Education for all in action: Measuring teachers’ competences for inclusive education

they experience when providing education to students from low-SES family backgrounds [11]. Qualitative research would be well-placed to thoroughly investigate and make sense of this ambiguous stance of teachers. The second part of the questionnaire contains 36 items considering teachers’ sense of effi- cacy, and is organized in five dimensions. The first dimension taps teachers’ efficacy in notic- ing student diversity (f.i., students’ background, interests, well-being, . . .), the second the extent to which teachers feel capable to design a classroom which capitalizes on the strengths and needs of their students, and the third measuring the extent to which teachers feel capable to create high-quality interactions among students. The fourth and fifth dimension tap teach- ers’ perceptions of the degree to which they feel capable to collaborate with colleagues and diverse parents respectively. The analyses on the scale-scores show that teachers tend to feel most efficacious in both col- laborating with colleagues and in creating high-quality interactions among students. This is followed by creating stimulating learning environments for diverse students. Note that this dimension includes a lot of items related to providing differentiated instruction, with using a variety of instructional and evaluation methods, and stimulating the interest and engagement of students. As such, this dimension connects to the core of teachers didactical competencies [61,62]. Consequently, the ranking of these dimensions may come as no surprise, with teachers

feeling reasonably efficacious in this dimension, while at the same time continuing to see opportunities for further growth and improvement. At the same time, noticing student diver- sity and collaborating with diverse parents are the lowest rated efficacy-dimensions. Neverthe- less, in order to capture students’ attention and engagement, theories on differentiated instruction emphasize the importance of taking into account the social environment of stu- dents and their individual interests [62]. We could speculate that the relatively low score on noticing diversity reflects the idea among teachers that this is not a must, but merely a nice extra, second to more concrete didactical approaches. Qualitative research with teachers would be well-placed to explore the reasons for teachers’ efficacy-assessment on this dimen- sion. Furthermore, the low score on collaborating with diverse parents is in line with previous research in Flanders, indicating that parents’ involvement is often only expected or even toler- ated under specific circumstances, such as coming to the parent-teacher contact moment or helping out with the school fair [63]. Nevertheless, research has shown that creating strong connections between the school and the home environment is conducive to students’ school belonging and achievement [64,65], and could be an important lever in creating quality educa- tion for all [11]. Note that the scales on efficacy in collaboration with parents and colleagues originally started out as responsibility belief-scales, which had to be reworked due to ceiling-effects.

Interestingly, the data shows that teachers combine the highest efficacy-ratings in collaborating with colleagues with the lowest efficacy-scores in collaborating with parents. This shows both the nuances and complexities in (student-)teachers’ assessments of what they can and should do. That is, our validation process suggests that (student-)teachers are able to recognize that collaboration is something they should do, while simultaneously admitting to low abilities in collaborating with one partner and high scores in collaborating with another. In conclusion, this article discusses the DISCO-instrument, which measures teachers’ beliefs and efficacy for creating quality education for diverse students. In the context of EfA being considered a wicked problem, we suggest that DISCO cannot only help researchers to grasp the state of affairs of a specific school or educational system, but can support policy mak- ers and principals in making evidence-based decisions on the professionalisation needs of their school teams. PLOS ONE Measuring teachers’ competences for inclusive education PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291033 November 8, 2023 18 / 22