Introduction

With the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD) in 2009, the Federal Republic of Germany and more than 150 other countries committed itself to ensure an inclusive education system in which students with and without special educational needs (in the following: SEN) attend the same schools and are educated together. A special characteristic of the german school system with regard to SEN support is a fixation on independent special education schools for over more than 130 years (Dietze, 2019). So-called “Integration trials” were approved in the mid-1970s and “joint teaching” of students with and without disabilities was recognized as an alternative to special education schools from the mid-1990s. Since then there has been a marked shift away from the german system of SEN support in special schools. From 2009 to 2018, the proportion of students with SEN support in mainstream schools increased from 19.8% to 42.3%, though the proportion varies from between one third and 90% depending on the federal state (KMK, 2020). At the same time, special educational needs teachers (in the following: SEN teachers) are also increasingly employed in mainstream schools. For example, in 2008 in the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NW) only 12% of SEN teachers were working at a mainstream school; in 2018 the percentage had already increased to 33% (Wolf et al., 2022). However, the responsibility for school policy in Germany does not lie with the government of the Federal Republic, but essentially with the 16 german federal states and their 16 respective systems of legislative, executive, and judicial power. As a result, inclusion policies in the Federal Republic of Germany vary. For example, in some federal states SEN-teachers are employed directly in the mainstream schools while in others they are delegates from a special education competence center. The proportion of special education resources varies between a basic allocation and an allocation based on the individual student’s educational needs. However, the federal states have in common that several SEN are recognized, which are individually diagnosed.Footnote 1 In most cases and most (but not all!) federal states this is accompanied by a formal “labeling” and identifies the students – in mainstream schools more or less – as clients of SEN teachers (Kuhl et al., 2022). SEN teachers are qualified during a 4–5 years-long study program. The curriculum is based on the different SEN types/funding priorities (see FN 1) and on one specific class subject. The curriculum formally enables them to work both in the still existing special schools and also in mainstream schools. There are increasing demands to orient the first phase of teacher training towards a “school of diversity” (HRK & KMK, 2015) but specifically the training of SEN teachers, who graduated several years/decades ago and today make up a large part of the teaching stuff, was oriented towards a separating school system.

The model experiments of inclusion respectively school-integration of the 1980s and the first legally anchored implementation of inclusion from the middle of the 1980s onwards were accompanied by a comparatively generous provision of SEN teachers, and inclusive teaching was were accompanied by a comparatively generous supply as teaching with double-staffing (= co-teaching non-SEN teacher & SEN teacher). In contrast, inclusive school development in Germany in our times is under pressure from a shortage of SEN teachers. For example, the federal state of Lower Saxony in 2016 was able to provide SEN teaching supply only to 62% by special education expertise (Wolf et al., 2022). For this reason, among others, the professional role of SEN teachers in mainstream schools is no longer negotiated (alone) in the individual co-teaching teams. Instead, it requires a targeted embedding in the school organization (Grummt, 2019) as well as a tailored professionalization of the stakeholders involved. Surveys of SEN teachers on their deployment at mainstream schools reveal specific, mainly support- and counseling-related, but overall heterogeneous tasks (Neumann, 2019, p. 69). Further, these days “typical” SEN teachers’ tasks (e.g. promoting, diagnosing, cooperating, and advising) are described as basic activities of all teachers in Germany (e.g. KMK, 2014, for international context see Rice & Zigmond, 2000). With a view to international developments, Köpfer (2012) was able to identify a model according to which SEN teachers take over coordinating and moderating functions as “methods & resource teachers” in the sense of case management. This steering function of SEN teachers is also found in other international studies: for example, a Swedish study points to the relevant coordinating function of teacher cooperation (Lindqvist & Nilholm, 2014). Research have shown how politics can affect teachers, school leaders and administrators and how teachers realize and frame education policies in classrooms through their practices (e.g. for german case Bengel, 2021 within individual schools; for swedish case see Magnússon et al., 2019; with a comparative view: Wermke et al., 2020).

The relocation of SEN teachers to mainstream schools leads to numerous questions from the perspective of organizational theory and professional theory, which are largely interrelated and must be observed in the context of the complex constellation of the school system and its stakeholders. This chapter aims to focus on specific constellations of the multi-level school system and the contexts, forms and results of steering practice of inclusive education in the field of SEN. From the perspective of an expected policy-practice-nexus and considering the complex power and organizational structures in the school system, it is important for the german case, that

  1. (a)

    the school system is characterized by a strong bureaucracyFootnote 2 with a high level of differentiation into several school types following the idea of selection.

  2. (b)

    the challenges of building up inclusive (special needs) education cannot be embedded in the usual administrative structure of school administration, which is based on working units according to school-type or education curriculum. Instead, the challenges in policy have to be managed by many different units and responsible persons.

In the FoLis project (Förderpädagogische Lehrkräfte in inklusiven Schulen) – for general information see https://ufo.reha.tu-dortmund.de/forschung/projekte/folis/ – experts from school administrations, primary school principals, and SEN teachers in four (of 16) german federal states were questioned and interviewed from 2018 to 2021 using qualitative and quantitative methods in a mixed-methods design. The data generated in this exploratory research project form the basis of the results presented here. The theoretical framework of the analysis is a multilevel model of the school system. The empirical part provides an exemplary answer to how the previously analyzed forms of governance are processed at the macro and exo level (school policy and educational administration) and the resulting contexts at the meso and micro levels.

Control and Educational Governance

Control and Inclusive Education

In this chapter, control action is understood as an intentional practice of steering with which structures in the multi-level system of schools are to be preserved, changed or guided (Mayntz, 1997, p. 191). In line with the prevailing “control scepticism” (Berkemeyer, 2010, p. 90; author’s translation), control does not mean that “control intentions would be 100% translated into corresponding follow-up actions”, but also include the consideration of side effects of control action and transintentional effects, as well as individual and social mediation steps (Altrichter & Maag-Merki, 2016, p. 6; author’s translation). This goes along with the many times quoted conceptual understanding of governance by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the emphasis of different shaping power and intentions

Governance – the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority in the management of a country’s affairs at all levels. Governance is a neutral concept comprising the complex mechanisms, processes, relationships and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their rights and obligations and mediate their differences.

Consequently, control in this chapter is understood as the sum of the “transactions of all relevant system players” (Altrichter & Maag-Merki, 2016, p. 6). On the other hand, the target systems of control efforts and the target systems of the stakeholders develop according to their own logic even without systematic intervention. They do not “keep still”, but selectively and actively-constructively take up political, legal or societal demands and translate them into the respective system practices (ibid., p. 4.).

In doing so, many stakeholders try to control developments rationally in terms of their intentions. Also, due to the overlapping of steering processes, “many significant dynamics and effects of their actions are transintentional” (ibid., p. 6) and can – on the same or other levels – entail unintended consequences and create new preconditions (cf. the concept of recontextualization by Fend, 2008). For reform processes in the multi-level school system, this means that they cannot be “steered in/controlled” directly (Altrichter & Maag-Merki, 2016, p. 6). Rather, control should (re)direct this autonomous dynamic of a system in a targeted way, such as preserving structures or changing existing structures (Mayntz, 1997, p. 191).

Inclusive Education has so far only been considered partially and unsystematically in the output management instruments that have been developed (e.g. in german educational standards, standardized school evaluations, Holder & Kessels, 2018; school inspections, Piezunka, 2020, p. 224).

Its normative determination faces the dilemma of “arguing theoretically-idealistically on the one hand, and, on the other hand, often making pragmatic cutbacks already in the definition of what inclusion should contain in order not to expose oneself of being unrealistic” (Heinrich et al., 2013, p. 73; author’s translation).

Thus, the implementation of school-based inclusion takes place in the context of the development and governance of the general school system, which continues to adhere to its separative functions based on achievement and performance assessment, which are only partially compatible with the implementation of an inclusive school system (Budde, 2018, p. 49). Accordingly, even more than 10 years after the ratification of the UN CRPD, inclusion as a norm “by no means follows a uniform understanding” (Tegge, 2020, p. 32; author’s translation), but rather implies “diverse, not always congruent requirements for a school system” (ibid.). The result is not only internationally but also nationally different concepts of inclusion, and subsequently different legislation (Gasterstädt, 2019, p. 3). From this, the following hypothesis can be derived for the german case:

In the context of the guiding ideas of the New Public Management (Hartley, 2003; Langer, 2019) input control is essentially limited to a basic school structure, the training of teachers, educational programs, curricula and job allocations, even for the reform objective of inclusive education – while school autonomy exists at the same time (Rürup, 2020). In the course of the reform towards output-oriented management, appropriate instruments (e.g., educational standards, evaluations) are made available, but these do not necessarily relate to inclusive school development. Furthermore, there are no specific implemented standards or quality assurance concepts for inclusive education. Inclusive education thus takes place without the provision of a definition and a corresponding “toolkit” in a school system that contradicts its fundamental/basic intentions.

This hypothesis leads to the question: which control contexts, control possibilities, and control results can be found with regard to the implementation of the UN CRPD in the multi-level system of schools in the four federal states studied? How are these accepted and implemented or further processed by the stakeholder at the respective levels of the school system? The analytical basis for this is described below.

The Multi-Level System of Schools and Its Control

Analyses of governance (control) processes in the school system require approaches that consider the complexity of the system and include both the stakeholders at the different levels with their respective intentions, contexts, and opportunities for action as well as interdependencies and intended or unintended effects. Multilevel models of the school system form the basis for such analyses. They usually include at least a macro (social context, educational policy, educational administration), a meso (individual school) and a micro level (teachers), but are diverse in their design (e.g. there is a second micro level: the students).

The establishment of an inclusive school system offers an attractive use case for the multilevel nature of control in education, and the questions on the policy and practice relation put forward in this book volume: a “constellation shaped by numerous stakeholders with different interests, which could not be controlled and shaped unilaterally by political-administrative stakeholders – and especially not by centrally planned and executed top-down control” (Rürup, 2015, p. 687; author’s translation). In other words, teachers/practitioners and individual schools face a series of dilemmas and contradictions in practice, which are often difficult to solve. They face contradicting policies as a part of their daily work (Clark et al., 1998; Ball et al., 2012).

Control Contexts, Forms, and Results in the Multi-Level School System

Following Fend’s action model – optimization processes of an action level are an expression of rational task management and an expression of the interests that are central at the respective action level (Fend, 2008, p. 36 f.) can be described. It provides a basis on which questions or analyses can be structured and classified (see Table 10.1). Interdependencies between the levels are considered: “On each level of action […] the specifications on the respective superordinate level are environments of action, which require an implementation to the respective new, level-specific characteristics of the environments of action” (ibid., p. 34; author’s translation). “Actions” are understood in the sense of this paper as “control actions”. In the following, the terms “control contexts, forms and results” are used. The control results of higher levels thus structure – more or less and intentionally or unintentionally – the control context of subsequent levels.

Table 10.1 Action & control contexts, -forms and -results in the multi-level school system, own illustration based on Fend (2008, p. 36 f.) and the 4-level model of school system of Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia (2006, p. 206)
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Research Questions and Design

This chapter analyzes the contexts, forms, and results of control (actions) at the different levels of the school system with regard to the deployment of SEN teachers at inclusive primary schools.Footnote 3 Specifically, it addresses the following questions:

  1. 1.

    Which forms of control are found at the macro and exo level?

  2. 2.

    What control/steering contexts emerge from this for the meso and micro level?

  3. 3.

    With which forms of control do the stakeholders react on the

    1. (a)

      meso level and

    2. (b)

      micro level?

The data used to answer these questions were obtained from the project FoLiS, in which data from school administrations (qualitative), primary school leaders (quantitative), and SEN teachers (quantitative and qualitative) from the four federal states of Hesse (HE), North Rhine-Westphalia (NW), Berlin (BE), and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (MV) were collected (see Table 10.2). These federal states were selected because they differ, among other factors, in terms of population and school density, SEN support rate, and their specific federal state “integration history”. The selection was made in order to (re)present a broad perspective on the possibilities of deploying SEN teachers at primary schools. The selection of the school boards included was also made with the aim of achieving the greatest possible heterogeneity. The survey of primary school leaders and subsequently of SEN teachers was conducted without restriction to these school districts.

Table 10.2 Methods and samples of the research project Folies, geographical location of the four studied federal states in Germany
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The teachers, who had been interviewed worked at schools where the primary school leaders had previously been interviewed. Table 10.2 gives an overview of the survey methods and samples in each project phase. The survey instruments were developed or adapted on the basis of the findings obtained in the previous project phase. For more detailed information on project phases, data used, and forms of analysis, see the links to full project information at the end of the chapter. The broad and extensive data of the project are considered here under the above-mentioned questions; the results reported in the following are to be understood as partial results of the overall project. Further results refer, for example, to concrete activities and responsibilities of the SEN teachers and corresponding task distributions with the teachers of the mainstream school as the result of the negotiation processes described here on the micro level (see above).

The extensive data of the project are considered here under the above-mentioned questions; the results presented are to be understood as partial results of the overall project.

Results

Control at the Macro and Exo Levels (Question 1)

The following findings were obtained from the document analysis and the interviews with the experts from the macro and exo levels: Because there are only recommendations (without binding effect) on high-quality teacher training as a steering activity at the federal level (KMK, 2011, 2014), all further control actions lie with the federal states and their educational sovereignty. At the level of the federal states, the stakeholders at the macro and exo levels are responsible for the basic concepts and organizational models of inclusive education, including the establishment of (new) support systems and concrete resource allocation models for teaching staff hours. Corresponding regulations are first laid down in the federal state school laws and then documented in the inclusion strategies of the states, which are continually supplemented and adapted. This also includes the clarification of the SEN teachers’ school membership (special school or primary school), an optional deployment as a class teacher and the responsibility (or non-responsibility) for SEN diagnostics.

Corresponding regulations are first laid down in the state school laws and then documented in the inclusion concepts of the states, which are continuously supplemented and adapted. Specifically, this also involves clarifying the school affiliation of SEN teachers (special school or elementary school), the optional assignment as class teacher, and the responsibility (or non-responsibility) for SEN diagnostics.

From the interviews, the following general formal or systematic central forms of action and control of the stakeholders at the exo level could be worked out:

  • The assessment of needs for SEN teacher positions at the primary schools including the required specific SEN qualifications, e.g. special focus “hearing” or “speech”. This is done in consultation with the respective school leader. A job description is created and published.

  • The exact creation of the school-specific maximum resource allocation for SEN teachers based on the applicable key figures in the school district. The macro-level control specifications for the resource allocation of the SEN teachers are translated into specific numbers of SEN teachers per school and concrete job descriptions (qualifications, weekly working hours, etc.).

  • The request to special schools as well as mainstream schools, whether and which specific SEN teacher can be released for the deployment in inclusive education of a primary school (part-time or completely). In order to recruit SEN teachers for rather rare specializations such as “sight”, the request is also made over and beyond the school administrators’ own area of supervision.

  • Fulfilling a coordination role to “match” SEN teachers and primary schools. In BE, MV and NW, the final selection of the SEN teaching staff is largely made by the school leaders because of the autonomy they are granted in personnel matters. In HE, the counseling and support centers (in the following: BFZ) are also involved in the allocation of teachers.

It can be seen that the forms of control used by the stakeholders on the exo level with regard to the deployment of SEN teachers essentially relate to the allocation of resources within their respective control contexts (cf. Table 10.1). There is no further steering of the deployment at a content-related level. One of the reasons given in the interviews for the lack of control over specific content was the heterogeneity and the conditions of deployment at the schools. This means, that the school administration was unable to provide detailed specifications for areas of responsibility (Interview with school administrator T3). Furthermore, reference was made to school autonomy and the (assumed) leadership competence of each school leader:

Yes, this is also the original task of the school leader. […] Planning the job profile for teachers. And they know their colleagues and also know what diamonds they have in the staff. (Interview with school administrator T4)

In some interviews, it was reported that the question of a job and role description is often brought up to the school administration by the school leaders (the meso-level in our analyses). During the running time of the project FoLiS, it was found that in some cases job and role descriptions were indeed published by stakeholders on the exo level (e.g. Arbeitsstelle Inklusion der Bezirksregierung Köln, 2019).

The guiding principle for the deployment of SEN teachers should always be the effective deployment of SEN expertise. For this reason, it may be profitable to deploy SEN teachers more flexibly within their mandatory teaching hours. Depending on the resources, it may e.g. make sense, to support student groups or whole classes for a limited period of time by the SEN teacher in a co-teaching or epoch education contexts, or to develop flexible advisory concepts. (Manual of the Düsseldorf District Government, published in May 2020, 32; author’s translation)

The federal state of Hesse has defined the tasks and responsibilities of SEN teachers in 2020 (HKM, 2020). Overall, however, it can be stated that forms of control at macro and exo levels with regard to the deployment of the SEN teachers in essence comprise the basic deployment structure and the procedure for resource allocation. Recommendations for action (not standards!) are given gradually and presumably mainly at the insistence of stakeholders at meso and micro levels; there is no further definition of possible outputs of inclusive education (i.e. standards). The delegation of responsibility for the design of the work of SEN teachers is partly given an “official character” in the recommendations for action (e.g. in the above-mentioned manual of the Düsseldorf District Government).

In the last few years, new organizations have been founded in all of the federal states studied to promote the development of an inclusive school system together with the mainstream and the special schools. The task of these organizations is to answer any questions primary schools or SEN teachers at inclusive schools may have and to help to find local or individual case solutions, not only for personnel issues but for all school development issues. Their concrete tasks are defined in the inclusion strategies of the 16 federal states. These new stakeholders (e.g. the BFZ-leader or Inclusion Consultants; not interviewed in the project) cannot always be clearly assigned to the exo or meso level.

Control Contexts for the Meso and Micro Levels (Question 2)

For the actors on the meso and micro levels (school leaders and SEN teachers), the control actions on the macro and exo levels result in control contexts within which the deployment of SEN teachers is controlled within the schools. In the following, the assessment of school leaders and SEN teachers on these control contexts (in two selected areas) are presented.

Personnel Issues

More than three quarters (77%; N = 78) of the school leaders and about 60% (N = 47) of the SEN teachers asses the staffing with SEN teachers as (rather) insufficient (no consistent significant differences between the states).Footnote 4 The assessments of the school leaders and SEN teachers are rudimentary reflected in the actual personnel equipment, which was calculated here using the relation between total number of students and total hours worked by all SEN teachers at the school (correlation with the assessment of the school leaders: 0.416, p = 0.000; SEN teachers: 0.345, p = 0.029) as well as the relation between the primary school teachers and SEN teachers (correlation with the assessment of the school leaders: 0.323, p = 0.004; SEN teachers: 0.283, p = 0.066).

36% of school leaders (27 out of 75) consider the criteria used to allocate SEN teachers positions to schools to be (rather) not transparent.Footnote 5 There are clear differences between the federal states: in HE, transparency is rated significantly higher compared to NW (p = 0.008) and MV (p = 0.007).

Cooperation with the Relevant School Administration

Table 10.3 shows the mean values and standard deviations for the school leaders´ satisfaction with the cooperation with the responsible school administration regarding overarching questions about inclusive school education as well as specific questions about individual SEN. Overall, the school leaders seem to be quite satisfied. The somewhat more negative findings for the state of HE can be explained by the tasks of the BFZs, which are officially available to the primary schools as contact persons for these questions. Hessian school leaders are comparatively even more satisfied with their support than the school leaders of the other federal states.

Table 10.3 Satisfaction of the primary school leaders with cooperation with the responsible school administration (for HE additionally: BFZ), 1 – unsatisfied, 5 – very satisfied
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In detail, in the case of overarching questions about inclusive school education, the primary school leaders in HE (BFZ, approx. 94%), BE (approx. 79%), and NW (68%) feel (rather) well supported; in MV this proportion is significantly lower at 40%. With regard to specific questions regarding individual SEN, the school administrators also seem to provide good support for the school leaders in general: most school leaders from HE (BFZ, approx. 88%) and NW (76%) are (rather) satisfied with this, in BE (approx. 67%) and MV (60%) the proportion is somewhat lower.

Within these contexts of action, individual schools and school administrations have various instruments at their disposal to control the deployment of the SEN teachers at their school or to provide favorable framework conditions. This concerns on the one hand the “what” of the SEN teachers´ activities and on the other hand the “how” of the occurrence of these tasks and task distributions, which will be considered in more detail in the following.

Forms of Control on Meso Level (Question 3a)

Which forms of control can be found on the meso level will be answered based on the information provided by the school leaders. One way of creating a framework of orientation regarding the deployment of SEN teachers at the primary school is through written agreements within the school on the areas of responsibility of SEN teachers at the school (Arnoldt, 2007, p. 129, p. 132 ff.). Overall, according to the school leaders, such an agreement exists in less than half of the schools surveyed (44.9%, 35 out of 78). In HE – where cooperation agreements between the mainstream school and the SEN teachers´ BFZs are mandatory – this is, with 75%, clearly more often the case than in the other federal states (MV: 21.1%, BE: 26.7%, NW: 53.6%). It should be critical noted that even in the case of a written agreement, according to the school leaders, not all relevant stakeholders (school leaders, the SEN teachers concerned, primary school teachers) were involved in its creation.

Sufficient time for meetings and joint planning is an important precondition for successful interdisciplinary or multi professional collaboration (e.g. Grosche et al., 2020). Especially in cases where responsibilities are not defined in writing, corresponding appointments are likely to play an important role in clarifying individual tasks. According to the school leaders, these appointments are fixed and take place at least weekly in about 42% (36 of 85) of the primary schools. In almost as many schools (a total of about 39%, 33 of 85), such times do not exist at all or only as needed (in particular in MV: approx. 57% not at all/as needed; 12 of 21).Footnote 6 The extent to which SEN teachers are involved in the organization and structures of the primary school is also reflected in the extent to which they are included in meetings in the school. Table 10.4 shows the percentage frequencies of schools in which SEN teachers (almost) always participate in the overall team meetings and also in the school-subject conferences of the primary school. In the other cases (difference to 100%), the SEN teachers do not participate at all, or only if students with SEN are a point of conference conversation, or according to another regulation (e.g. only from a certain hour quota at the school).

Table 10.4 Participation of the SEN teachers in meetings in the primary school (data source: project phase 2, cf. Table 10.2)
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The results show that in most schools the SEN teachers (almost) always participate in the overall teacher meetings of the primary school, but that this proportion is somewhat lower in the subject conferences (conferences for the individual subjects or subject groups). There are also differences between the federal states: in HE, for example, SEN teachers participate significantly less often in the overall meetings, but above all, rarely in the subject conferences. In BE, on the other hand, the SEN teachers´ participation in meetings and conferences seems to be the common rule. Reasons for a rare participation of SEN teachers mentioned in open comment fields in the questionnaires are e.g. the use of “time for other tasks concerning the students to be supervised” (primary school leader from MV; author’s translation) or “not feasible in terms of working time” (school leader from NW; author’s translation).

Forms of Control on Micro Level (Question 3b)

In light of the findings presented thus far, it is not surprising that SEN teacher deployment practices are often negotiated at the level of individual or cooperating teachers. They may be based, for example, on a long-standing collaboration with established traditions or on a verbal clarification of the assignment that is perceived as sufficient by the school leader. This is shown by a content-analytical evaluation of 37 interviews with SEN teachers, in which four priority modes of agreement could be identified (cf. Fig. 10.1): Most frequently (n = 18), a collegial negotiation with the other teachers of the primary school was mentioned. In eight cases, deployment practices were based on the own decision of the interviewed SEN teachers. In six cases, individual job responsibilities were developed jointly with the school leaders. In another five cases, the tasks and task assignments were taken from pre-existing traditions of the school or taken from arrangements of other SEN teachers (who were already or had previously worked at the school).

Fig. 10.1
A table for the 4 priority modes of agreement, collegial negotiation with the other teacher, own decision, developed jointly with the school teacher, and pre-existing traditions. The ratios in N W, H E, B E, M V and Gesamt are listed for each mode.

Priority modes of agreement among SEN teachers on tasks and task distributions; results based on the FoLiS study (reading note (example): NW 2/9 = two out of nine SEN teachers in NW)

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There are tendencies for differences between the federal states, but these must be interpreted with caution due to the small sample size: in HE, where written agreements on the deployment of SEN teachers are mandatory (see above), the individual areas of responsibility of SEN teachers are proportionately less frequently negotiated at the level of the cooperating teachers (approx. 27%). Here, in contrast to the other federal states, they are more often developed jointly with the school leader (approx. 36%; possibly in the context of drawing up the cooperation agreement). In MV and BE, on the other hand, negotiation between teachers seems to be the common norm (80% and approx. 64%).

The SEN teachers who are most satisfied with the mode of agreement are those who arrange their areas of responsibility collegially with the other teachers in the school (12 of 18). Among the SEN teachers of the agreement mode Development together with the school management, two-thirds (4 out of 6) also express satisfaction, among other reasons, due to the great willingness of the primary school leaders to adapt the task areas to meet the needs of students. Three out of eight SEN teachers were satisfied with the mode Own decision, among other reasons because the school community fully grants them the competence over the “how” of the support and thus letting them shape their own intervention at the same time.

Summary and Discussion

In this chapter, the forms of control of the stakeholders in the multi-level system of schools were examined with attention to the deployment of SEN teachers in primary schools in four of 16 german federal states. By focusing on regulatory structures in educational systems in particular, representatives of the system levels were interviewed about their control activities and considered in their coupling. Table 10.5 shows – as an extract of the empirical investigation – the respective control contexts, forms and results with regard to the deployment of SEN teachers at primary schools.

Table 10.5 Action & control contexts, -forms, and outcomes regarding the deployment of SEN teachers at primary schools in the multilevel model
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It was found that, contrary to the new orientation towards output-oriented control in the school system (standards-based reform), there is a traditional input-oriented control with regard to the implementation of inclusion and the deployment of special education teachers, which essentially focuses on the provision of resources and organizational models. Definitions of outputs of inclusive school education are not found in the four federal states studied. The concrete design of inclusive education in terms of the deployment of SEN teachers is delegated to the school leaders with reference to school autonomy and (assumed) school management competence: “They know what diamonds they have in staff” (Interview school administrator). This is justified by the need for variable and school-specific deployment at the level of the individual school. At the same time, the stakeholders at these levels are neither provided with concrete formulations of goals nor with corresponding instruments of evaluation of their school-specific implementation of inclusive education (meso level, individual school), or of their special education activities (micro level, teaching staff) as a component and feature of output-oriented control.

This practice, called here “fragmentary control,” leads to a high responsibility of the individual school (and the SEN teachers themselves) for the organization of the deployment of SEN teachers. At the individual schools, the SEN teachers do not participate in the school meetings with the same regularity in all of the federal states studied here, meeting and planning times are not implemented sufficiently and comprehensively, and written agreements to clarify the SEN teachers’ areas of responsibility are rarely used to their full potential due to the lack of involvement of all relevant stakeholders. Professional support for the implementation of inclusion and specific support is provided at the level of individual actors in school administration or intermediary agencies. The actors providing support at this level are, for example, SEN teachers with a specific SEN expertise or expertise in school management positions. School principals perceive support as sufficient, but here too individual actors – legitimized by their expertise – are granted far-reaching powers of action and decision-making (autonomy or delegation of responsibility), without binding quality standards formulated in the sense of output-oriented control. In this regard, these actors represent a field of research that should be given more attention in the future.

From the point of view of the SEN teachers, the low degree of pre-structuring of their work through binding guidelines or fixed agreements requires the ability to find an individual role, which can also be assumed as a challenge of professionalization in the future. They are pushed into the role of a “fragmentation-manager”. The lack of guidelines on what inclusive education should be in everyday school life leads to the fact that teachers translate and implement “inclusive education” in their professional actions either entirely on their own or in intra-school cooperation. By analyzing the interviews of the SEN teachers, we were able to reconstruct two types of changing the own professional role, using the documentary method: we found an expert/knowledge based model and a professional biography contoured model (Ludwig et al., 2023, under review).

The given school autonomy is rather used in the sense of “ad hoc advocacy” than for systematic control of the deployment of special needs teachers and the implementation of inclusive support. This finding, in turn, evidences the need of a systematic study of the input factors of school administration in the current new handbooks by the exo level written for school leaders and teachers (see above). Follow-up studies could as well focus even more on sensemaking processes (Weick, 1995) to take focus more on the personal attributes of the actors (including individual knowledge, beliefs, and experiences), the situational context (including setting of the argument, existing values within an organization, historical context) and the representation of the policy prescription (question of macro and exo level intention and interpretation by meso and micro levels; see e.g. Spillane et al., 2002; Spillane & Anderson, 2019).

The results of the study show that inclusive education is a very fruitful field of research in the policy-practice nexus. First of all, inclusive education is – at least in the context of Germany – one of the most far-reaching reform projects in school policy since decades. Meanwhile, the elaborated research methods of educational research as well as the meanwhile uncomplicated data exchange, allow bi- and multinational studies and comparative analyses in a historically unprecedented range of possibilities. In this context, the study “FoLis” could show that the policy-practice nexus exists in both directions. The management of the quality indicators for inclusive education by school administration based on a poorly developed conceptual foundation by education policy is low. In the FoLis-study (2018–2021) it also became visible in the interviews with SEN teachers that the “window of opportunity” of a high degree of professional autonomy starts to close and a standardization of the job profile “SEN teacher in a mainstream school” (e.g. on teaching assignment, on the use of special educational diagnostics) is indicated in the case of four federal states studied. As a consequence, it is highly interesting to examine the “pathways” (Sydow et al., 2009) as well as the future evolution as explanatory patterns for contemporary policy and practice nexuses.

Note for readers: Results of the entire research project including reference to further publications, scientific posters, final meeting (video recording) and audio podcast are available at the following links:

The project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2018 to 2020 with funding code 01NV1718A-B.