Creating Inclusive Education: from the Perspectives of Children, Parents, Teachers and Others

An international scoping review involving different perspectives has shown that inclusive experiences in shared occupational situations are co-created by both children and adults. These situations are changeable and can promote inclusive Experiences by choosing, adapting and flexibilising occupations, how children are grouped, what kind of support is offered and how adults and diverse children interact with each other in these situations.

Reconceptualising Inclusive Practice: From Individual Support to Collective Co-creation

Key Findings from Case Studies

Oak School Case: Oak School demonstrated how inclusive education unfolds through stable, long-term class communities. The two-year continuous classroom structure enabled children and teachers to develop an "individualising class community" where children's sense of belonging to the community and their individual recognition reinforced one another. Through diverse shared occupational situations, from Class Councils to peer-led soccer games, children learned to navigate flexible participation situations (doing together with all, some, or alone) whilst maintaining strong connections to the class as a whole. Teachers created conditions for children to develop self-awareness and consideration for others, fostering what parents described as a "Gefüge", a dynamic entity where all children belonged and contributed equally, just as they were.

Village School Case: Village School revealed how annual class composition changes shaped inclusive practice differently. The multi-grade structure (3rd and 4th grade together) created yearly cycles of gaining and losing peers, which multiple stakeholders experienced as disruptive to community building. Unexpectedly, this heterogeneous setting functioned as a less individualising community, with children being grouped more by grade levels, with less opportunities to contribute to the class community. Despite these challenges, children emphasised the importance of connecting as a class through shared experiences, demonstrating that effective collaboration required tolerance and respect. The yearly transitions challenged stakeholders to continually recreate inclusive practice, revealing the adaptive and resilient nature of school communities.

Common Ground: Both cases revealed that inclusive education emerges through three interconnected dimensions: shared occupational situations (the concrete activities and interactions where inclusion is created), changeability (the capacity for transformation through various modifications), and social context (the relational and cultural environments that shape participation). Across both schools, all stakeholders, children, teachers, parents, assistants, therapists, and principals, recognised class community as fundamental to inclusive practice, though they emphasised different aspects based on their roles and experiences.

Discussion

Shifting from Individual to Collective Perspectives The findings indicate that a more nuanced understanding of inclusive practice must shift away from individualising views of including single children toward collective perspectives on creating shared occupational situations for all children. At the classroom level, reconceptualising inclusive practice reveals a needed shift from providing individual support to collective co-creation, focusing on actions in the classroom and at school. This involves understanding how people create shared occupational situations, shape inclusive values, and foster class communities that connect children and classroom staff in individualising yet collective experiences. Dewey's emphasis on learning through shared experience finds concrete expression when all children engage as contributing members.

Contextualised and Situated Practice At the wider school community level, inclusive education unfolds as an open-ended, situated, and contextualised process that creates environments welcoming to all children. The diversity of inclusive practice must be recognised at an international level, acknowledging international differences and cultural contexts. What works in one school community cannot be adopted by another, inclusive practice emerges from the specific people within, their interactions, values, and situations within each unique context. However, learning from and with each other across these differences can enrich all learning communities.

Embracing Tensions as Generative Forces

Inclusive education inevitably involves tensions, between individual and collective needs, stability and change, structure and flexibility. Rather than viewing these as problems to solve, both cases revealed that working through tensions collectively drives the ongoing transformation of inclusive practice. These tensions emerge naturally when diverse stakeholders with different perspectives, values, and experiences work together to create inclusive environments. Recognising and engaging with these tensions, rather than avoiding them, becomes essential for all stakeholders in building responsive and dynamic school communities, welcoming all.

Implications for Different Stakeholders

For Teachers and School Leaders:

Create conditions for collective co-creation
Recognise the importance of stable class communities and consider the impact of structural decisions (e.g., class composition changes) on community building
Develop capacity to facilitate diverse shared occupational situations that allow flexible participation

For Occupational Therapists and Related Professionals:

Shift from individual child-centred interventions to supporting the creation of inclusive shared occupational situations
Work collaboratively with teachers to understand and enhance the changeability of classroom situations
Recognise therapeutic potential in everyday classroom activities and peer interactions

For Policymakers:

Move beyond individual support models to frameworks that enable collective approaches
Acknowledge that inclusive education requires attention to social context
Support schools in developing contextualised practices

For Researchers:

Develop methodological innovations for participatory research that captures multi-stakeholder perspectives
Examine how the concept of shared occupational situations and its changeability dimensions function across diverse cultural and educational contexts.

Inclusive schools teach children skills to engage with each other and do things together in classrooms, playgrounds, and other places, disregarding differences in abilities, gender, race, class, and language. Education is contextualised within local systems, varying across socio-historical and cultural settings. Efforts to promote inclusive education increasingly focus on children in their social context at school, with growing awareness that inclusive education needs to be human rights-based. However, research to date has predominantly canvassed teachers’ perspectives and focused on academic outcomes, excluding broader concerns of doings together, experiencing participation and subsequently, social inclusion.

The guiding research question is: From an occupational perspective, how is inclusive education enacted in mainstream schools? The philosophical underpinning of the study is John Dewey’s pragmatist work on experience, education and democracy, and understanding that education comes primarily through social interaction. He describes the nature of truth as a belief being true following investigational inquiry, wherein different situations may reveal different truths. A scoping review of international research encompassing social, health and educational standpoints on inclusive education, experiences and views, of children, teachers, other staff, and parents will be analysed applying reflective thematic analysis. On a local level, Stake case study research will be conducted at two Swiss primary schools. Interactions and views of children, teachers, other staff, and parents in a specific context shaped by the school environment, culture, politics and attitudes will be studied. Cases will be analysed individually and comparatively using an interpretive approach. Findings may reveal a more holistic understanding of social interaction, inclusion and doing things together at school, indicating how children’s and adults’ views on inclusive education can be respected and actioned in practice, policy and society. Bringing an occupational perspective, underpinned by human rights, to inclusive education can contribute to educating for diversity, building inclusive societies for the future.