Kategorien subjektiver Definitionen von Lehrkräften zu Inklusion [Categories to Describe Teachers’ Subjective Definitions of Inclusion]

A review of the academic scholarship provides many different understandings and various ways to define and operationalize inclusion. It stands to reason that practitioners like teachers also have inconsistent concepts of inclusion. Although there is some evidence, that the association between behavior and subjective understandings or beliefs of teachers is stronger than the relationship between academic theories and teachers’ behavior, there is a lack of research on teachers’ subjective definitions of inclusion.

The system of categories shows which content-related elements compose teachers’ subjective definitions of inclusion as a concept. A subsample of 182 teachers completed an online survey and answered the open-ended item “Define Inclusion in your own words.”. The data was analyzed using an inductive qualitative content analysis.

Through three iterations of the analysis the answers were summarized in 27 categories (κ = 0.85) which could be categorized by 15 dimensions (κ = 0.89).