In this systematic scoping review, research on the inclusion of students with special education needs (SEN) in Nordic countries was reviewed to describe the scope and types of empirical research, identify the practices and approaches on the inclusion of students with SEN, and conceptually map how particular concepts (i.e., inclusion, SEN) are…

Finland is committed to inclusive education as many other countries too. In this study, we examined Finnish student teachers' attitudes towards inclusion using an electronic questionnaire. In total, 277 students participated. The open responses were studied as various teacher students', class, subject or special education students' narratives of…

Calls for increased monitoring and evaluation of education policies and practices have not, so far, included widespread and consistent assessments of the inclusiveness of education settings. Measuring inclusion in education has proven to be a challenging exercise, due not only to the complexity and different uses of the concept, but also to its…

The qualitative literature review includes 34 articles published in English-language, peer-reviewed journals to obtain a Nordic perspective on the status of the research on how the idea of inclusion implemented into practice is reflected in the literature from 2009 through 2019. Qualitative content analysis was conducted. In the analysis, we…

The attitudes towards inclusion and the terms used related to special needs by pre-service teachers in three Finnish universities were studied. Inclusion is the main educational policy in Finland, and special solutions are avoided when possible. With a questionnaire and a brief survey, data from 488 pre-service teachers (PSTs) were collected and…

This article carries out a cross-European comparison of stakeholder perspectives on catering to diversity within CLIL programs. It reports on a cross-sectional concurrent triangulation mixed methods study with 2,526 teachers, students, and parents in 59 Secondary schools in six European countries: Austria, Finland, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the…

Many universities in non-English speaking countries have been adopting English as a medium of instruction to internationalize their education. We set out to compare the language policies of a Finnish and a Japanese university using the lens of language ideology -- a set of normative beliefs about the social dimension of language. Data were…

The present article draws attention to the latest curriculum reform in Finland, which came into effect in August 2016 and promoted a shift towards a competency-based curriculum which highlights diversity as a positive resource. The main aim of this study was to gain insights into the understanding of 'inclusion' within the context of PE policy in…

Positive teacher attitudes are essential for success when children with special educational needs (SEN) are placed into mainstream classrooms. The present study surveyed teachers' attitudes towards inclusion by using a large national sample and Teachers' Attitudes towards Inclusion Scale (TAIS). A total of 1,764 Finnish basic-school teachers…

Teachers' positive attitudes towards inclusive education are a prerequisite for its successful implementation. This study surveyed the attitudes of Finnish classroom, subject, resource room and special education class teachers (N = 4567) towards inclusive education. The results indicated very low support for the concept. Its acceptance was…

This review aims to explore the effects of placing children with special needs in inclusive educational settings, compared with segregated placement on measures of academic achievement and psychosocial adjustment. A secondary aim is to explore how different child or setting characteristics (gender, age, type and severity of special need, part- or…

Over the past decades, an abundance of studies have assessed teacher attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs related to inclusive education. However, empirical evidence on the causal relationship between efficacy and attitudes is still rare and inconclusive. Therefore, the present study focused on identifying the interdependent relationship between…

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted elderly people as a vulnerable and excluded community, and connecting to the younger social media generation requires a shift in intergenerational storytelling performance. Recent research on multimodality has emphasized its benefits for the interactional process in storytelling. This study examines three…

Inclusive education as an alternative to traditional separate special education has gained recognition since the approval of the Salamanca Statement in 1994. The success of inclusion is considered to be highly dependent on the teachers' positions on inclusion. In this study Finnish comprehensive school teachers' opinions were investigated in order…

This report projects Northern Ireland's skills base through to 2030 and compares this to a number of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The report shows that on current trends Northern Ireland will continue to lag many other countries on a number of measures of learning and skills in 2030. These shortfalls can…