This symposium presents key findings of the largest European study on schooling: INCLUD-ED (2006-2011), from the 6^th Framework Program of the EU. Involving partners from 14 European countries, INCLUD-ED has addressed the question of how educational systems in Europe can provide best quality education for students from all cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds, and thus achieve greater levels of social justice. To meet that aim, INCLUD-ED has analyzed educational strategies that contribute to overcome the inequalities and enhance social cohesion in today’s multicultural Europe. This symposium disseminates some of those strategies, named Successful Educational Actions (SEA), paying particular attention to issues of multiculturalism. The SEAs shared in this panel are, concretely: a) Interactive Groups; b) the types of family and community participation that are more likely to enhance academic achievement; c) practices of dialogic reading; and d) an exploration of how education affects the trajectories of migrants and ethnic minorities in Europe. 

These SEAs have resulted from the study of all educational systems in Europe and their outcomes, as well as from case studies of preprimary, primary and secondary schools around Europe that serve cultural and ethnic minorities from low SES and have achieved high results for all students. A common element in all the SEAs is their inclusive character and the evidence of drawing on cultural diversity to improve education. All papers are framed by education theories that understand schools in connection to their social context, and that see the dynamics of education as influenced not only by systems but also, and importantly, by human agency, the everyday actions of learners, teachers, and communities.

 The first paper presents the Interactive Groups (IG), which has been found to be the most successful type of classroom organization involving reallocation of existing resources and heterogeneous grouping of students. In IG diverse community members participate in the classroom supporting solidarity-based interactions among students. The IG have proved to raise the academic achievement of all students and improve intercultural relations. Because family and community involvement has been found to be essential in all SEAs, the symposium includes a paper on types of family and community involvement in schools. A central finding is the need for moving minority families and communities to the center of school participation to improve schools and students’ learning. The third paper focuses on reading practices in successful schools in Europe. The dialogic reading approach has dismantled stereotypes about the motivation of students and families from minority and low SES background for school learning and classical literature. The last paper analyzes how successful education shapes the trajectories of social inclusion of migrants and cultural minorities in Europe.

 All studies have employed the critical communicative methodology, a research approach that has implied the inclusion throughout the research of the voices of the minorities and marginalized people whose situation is addresses in INCLUD-ED. As a whole, this symposium provides key elements and action lines to inform educational and social policy for achieving social justice in urban schools and beyond their walls.