Despite its commitment to equity and participation, the practice of inclusive education is shaped by historical post/colonial knowledge and power structures that continue to determine what is recognized as legitimate knowledge, normality and difference within educational contexts (Grech & Soldatic, 2015; Muthukrishna & Engelbrecht, 2018). Although inclusive education is generally considered a response to the growing diversity in contemporary classrooms, its epistemological basis is often taken for granted. Teacher education plays a pivotal role in this regard as it is a key place where ideas about inclusive education are formed and passed on to future teachers (European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education, 2012). In the European context, this role is particularly significant, as education systems face increasing classroom heterogeneity resulting from global and international crises alongside nationally specific frameworks for children with disabilities, requiring diversity-sensitive engagement with all learners.

Against the backdrop of growing socioeconomic and educational inequalities relating to dis/ability, gender, class and race, teachers working in inclusive settings are increasingly expected to demonstrate critical and reflexive competence. However, this paper argues that dominant understandings of inclusive education are profoundly influenced by postcolonial knowledge and power relations (Grech & Soldatic, 2015; Walton, 2018). These relations are not only articulated in global inclusion discourses, but also reproduced and enacted within teacher education programs and classrooms. Consequently, inclusive education is predisposed to perpetuating the very inequalities it aims to address, creating cycles of epistemic reproduction and self-legitimization under the guise of inclusion. Mignolo cautions, failing to interrogate the epistemic foundations of inclusion risks reproducing “the blind epistemic ethnocentrism that makes difficult, if not impossible, any political philosophy of inclusion” (Mignolo, 2002, p. 66).

Based on my recently completed PhD project examining post/colonial knowledge production in inclusive education, this paper conceptualizes teacher education as a vital epistemic site where knowledge about inclusion is created and normalized. Rather than treating inclusive education as a transferable set of pedagogical methods or competencies, the paper approaches inclusion as an epistemic practice. From this perspective, inclusive education involves ongoing epistemic decisions about which knowledge and experiences are recognized as valid and which are marginalized (Ballard, 2013; Slee, 2001; Spivak, 1988).

The papers guiding research question is:

How do post/colonial knowledge orders influence what is recognized and enacted as inclusive education in teacher training, and how these orders be made analytically visible in order to foster epistemological reflection within teacher education programs?

The theoretical framework combines three interrelated levels:

Firstly, post/colonial perspectives on knowledge production are employed to analyze historical and geopolitical asymmetries in the production and circulation of educational knowledge, particularly with regard to inclusive education and dis/ability (Escobar & Frye, 2020; Mignolo, 2002).

Secondly, critical discourses on inclusive education are considered as a contested project situated between de/colonization and social justice (Muthukrishna & Engelbrecht, 2018; Slee, 2001).

Thirdly, these perspectives are connected to current debates on teacher professionalization under conditions of growing social, cultural and epistemic diversity in Europe (Bartels & Vierbuchen, 2024; Lindmeier & Lindmeier, 2024).

Central to the analysis is the concept of epistemic positionality - developed in the dissertation. It captures how the professional knowledge of future teachers is shaped by historically and geopolitically situated assumptions regarding normality, dis/ability, and difference. From this perspective, inclusive education is not merely a pedagogical task, but an epistemic practice embedded in post/colonial regimes of knowledge that continue to influence European teacher education and the ways difference is addressed in inclusive classrooms. Epistemic positionality therefore provides the basis for a transferable heuristic analytical framework – also developed in the dissertation - that renders these epistemic orderings visible and open to reflexive interrogation.

The presentation examines teacher education as an epistemic site in which understandings of inclusive education are produced, legitimized, and transmitted, as well as a space for critical examination and reflection. Methodologically, the paper follows two interrelated commitments: Firstly, the paper is rooted in a post/colonial epistemological critique. Teacher education is conceptualized as being embedded within the historically constituted knowledge and power relations that shape the dominant concepts of inclusion and dis/ability. Building on post/colonial and decolonial scholarship (Grech & Soldatic, 2015; Meekosha, 2011; Walton, 2018), the analysis explores how colonial legacies persist in contemporary inclusion discourse and professional norms. This perspective enables a systematic examination of how global inclusion discourses are incorporated into teacher education curricula and professional norms, particularly but not exclusively in European contexts. Findings from teacher education programs in Germany, France, and Great Britain—all formerly colonizing nations—will be presented to analyze how colonial epistemic legacies are addressed, reframed, or rendered invisible within national teacher education contexts. Secondly, the methodological framework focuses on the concept of epistemic positionality as an analytical tool for reflective analysis. Rather than viewing reflexivity as an individual trait, epistemic positionality is considered to be socially and historically formed (Pillow, 2003; Rodriguez & Ridgway, 2023; Rose, 1997). This approach is used to analyses how teacher educators, student teachers and educational researchers are positioned within epistemic hierarchies that determine what constitutes valid (inclusive) knowledge. Although related to the concept of situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988), epistemic positionality highlights the relational orders through which knowledge positions are assigned, negotiated and valued hierarchically. This approach conceptualizes teacher education as an interactive process in which knowledge, actors and contexts constitute each other reciprocally. It allows inclusive education to be analyzed as an epistemic practice involving decisions about legitimacy, authority, and difference (Spivak, 1988), rather than as a neutral or technical endeavor. Overall, this methodological approach contributes to ECER debates by demonstrating the relevance of post/colonial reflexivity about knowledge production for teacher education in European contexts and by showing how such reflexivity can be operationalized through a heuristic analytical framework. It shifts attention from technical questions of implementation to the epistemic conditions under which inclusive education is taught, learned, and enacted.

The paper is expected to contribute to current debates on teacher education for inclusive education in a European context in three interrelated ways. Firstly, the paper advances a conceptual understanding of inclusive education in teacher training by presenting it as an epistemic practice rather than a set of transferable methods or competencies. By foregrounding post/colonial knowledge production, the paper demonstrates how assumptions about normality, dis/ability and learning, which are often taken for granted, are shaped by historical and global power relations. This helps to explain why, despite its normative commitment to equity, inclusive education may continue to reproduce epistemic hierarchies within teacher education programs and later on in inclusive classrooms. Secondly, the paper presents an intra-active, heuristic analytical framework as its central outcome and concrete contribution. The heuristic, developed in the dissertation, structures analysis along three interrelated dimensions: epistemological–structural, praxeological–situational and conceptual–normative. This framework can be used to analyze epistemic positionality in teacher education and to highlight the structural conditions under which knowledge or preconceptions on inclusive education are produced and legitimized in European contexts. Thirdly, the paper outlines the implications for designing and orienting teacher education programs. It argues that teacher education informed by post/colonial theory can enable future teachers to engage with inclusive education in context-sensitive ways that are attentive to epistemic plurality. Rather than prescribing specific pedagogical techniques, the paper emphasizes cultivating epistemic awareness as a core dimension of professional competence for inclusive education in Europe. In relation to the ECER theme, 'Knowing and Acting: The Changing Conditions and Potentials of Education Research', this paper shows how making epistemic orderings analytically visible through a heuristic framework reshapes both professional knowing and pedagogical acting in teacher education.

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