Synthesising Inclusive and Didactic Research – a Way to Ensure the Participation and Learning of Every Student?

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to compare research criteria for inclusive education in relation to criteria for didactic research. The inclusive researchers that were selected defined inclusive education as removing barriers to social participation and learning for all students. The didactic researchers that we have selected referred to the tradition of successful reading and writing, focused on schools and teaching practices with favourable outcomes. The results indicated that the inclusive education researchers study school mainly from an organisational point of view. In contrast, the didactic researchers focus on a pedagogical approach, that is, on the teachers’ teaching strategies concerning the ways in which each student learns best. Within both fields under study it is considered that in-service training is most effective when it is based on the teachers’ actual working situation and when it emphasizes the importance of cooperative school cultures where the teachers also meet researchers. A reflection is that the inclusive education researchers in the study strive to transfer new knowledge to the teachers, in order to help them broaden their views on reducing social and organisational barriers to inclusion. The reading and writing researchers presented in this study represent a more dialectical process aimed at developing both the teachers’ didactic professionalism, the researchers’ own research questions and, in the end, the students’ learning. Another reflection is that if inclusive education and didactic researchers were to develop collaborative research cultures, this would shorten the way to the common goal: to ensure the participation and learning of all students.