessional cooperation. We assume that the consideration of an systematical interplay contains an additional value to analyse the challenges of multiprofessional cooperation. Furthermore, we argue against the narratives that the implementation of inclusive education only depends on the national legislation or pedagogical practices on the ground. The heuristic demonstrates the importance to research multiprofessional cooperation for inclusive education from a transnational viewpoint. Following this, we use a second heuristic referred to as the trilemmatic inclusion origining from the German context and describes different paradigms based on civil right and political movements (Boger, 2017). It aims to repoliticalize the existing (scientific) narratives of inclusive edcuation (Göransson, & Nilholm, 2014). The trilemmatic inclusion indicates a theoretical triangle consisting of empowerment, normalisation, and deconstruction (Boger, 2017). Each triangle leg conceptionalize inclusion in school education but excludes the third aspect simultaneously. The trilemmatic situation thus appears with the realization of two aspects, which automatically negates the third aspect. By applying this heuristic, we aim to analyse the demands of multiprofessional cooperation for inclusive education with the help of empirical data from Germany and Austria. Based on these two heuristical approaches, we hope to understand the demands and challenges appearing in multiprofessional cooperation for inclusion and how is affects educators. We attempt to investigate different policies of multiprofessional cooperation and practices of educators in the Austrian and German context against the backdrop of the theoretical approach of trilemmatic inclusion (Boger, 2017). Combining both heuristics helps us to generate new theoretical findings regarding the multi-professional collaboration and its role for implementing inclusive education comprehensively.
Expected Outcomes
We living currently in times of uncertainty, (inter-)national and local challenges make an impact on the education systems, learning enviornment but also the individuals. In Germany, there is a slight tendency to move away from an inclusive school system (Klemm 2022). We run the risk of reinforcing familiar patterns like exclusion and separation, even though they prevent progress towards change. Thus, inclusive education become indispensable for change aiming to a peaceful and social society - inclusive education is essential for the development of a society (UNESCO, Agenda 2030). The paper demonstrates the role of multi-professional collaboration for the implementation of inclusive education across national boundaries. Educators work in the tensioned field of decreasing resources and increasing demands at the same time, which causes an systematic overload that might end in a systematic collapse. We figured out that the different pedagogical professions follows different aims within contradictive paradigms. This can be explained by the trilemmatic inclusion, because one aspect always be left out. This acknowledgement leads to the challenge that multi-professional collaboration needs to balance the three aspects of empowerment, normalisation, and deconstruction within pratice. Thus, inclusive education is highly depends on situative practices and the involved actors in everyday schooling. The collaboration of these diverse actors across all system level has an essential impact on students´ learning. Althogh actors as school administrators do not have an explicit impact on the student in everyday life, the implicit impact can be a game changer. This demonstrates the importance of each professional actor because it impacts the childs educational carrier always to some extent. Concesily, the focus should always be on the common goal combined with a reflective attitude in keeping with the motto: Leave no child behind. Only with are shared vision, it is possible to tackle future challenges as a community.
References
Boger, M.-A. (2017). Theorie der Inklusion – eine Übersicht. In Inklusion online. https://www.inklusion-online.net/index.php/inklusion-online/article/view/413 Buchner, T. & Michelle Proyer (2019). From special to inclusive education policies in Austria – developments and implications for schools and teacher education, European. In Journal of Teacher Education 43 (3), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2019.1691992 Fabel-Lamla, M. & Gräsel, C. (2023). Professionelle Kooperation in der Schule. In T. Hascher, T. Idel & W. Helsper (eds.). Handbuch Schulforschung. Wiesbaden: Springer, 1189-1209. Fend, H. (2008). Schule gestalten. Systemsteuerung, Schulentwicklung und Unterrichtsqualität. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Feyerer, E. (2016). Mit Inklusiven Modellregionen auf dem Weg zur inklusiven Schule? Österreichische Bildungspolitik zwischen Vision und Pragmatismus. In Zeitschrift für Inklusion. https://www.inklusion-online.net/index.php/inklusion-online/article/view/361 Göransson, K. & Nilholm, C. (2014). Conceptual diversities and empirical shortcomings – a critical analysis of research on inclusive education. In European Journal of Special Needs Education 29 (3), 265–280. https://doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2014.933545 Hollenbach-Biele, N. & Vogt, D. (2016). Inklusion kann gelingen! Forschungsergebnisse und Beispiele guter schulischer Praxis. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann. Klemm, K. (2022). Inklusion in Deutschlands Schulen: Eine bildungsstatistische Momentaufnahme 2020/21. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann. Kultusministerkonferenz (2021). Sonderpädagogische Förderung an Schulen. https://www.kmk.org/dokumentation-statistik/statistik/schulstatistik/sonderpaedagogische-foerderung-an-schulen.html Lütje-Klose, B. & Urban, M. (2014). Professionelle Kooperation als wesentliche Bedingung inklusiver Schul- und Unterrichtsentwicklung. Grundlagen und Modelle inklusiver Kooperation. In Vierteljahresschrift für Heilpädagogik und ihre Nachbargebiete 2, 112-123. Massenkeil, J. & Rothland, M. (2016). Kollegiale Kooperation im Lehrerberuf. Überblick und Systematisierung aktueller Forschung. In Schulpädagogik heute 7 (13). Mitchell, D. (2018). The Ecology of Inclusive Education: Strategies to Tackle the Crisis in Educating Diverse Learners. London: Routlegde. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315110448 Niedersächsisches Kultusministerium (2012). Einführung der inklusiven Schule in Niedersachsen. Hinweise für die kommunalen Schulträger. https://www.mk.niedersachsen.de/download/66896 Prengel, A. (2022). Schule inklusiv gestalten. Eine Einführung in die Gründe und Handlungsmöglichkeiten. Opladen; Berlin; Toronto: Budrich. Sansour, T. & Bernhard, D. (2018). Special needs education and inclusion in Germany and Sweden. In Alter 12 (3), 127-139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alter.2017.12.002 Schwab, S. (2020). Inclusive and Special Education in Europe. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Inclusive and Special Education, edited by Umesh Sharma, and Spencer J. Salend. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1230 Senat Bremen (2014). Aktionsplan zur Umsetzung der UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention im Land Bremen. Bremen: Der Senat der freien Hansestadt Bremen. Serke, B. & Streese, B. (2022). Wege der Kooperation im Kontext inklusiver Bildung. Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt. Statistik Austria (2023). Schulstatistik ab 2006. https://statcube.at/statistik.at/ext/statcube/jsf/dataCatalogueExplorer.xhtml
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