An investigation into classroom practices across Europe.

This report contains an overview of the findings of the first phase of the European Agency's Classroom and School Practice project. The project is focused on revealing, analysing, describing and disseminating classroom practices in inclusive settings in such a way that European teachers can implement inclusive practices on a wider scale in their classrooms.

The Classroom and School Practice project is of particular interest for the field of special educational needs since it focuses directly on practical aspects of special needs education. As such it may have a great impact on the field of special education, especially for the main user group of the Agency's work: classroom teachers.

Two main questions form the basis for the study:

1. How can differences in the classroom be dealt with?

2. How can mainstream schools be equipped and organized in order to deal with pupils with special educational needs?

The complete study will consist of three phases. In the first phase a literature review has been conducted in the participating countries in order to reveal the current state of the art of effective inclusive practices. Literature reviews were received from 15 countries and they are presented in this report. In addition, an international (mainly American) literature review was conducted in this phase. This part of the project addresses the question: which practices have proven to be effective in inclusive education? The focus was to reveal the current body of knowledge on the issue independent of the specific country.

The report is structured to cover:

- the questions, goal, output and target group of the project (Chapter 1);

- the framework for the study (Chapter 2);

- the methodology of the study and the timetable of the study (Chapter 3);

- the international literature review (Chapter 4);

- the European literature reviews (Chapter 5);

- the synthesis of findings (Chapter 6).

The study was edited by the project manager, but different parts of this report (Chapters 4 and 5 mainly) were written by authors selected within the participating countries. These were either working partners of the European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education themselves or 'guest writers', selected by the working partners.

This full report is only available as a download in electronic format (pdf) in English.

The report has a hyperlinked Contents page (p. 3) and Index of Authors (p. 251) and Index of Key Subjects (p. 254) for ease of navigation. 
 
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