This qualitative case study explores how a comprehensive school in Iceland has restructured its internal organization to enhance interprofessional collaboration and knowledge construction. The study aims to understand how professional knowledge is co-constructed at the boundaries of different roles and practices. Specifically, it identifies key factors that foster and sustain interprofessional collaboration and examines how such collaboration contributes to the development of inclusive practice withing the school. The research question is: What conditions and practices support sustained interprofessional collaboration and knowledge construction within a school context?

The focus is on inclusive education and interdisciplinary teamwork. We argue that interdisciplinary teamwork and common knowledge construction through work at the boundaries of different professions is necessary for inclusive education to be successful, not only at the student level but for the school community. Inclusive education focuses on three key elements: presence, participation, and achievement of all learners (Ainscow, 2016). Presence refers to where students are educated and how consistently they attend. Participation reflects the quality of their daily school experiences and includes their personal perspectives. Achievement encompasses all learning outcomes across the curriculum, extending beyond standardized tests and exam scores. These elements together support the goal of delivering high-quality education and outcomes for all children and young people. Requiring schools to strengthen their ability to remove obstacles that hinder students’ access and presence (Ainscow, 2016; Slee, 2018).

According to Ainscow (2016) “schools know more than they use” which suggests that efforts to enhance a school’s ability to address learner diversity should begin with encouraging staff to share and build on existing practices through collaboration and developing joint practice. In this research the focus is on examining interdisciplinary teamwork and common knowledge construction through the lens of Anne Edwards’s theory on relational agency (Edwards, 2005). According to her theory, relational agency strengthens professional agency, which ultimately will benefit the object of practice - the object of practice being inclusive education. Edwards has long applied a cultural-historical approach (CHAT) to her research on institutional and professional development, and in this context has introduced three professional development concepts that she calls “gardening tools” (Duhn et al., 2016; Edwards, 2011). The “gardening tools”: relational expertise, common knowledge, and relational agency, are conceptual tools for analyzing and facilitating collaborative work, particularly in boundary-crossing situations (Edwards, 2011). These tools help understand how diverse individuals and groups work together to achieve common goals, especially when their perspectives, knowledge, and practices differ. 

In the context of CHAT, relational agency refers to the ability to collaborate with others to broaden and develop the focus of one’s work. This involves acknowledging and drawing on the knowledge and resources that others contribute as they interpret and engage with the shared objective. It requires recognizing that others can serve as valuable resources, and that active effort is needed to identify, understand, and negotiate the use of these contributions in pursuit of coordinated, collective action. Relational agency represents an expanded form of personal agency—one that can be cultivated and learned over time. This concept is closely linked to the ideas of distributed intelligence and distributed expertise. Distributed expertise, a more practice-oriented subset of distributed intelligence, highlights how knowledge is spread across individuals in a group. It brings attention to important issues in professional contexts, such as the nature of expertise, collaboration, teamwork, and the negotiation of professional roles, boundaries, and identities (Edwards, 2005, 2011).

This is a qualitative case study looking at one comprehensive school in Iceland that is restructuring its internal organization towards increased emphasis on interprofessional collaboration. The case study approach was chosen as it enables an in-depth exploration of interprofessional teamwork and knowledge construction within a real-life school setting, allowing for a nuanced understanding of complex social processes in context (Yin, 2018). Prior to fieldwork, semi-structured interview guides were developed, drawing on previous research findings in relation to inclusive education. These guides were partially tailored to the different roles of participants, which were the principal and administrative team, project leaders for personalized learning, teachers, special needs teachers, social educators and learning support assistants. Data collection was carried out between May 2022 and January 2023. The primary method of data collection was individual and group interviews, ranging in duration from 36 to 105 minutes. These interviews were designed to be interactive, allowing for both differing and shared perspectives to emerge. Focus group interviews enabled participants to engage with colleagues, where one person’s comments could spark insights from others—revealing information that might not have surfaced in one-on-one interviews (Taber, 2013). Most interviews were conducted on-site at the school, though a few were conducted remotely via Teams due to travel and weather-related constraints. In total, there were 21 interviews, amounting to approximately 18 hours of recorded data. The analysis is informed by Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), which provides a useful lens for examining the implementation of new ideas that require shifts in organizational structures and practices—characteristics that define the case under study. CHAT is particularly suited to exploring the tensions that may emerge when innovations disrupt established ways of working, potentially hindering the routine functioning of an institution or system (Ingólfsdóttir, 2024). Rather than focusing on individual cognition, activity theory directs attention to the dynamic interactions between individuals, tools, and the objects of their activity, emphasizing how shared, goal-directed practices are collectively carried out and transformed (Sannino & Engström, 2018).

The findings illustrate how interprofessional collaboration is enacted and experienced within the activity system of a compulsory school in Iceland undergoing internal restructuring to support inclusive education. The findings are structured around key themes that capture enabling conditions, shared planning tools, and ongoing challenges, including unequal access to resources and limited time for collective reflection. Redefining roles to support inclusive practice: This theme illustrates how the school has addressed a secondary contradiction within its activity system—specifically, the tension between a hierarchical division of labor and the collective object of fostering inclusive education. Traditionally, different levels of specialist education among staff have contributed to status distinctions and power imbalances. In this case, the school actively disrupts such hierarchies by referring to all individuals involved in support roles, whether formally trained specialists or unlicensed support staff—as specialist support staff. Stability, shared responsibility and the role of tools: The findings further show that the school’s team-based structure contributes to both organizational stability and continuity in student support. Unlike traditional models where support staff are frequently reassigned across classes and year levels, this school maintains consistent team compositions. This approach not only strengthens collaboration among staff but also fosters trusting relationships and predictability for students. Clarity of roles and cross-boundary collaboration: While the school’s discourse emphasizes collective identity, referring to all staff as either teachers or specialist support staff, the findings show that the individual expertise of each team member remains clearly recognized and valued. Structural Constraints and Emerging Contradictions: Despite the strengths of the team-based and inclusive approach, the findings also reveal structural challenges that introduce tensions into the activity system. A key issue relates to limited access to tools. Learning assistants are not allocated individual computers, which restricts their ability to access teaching plans, search for resources, or document observations independently.

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