Call for Papers "Inclusive Education is not Dead, it just Articulates Differently. Approaches and Pitfalls to the International Comparison" (IEDAD)

2024-01-29

Invitation

This is a call for papers to be submitted to the special issue “Inclusive Education is not Dead, it just Articulates Differently. Approaches and Pitfalls to the International Comparison” starting from February 1, 2024. 

The procedure of the call is based on a two-stage process. Authors are first asked to submit an abstract. The closing date for submission of abstracts is April 30, 2024. In a second step, authors are asked to submit their full papers. The closing date for submission of full papers is September 30, 2024 (see below for further information).

 

Guest Editors

Lea Schäfer (University of Education Freiburg/Humboldt Universität Berlin); Julia Gasterstädt (University Kassel); Andreas Köpfer (University of Education Freiburg); Raphael Zahnd (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland)

 

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 the Rights 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 regional education 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 and specific 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 discourse on 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 the transformation towards inclusive educational systems, reaching from global to local levels, can be studied in an internationally comparative manner. Within the network, different theoretical and/or methodological approaches are compared and discussed with scientists from the international arena to analyze the potentials and limitations of different 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 some members of the network held a research workshop under the title "Inclusive Education is not Dead, it just Articulates Differently. Discussing Approaches and Pitfalls to the International Comparison" in Network 4 "Inclusive Education". In this special edition of the European Journal of Inclusive Education we aim to stick to the idea of that workshop and initiate 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 Handbook of Inclusion International (Köpfer, Powell & Zahnd 2021), the analytical focus of this special issue is rather put on the development 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 of educational systems).

The aim is not to evaluate approaches in the sense of a best practice, but to make clear which challenges become evident 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 and cross-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 International comparative research (i.e. in context of knowledge production process or data production) (cf. Badstieber, Gasterstädt & Köpfer 2022)

 

Timeline

Closing date for abstracts is March 15, 2024. We are happy to receive an abstract of 250-400 words, with a list of authors and title. You are invited to indicate 2 potential reviewers for your paper. 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).

After selecting suitable proposals, the authors will be informed and invited to take part in an author`s workshop (online) on June 1, 2024, between 9 and 12 a.m. The workshop aims to connect the involved authors and their ideas. Thereby it will also foster the process and quality of the contributions.

Deadline for the full papers is September 30, 2024. Full papers (max. 7000 words excluding references) 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).

 The special issue is planned to be published in 2025.

 

References

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

Badstieber, B., Gasterstädt, J. & Köpfer, A. (2022). Reconstructive Approaches in Inclusive Education – Methodological Challenges of Normativity 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).