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With the growing heterogeneity of student populations in contemporary classrooms across diverse international contexts, inclusive education has emerged as one of the most visible concepts on both the policy and research agenda (Ainscow, 2020). Recently, a broader political framework has emerged promoting inclusion as providing for the educational needs of all learners (“all means all”; UNESCO, 2020). Some authors point out that although there is an increasing emphasis on meeting the individual educational needs of all students in global political discourse, in academic discussions, most attention is still devoted to the needs of only some groups of students, typically those with SEND and/or sociocultural disadvantage (cf. Messiou, 2017; Nilhom & Göransson, 2017). More specifically, even where the authors adhere to the “inclusion for all” approach within the theoretical sections of their studies, in the methodological and empirical parts, the idea of “inclusion for some” tends to predominate (Kielblock & Woodcock, 2023). Therefore, in line with current conceptual discussions, we adhere to a more “broad” definition of inclusive education (cf. Ainscow et al., 2006), specifically to the “C” category of definitions as identified by Göransson & Nilholm (2014), where inclusive education is understood as meeting the social/academic needs of all pupils. We believe that inclusive education can rely on approaches such as differentiated instruction or universal design for learning, which are increasingly recognized as effective pedagogical models in terms of addressing student diversity (Gritful-Freixenet et al., 2020). Such approaches are based on the assumption that diversity among students exists in every group of learners, and students can differ in terms of readiness, interest and/or learning profile ranging from individual learning preferences to diverse family backgrounds (Tomlinson, 2022). Teachers can respond to this complex student diversity by using inclusive practices, i.e. any strategies ensuring that all students who have different individual needs can effectively learn in heterogeneous classrooms (Finkelstein et al., 2019). Our study is based on several research gaps in international literature. Firstly, emphasis is predominantly placed on teachers’ attitudes toward inclusion rather than their practices. Thus there is a lack of observational data (Finkelstein et al., 2019; Sharma et al., 2021). Secondly, although students are the primary beneficiaries of the (non-)inclusive practices of their teachers, research capturing students’ perspective on inclusion in a broader sense (cf., Subban et al., 2022) as well as students' views on teachers’ (non-)inclusive practices (Schwab et al., 2022) are lacking. Thirdly, research typically focuses on primary education, with fewer studies conducted at the lower-secondary level, where differentiation could be even more challenging for teachers (Stollman et al., 2019; Schwab et al., 2022). To address these research gaps, the aim of our ethnographic research is to explore how lower-secondary school teachers reflect on and implement inclusive practices to address student diversity and to investigate the perspectives of all students on their teachers' inclusive practices.
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