Inclusive Education: International and Comparative Perspectives

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Köpfer
• Subject Area: Education Systems and Educational Institutions
• Term: from 2019 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 427476584

The research network "Inclusive Education: International and Comparative Perspectives" focuses on methodological and theoretical questions regarding international comparative research on Inclusive Education.Legally backed by the UN CRPD, Inclusive Education has gained momentum as a global education norm and policy. Educational discourses and research focus on Inclusive Education as a central concept to analyze participation and exclusion in educational fields. However, international and comparative questions of Inclusive Education have not been subject to many research based projects within the German speaking discourse. Mostly, comparative analyses focus on education systems of other German speaking countries, although their structures, practices and cultures are fairly similar. A systematic conjunction of the German discourse and international comparative research on Inclusive Education has not been accomplished yet. This implies methodological considerations for the adequate addressing of research questions in the field of Inclusive Education and social inequity in the international context. Therefore, a group of ten junior researchers propose for the network „Inclusive Education: International and Comparative Perspectives“ in order to elaborate on the fundamental questions: (1) which methodological/methodical approaches are appropriate for international comparative research and (2) which theories and methodologies give insight into various types of processes of inclusion and exclusion in educational fields on an international level. With these different theoretical and methodological perspectives, the scientific network "Inclusive Education in International Comparison" aims to contribute to the methodological debate of international comparative research in education.Using Inclusive Education as a tertium comparationis, the network compares different theoretical and/or methodological approaches within comparative research, in order to analyze their potentials and limitations. The results will be published in a joint publication (anthology with open access) which disseminates these findings in the German speaking and international scientific discourse on Inclusive Education. Hence, the proposed network aims to support further development in the discourse on Inclusive Education in Germany by theoretical and methodological contributions on international comparative research within this field.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Lea Schäfer