This study examines behaviour-related ability expectations as a central yet often implicit component of the normative order of primary education. Starting from the “all means all” premise of inclusive education (UNESCO, 2020), our study shows that, despite inclusive guiding principles, educational participation is structured by historically evolved and institutionally effective ability expectations that produce normality and construct deviance along specific expectations regarding learning, achievement, and behaviour (Parekh, 2024). Therefore, our study focuses on behaviour-related ability expectations, which play a particular role in everyday school life but are rarely addressed explicitly. While expectations concerning academic abilities are comparatively explicit in curricula, learning objectives, or assessment frameworks, behaviour-related expectations often remain implicit and are produced and interpreted situationally within school interactions (Doyle, 2006; Mehan, 2014; Poed & Fox, 2023). Norms of “appropriate” school behaviour thus operate as relational ordering patterns: ability and inability are not measured against objective standards but are generated within subjectively interpreted interactional processes that are shaped by perception and relationships (Dittmann et al., 2025; Bühler-Niederberger et al., 2025).

For this reason, these norms become particularly relevant in diagnostic contexts, where subjective interpretations shaped by interactions that construct behaviour as deviant relative to ability expectations are translated into file-based case constructions and rendered institutionally decision-relevant (Cicourel & Kitsuse, 2012; MacLure et al., 2012). The paper therefore examines student case files compiled for the determination of special educational needs in the area of emotional and social development and understands these as institutionalised practices through which behaviour constructed as deviant is handled institutionally. From a diagnosis-critical perspective, determinations of support needs are not conceptualised as procedures presented as technical and value-neutral but as institutional processes through which implicit school ability norms are made explicit, condensed, and legitimised (Brodesser et al., 2025). Assessment procedures and the resulting reports function as instances of normalisation that translate situational observations of deviant behaviour into formalised attributions and are also the subject of current debates at the level of education policy (OECD, 2024).

Theoretically, the paper is situated within an ableism-critical, power-analytical perspective on ability norms. Ableism is conceptualised as a social relation of power that establishes particular emotional, social, and self-regulatory capacities as normative preconditions for participation in schooling, and frames behaviour deviating from these expectations as an individual deficit (Hehir, 2002; Campbell, 2009; Parekh, 2024). From an ableism-critical perspective, behavioural ability norms in elementary school function as implicit orders that establish certain forms of self-regulation, emotionality, and social behaviour as prerequisites for school participation (Parekh, 2024). Deviations from these norms are constructed as individual deficits, thereby socially and institutionally anchoring normality and deviance in everyday school life and potentially leading students into deviant educational and support careers based on such attributions (Holt, 2003; Poed & Fox, 2023).  Particularly within the special educational needs domain of emotional and social development, these normativities are especially consequential (Buchner, 2022) and are approached as institutional processes of categorisation and selection: norms are set, their (presumed) non-compliance is documented, and organisational responses to this are analysed as labelling steps within trajectories that can be described as deviant careers (Cicourel & Kitsuse, 2012; Bernburg, 2019).

Building on this framework, our study examines how student case files compiled for SEN assessments in emotional and social development articulate behaviour-related ability expectations and construct deviance. It further examines how these files translate interactional interpretations into institutional attributions and, in doing so, (re-)produce normative boundaries of ability, normality, and deviance.

The empirical basis of the study consists of case files of 40 primary school pupils from one German school district. The sample was drawn from a larger district-wide corpus of case files (N=121) from 2023 and 2024 that resulted in referrals to special schools across various SEN domains. For the present study, we only included files compiled for the assessment of special educational needs related to social-emotional and behavioural needs. The analysis focuses in particular on pedagogical assessment reports as well as support plans as key components of the files, in which behaviour-related (in)abilities are articulated as ability norms and used to mark normality and deviance. All documents were pseudonymised prior to analysis and handled in accordance with applicable data protection regulations. The material is analysed using Kuckartz and Rädiker’s (2024) qualitative content analysis with content-structuring procedures. The unit of analysis was the individual student case file. Using inductive, content-structuring coding, we analysed all segments in pedagogical assessment reports and support plans that addressed behaviour-related (in)abilities. The coding by multiple researchers was coordinated using an iteratively developed codebook and regular calibration meetings, with the coding process itself being critically reflected from an ableism-critical perspective to interrogate the construction of normative conceptions of ability. In a first step, we map the range of behaviour-related ability norms and identify the forms of deviation that are marked as relevant for determining support needs. In a second step, we discuss the resulting categories by analysing how the student case files (re-)produce notions of ability, normality, and deviation, thereby making ableism institutionally effective, for example through the attribution of individual deficits and the potential channelling of students into deviance-constructed educational and support trajectories.

Across the 40 case files, behaviour-related ability expectations reach well beyond the classroom. Pedagogical assessment reports and support plans evaluate pupils against norms of “appropriate” school conduct (e.g. self-regulation, rule-following, cooperation), but also draw on expectations concerning out-of-school social behaviour and family-related contexts that are treated as relevant for educational participation. From an ableism-critical perspective, this is problematic because these norms mark individual differences as “deficits” without sufficiently accounting for the structural conditions that shape these behaviours. At the same time, the documentation shows no stable organisational logic for which domains of behaviour-related ability norms are applied across cases. Rather than being applied uniformly, these norms are selectively activated to argue a particular problem framing. Viewed through an ableism-critical lens, it becomes clear how institutional practices privilege certain bodily and behavioural norms while pathologising others. Behaviour-related ability norms therefore appear less as general expectations for all children than as case-specific resources for producing a persuasive file narrative in support of a support-needs determination. Ambivalences, deliberations, and contradictory perspectives largely disappear. Competing interpretations are mentioned, they are quickly resolved in favour of a dominant case construction, and observations are condensed into stable attributions that become institutionally usable. A further pattern is decontextualisation and individualisation. Descriptions of deviance are predominantly framed as a pupil’s property; situational conditions, classroom dynamics, and interactional processes are rarely discussed as constitutive contexts. Instead, deviance is documented as a child-centred deficit, detached from relational or structural circumstances. An ableism-critical perspective reveals that this practice reproduces normative ideas of “capable” behaviour and institutionally categorises students who do not meet these norms. In a European context marked by inclusive policy commitments, these findings highlight how SEN documentation can operate as a gatekeeping mechanism that structures participation by rendering implicit behaviour-related ability norms institutionally decision-relevant in student case files.

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