This contribution reflects on how research can support school development within an inclusive education system, generating both knowledge and transformation amid changing conditions of academic knowledge. Building on perspectives on inclusive school cultures (Ainscow, 2020) and informed by transnationality in education governance (Lawn & Lingard, 2002), it addresses the Italian case—often portrayed as an education system structurally oriented towards inclusion. Yet the normative frame of the inclusive education system does not guarantee enactment: contradictions within (current) policies and political discourses lead to ambivalences which underly everyday social practices, shaped within professional cultures (Helsper, 2021), organisational routines and pedagogical arrangements. Against this backdrop, the paper asks how inclusive education is produced, negotiated and legitimised in everyday school practices, and what kinds of knowledge become authoritative in these processes. Empirically, the analysis draws on GOODWILL (Researching School Development: Pathways to Inclusive and Quality Education, 2023–2026), a mixed-methods study (Kolleck, 2017) designed as scientific research of a school development initiative promoted by local institutions in Northern Italy, in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano (Seitz et al., in press). Oriented at the Educational Design Based Research approach (Mc Kinney 2012), the research design combines an initial quantitative baseline with successive qualitative data collection and analysis, e.g. ethnographical observations and group discussions. Through dialogic feedback loops, empirical traces are turned into discussable and actionable knowledge for informing pedagogical and organisational decision-making (Seitz & Consalvo, 2025). Qualitative analyses follow an approach inspired by Grounded Theory to reconstruct interpretive frames, routines and (in)equity dynamics emerging from the materials. Analytically, we foreground “doing difference” (Machold & Wienand, 2021; Merl, 2019) as a mechanism through which inclusion and inequality are co-produced. Findings highlight three interrelated dynamics: (1) “inclusion” is re-interpreted within contextual frames and routines, often reduced to compensatory interventions targeted at individuals; (2) categories (e.g., need, diagnosis, language) are frequently employed performatively, thereby rendering difference governable while reproducing hierarchies of belonging and ability; and (3) a misalignment between accountability-driven demands and what is required to address individual children’s learning.

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