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Articles should be between 5.000 and 7.000 words, excluding references. Authors that plan to submit articles longer than 7,000 words must contact the editorial board in advance.

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EJIE Special Issue "Reimagine Special Education"

Call for Papers

“Reimagine Special Education” (RiSE)

A Special Issue of the European Journal of Inclusive Education

The guest editors for this special issue are:

Dr Olja Jovanović (Belgrade University), Dr Jude Tah (Stockholm University), Professor Jonathan Rix (The Open University & The Inland Norwegian University of Applied Sciences).

Invitation

This is an open call for papers to be submitted to the special issue “Reimagine Special Education” after December 15^th, 2023. There is no closing date for this call. 

We are happy to receive either: 

                ·         Full papers (max. 7000 words excluding references) which will go through the normal review process for the European Journal of Inclusive Education and must adhere to its author guidelines (see this link for details). 

or 

               ·         an abstract of 250-400 words, with a list of authors and title - should you wish to know if the editors consider whether your idea is relevant to the call, prior to a full paper submission.

Context of the special issue

Inclusive education was introduced as a means to overcome the exclusionary practices and experiences of mainstream and special education systems. Its’ apparent success is that it has globally taken hold even in systems where there is a well-established history of segregatory structures. However, it is understood in many different ways in relation to policy, practice and research (Amor et al, 2019) and in most countries the initial enthusiastic narrative has been met by a continued and frequently resurgent role for special education in various guises (Slee, 2018; Rix, 2015; Hausstatter & Jahnukainen, 2015). Research from across nations show that the drive for an inclusive ethos and culture results in cosmetic and surface-level changes, that numbers of children in special education continues to grow and that it can be supporting upto 40% of all children at some point in their school careers. Across all countries, similar numbers of children spend at least 80% of their time outside of the mainstream classroom, even in those which claim to have closed special education settings. In classroom which seek to enact a pedagogy underpinned by inclusive aims and principles, (e.g.: focussed upon whole class activity and student strengths), practitioners still feel the need to adopt practices for learners identified with special eduational needs that are associated with the special education paradigm (e.g. individualised seating arrangements and behaviour strategies). 

In this context this special issue seeks to explore whether we need to reimagine the nature of special education rather than seek to consign it to history. We wish to consider the possibility that inclusion has re-legitimised special education and become a barrier to special education’s necessary transformation. We invite papers that are interested in: 

·       considering ways in which special education and its traditions are maintained and/or re-legitimised,

·       introducing practical possibilities that can move us beyond this impasse,

·       exploring possible futures for special education and what alternatives may emerge.

Some possible themes for papers to explore.

·       Why does special education fill a gap which inclusion does not?

·       Are there aspects of special education which we should be seeking to retain and redevelop? 

·       What would happen to special education if we prioritise participation and social justice (rather than inclusion)? 

·       Are there views from across the sector that can help us understand the challenges and opportunities?

·       What issues have not yet been sufficiently researched to drive a transformation of special education?

·       Reactions to earlier papers in the call. 

(This special issue has already accepted 5 submissions on the basis of abstracts provided as part of a seminar series at the European Conference on Educational Research 2023. These papers touch on subjects such as individualisation, relationships with support services, administrative processes, ownership of knowledge and the legitimising nature of categories.) 

If you have any questions about this call you can contact Jonathan Rix at jonathan.rix@inn.no or you can join us for a special issue question and answer session on December 15^th at 10am (GMT). 

This question and answer session will be an Open Zoom meeting at: link

References

Amor, A., Hagiwara, M., Shogren, K., et al (2019). International perspectives and trends in research on inclusive education: a systematic review. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 23(12), 1277–1295.

Hausstätter, R. & Jahnukainen, M. (2015). From integration to inclusion and the role of special education. In F. Kiuppis and R. Hausstätter (eds), Inclusive Education Twenty Years after Salamanca (pp. 119-132). Peter Lang.

Rix, J. (2015). Must Inclusion be Special? Routledge.

Slee, R. (2018). Inclusive education isn’t dead, it just smells funny. Routledge.

Call for Papers "Inclusive Education is not Dead"

Invitation

This is a call for papers to be submitted to the special issue “Inclusive Education is not Dead, it just ArticulatesDifferently. Approaches and Pitfalls to the International Comparison” starting from 01.02.2024. The closing date forsubmission is 15.03.2024.

We are happy to receive either: 

• Full papers (max. 7000 words excluding references) which will go through the normal review process for the European Journal of Inclusive Education and must adhere to its author guidelines (see this linkfor details). 

or 

• An abstract of 250-400 words, with a list of authors and title - should you wish to know if the editors consider whether your idea is relevant to the call, prior to a full paper submission.

Papers and abstracts can be submitted through the following link: 

https://tidsskrift.dk/ejie/submission/wizard?sectionId=3492

specifying that they are addressed to the IEDAD Special Call.

Before submitting, please ensure that the contributions comply with the journal's Submission Preparation Checklist and Author Guidelines (https://tidsskrift.dk/ejie/about/submissions).

Context of the special issue

Inclusive education can be described as an international paradigm that, on the one hand, has been incorporated into the policies of international (educational) organizations, such as the European Union, the OECD, UNESCO or the World Bank, while on the other hand, it has gained significant visibility through international agreements, such as the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education of 1994, the UN Convention on theRights of Persons with Disabilities of 2006 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals of 2018. The political normative(pro)positions and goals in inclusive education associated with this are currently adopted in national and regionaleducation policies and, subsequently, specific steering processes in education systems are being initiated. Thereby, inclusion needs to be adapted, at both the national and regional level, into different educational systems with differing historical developments, distinct cultures, normative and legal foundations, and then be transferred into practice andspecific conditions.

Against the sketched backdrop inclusive education is discussed to be a fuzzy or slippery concept, meaning that it is difficult to define or operationalize it in a clear and precise way. As this fuzziness might be very well a problem for developing inclusive education systems, it also presents a specific challenge for international comparative research regarding inclusive education. Facing the differences of educational systems, of existing national data sources, and of the way inclusion gets implemented the task of comparing inclusion and participation between educational systems –and also the barriers and discrimination embedded therein – is challenging. For example, in the European discourseon Inclusive Education, different country-specific theoretical and methodological approaches come together. While reading inclusion divergently (Amrhein & Naraian 2022) can be seen as a necessary prerequisite for the European and international analysis of inclusive education, a methodological discussion is nonetheless necessary.

To tackle this challenge, researcher from Germany, Austria and Switzerland founded the DFG-funded (2020-2024)scientific network “Inclusive Education: International and Comparative Perspectives”. Its aim is to explore how thetransformation towards inclusive educational systems, reaching from global to local levels, can be studied in aninternationally comparative manner. Within the network, different theoretical and/or methodological approaches arecompared and discussed with scientists from the international arena to analyze the potentials and limitations ofdifferent approaches for international comparative (educational) research.

The idea for this special issue was born at the ECER conference at the University of Glasgow 2023, where somemembers of the network held a research workshop under the title "Inclusive Education is not Dead, it just ArticulatesDifferently. Discussing Approaches and Pitfalls to the International Comparison" in Network 4 "Inclusive Education". Inthis special edition of the European Journal of Inclusive Education we aim to stick to the idea of that workshop andinitiate a theoretical and methodological discussion by presenting a collection of papers that deal with this challenge.Thus, based on the preliminary work and research of the network, which has already been published in the Handbookof Inclusion International (Köpfer, Powell & Zahnd 2021), the analytical focus of this special issue is rather put on thedevelopment process regarding the international comparative research discourse on inclusive education (i.e., how can international comparative research be done?) than on the implementation process (i.e., results of a comparison ofeducational systems).

The aim is not to evaluate approaches in the sense of a best practice, but to make clear which challenges becomeevident and what kind of approaches (methodological/theoretical) could be helpful to tackle them. Hence, the call will welcome papers from the network members, experts working on the network’s topic, and researchers that participated in the Glasgow’s workshop. It will comprise both theoretical and methodological challenges regarding international andcross-cultural comparison in inclusive education.

Some possible themes for papers to explore.

• The diversity of understandings of inclusion and synonymous concepts that deal with inclusive education, their theoretical foundations, and how international comparative research has to deal with this diversity (i.e.participation, discrimination)
• Translating inclusion between “global-national-local” levels and the problem of translation and context-dependence of researcher perspective(s)
• Classification, categories and the problem of normativity and reification in the context of Internationalcomparative research (i.e. in context of knowledge production process or data production) (cf. Badstieber,Gasterstädt & Köpfer 2022)

Organization / timeline

The special issue is planned to be published in 2025.

After selecting suitable proposals, the authors will be informed and invited to take part in an author`s workshop (online) in May/June 2024. The workshop aims to connect the involved authors and their ideas. Thereby it will also foster theprocess and quality of the contributions.

References

Amrhein, B. & Naraian, S. (2022). Reading Inclusion Divergently. Emerald Publishing Limited.

Badstieber, Benjamin.

Gasterstädt, J. & Köpfer, A. (2022). Reconstructive Approaches in Inclusive Education – Methodological Challenges ofNormativity and Reification in International Inclusion Research. In: B. Amrhein & S. Naraian (Eds.): Reading Inclusion Divergently: Articulations from Around the World. London: Emerald Publishing, S. 171-186.

Köpfer, A., Powell, J.J.W. & Zahnd, R. (Eds.) (2021): International Handbook of Inclusive Education. Opladen, Berlin, Toronto: Verlag Barbara Budrich. Available at: shop.budrich-academic.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/9783847415770.pdf (31.01.2024).

Call for Papers Special Issue: Making Up Inclusive Education: How Educational Realities Are Made?

Special Issue Editors:

Elias Helge Braun, University of Koblenz

Lea Klöpfer, University of Koblenz 

Emma Shubin, University of Luxembourg 

Olivera Ilić, University of Belgrade 

Prof. Dr. Thorsten Merl, University of Koblenz 

Dr. Olja Jovanović, University of Belgrade

Prof.in Dr.in Michelle Proyer, University of Luxembourg 

Context and Origin

This Special Issue of the European Journal of Inclusive Education (EJIE) arises from the international Spring School "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Equity and Community in Inclusive Education" held in April 2026 at the University of Koblenz. Organised by the Universities of Belgrade, Koblenz and Luxembourg, this initiative brought together emerging researchers from psychology, pedagogy, philosophy and cultural studies backgrounds to engage in critical dialogue on inclusive education across disciplinary and national boundaries. While this issue showcases contributions that were developed for and refined during the spring school, we warmly welcome submissions from emerging scholars beyond this group whose work speaks to and extends the themes of the special issue.

For the purpose of this call, we use ‘emerging researchers’ to refer broadly to PhD candidates, early-career researchers and all those who are beginning to establish their own lines of inquiry within a research community. We recognise that this process takes different forms and does not necessarily follow a linear career path. We therefore welcome contributions from researchers at different stages of developing their independent research, including those working alongside more experienced colleagues as well as those beginning to formulate and lead their own research.

Thematic Rationale

Inclusive education is a process of community-building. While it aspires to create schools where every learner belongs (Slee, 2019), building an inclusive community inevitably involves deciding who belongs, how resources are distributed, and whose voices are heard (Fricker, 2007).These processes unfold through sedimented and emerging categories that do not simply describe educational realities, but actively shape them (Mouffe, 2011). Such categories are produced, stabilised and normalised through broader social narratives, policy frameworks, institutional structures and procedures, and professional practices concerning norms regarding difference. They are also lived in the everyday worlds of classrooms, families, peer groups, and other communities, where they may be accepted, negotiated or resisted. Finally, they are sustained, challenged, and/or reimagined through research itself—through the concepts it privileges, the methods it employs, and the stories it tells about learners, teachers, families, and communities.

This special issue invites contributions that examine how inclusive education is made and remade across these interconnected domains: through policies and institutional arrangements, through everyday educational practices, and through research and knowledge production. Taken together, these perspectives can illuminate inclusive education not simply as a policy aspiration or pedagogical approach, but as an ongoing struggle over how educational communities are built, who is recognised within them, and what kinds of participation they make possible (see Felder, 2018, Rix, 2023). By bringing these perspectives together, the special issue seeks to foster richer and more timely understandings of how inclusive education is imagined, built, and sustained. But this is not only a matter of understanding existing practices and arrangements. As Ian Hacking (1986, p. 169) claims:

“What is curious about human action is that, by and large, what I am deliberately doing depends on the possibilities of description. [...] Hence if new modes of description come into being, new possibilities for action come into being in consequence.”

Therefore, we hope that this special issue will bring us new descriptions of experiences, structures, procedures, narratives that may help reshape how we think about inclusive education and, consequently, how we work to develop it.

Scope of the special issue

We invite emetging researchers from a range of disciplinary perspectives, working in diverse educational and socio-historical contexts, to contribute high-quality theoretical, empirical, and review papers to this special issue. We are particularly interested in contributions that examine how inclusive education is shaped through social, cultural, institutional, and interpersonal processes. In particular, we welcome papers that engage with questions such as:

• How is inclusive education shaped by broader social, cultural, scientific and political narratives about difference?
• How do children, young people, families, and educators negotiate, resist, or use the categories through which inclusive education is organised?
• How does research itself participate in making up inclusive education—through the concepts it privileges, the voices it amplifies, the methods it uses, and the stories it tells about learners, teachers, and communities?
• How do educational policies, procedures, structures, and actors shape what counts as inclusion, who is eligible for support, and which educational pathways become available?

References

Felder, F. (2018), The Value of Inclusion.Journal of Philosophy of Education, 52, 54-70. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12280

Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press.

Hacking, I. (1986). Making up people. In T. C. Heller, M. Sosna, & D. E. Wellbery (Eds.), Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought (pp. 222–236). Stanford University Press.

Mouffe, C. (2011). On the Political. Routledge.

Rix, J. (2023). In Search of Education, Participation and Inclusion Embrace the Uncertain. Routledge.

Slee, R. (2019). Belonging in an age of exclusion. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 23(9), 909–922. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2019.1602366

Submission information

Authors are invited to submit full manuscripts of up to 7,000 words (excluding references). All submissions must comply with the author guidelines of the European Journal of Inclusive Education.

All manuscripts submitted to this special issue will undergo the journal’s double-blind peer-review process and will be reviewed by at least two reviewers. Only original and previously unpublished manuscripts will be considered for publication.

Manuscripts should be submitted through the EJIE submission system: https://tidsskrift.dk/ejie/about/submissions

Important dates

• Paper submission deadline: 20 February 2027
• Expected publication of the special issue: end of 2027

For any questions regarding this call for papers, please contact the special issue editor Elias Braun (ebraun@uni-koblenz.de).