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

maintaining a clear understanding of how systemic inequalities in education disproportionally affect specific (groups of) students [7]. EfA can be framed as a so-called wicked problem [8], being a social problem that is both hard to grasp and solve. Wicked problems are characterised by institutional complexity requir- ing cooperation and changes to several processes, while scientific knowledge on the topic is often fragmented or contested [9,10]. While effective EfA would require changes to curricula, teacher mindsets and behaviour, and cooperation between educational stakeholders (i.e., insti- tutional complexity) [11], most research on EfA employs a narrow focus by considering only one specific diversity group, and is either literature-based or qualitative in nature [12]. While this research has highlighted the crucial role of teachers and has given us some hints on how EfA can be realised, these have not been empirically tested on a large scale due to the lack of valid measurement instruments. Consequently, this article provides insight into the validation of the “DIversity SCreening in educatiOn" (DISCO)-instrument, which is an instrument designed to grasp teachers’ competences for inclusive education, and which could help both research and practice move forward in tackling EfA as a wicked problem. Teachers’ competences in inclusive education Inclusive teaching has become an obligatory professional competence for teachers in many countries [3]. Unfortunately, teachers both in Flanders and abroad express a low capacity to

address the educational needs of diverse pupils [13,14]. Hence, research that provides more insight on teachers’ competences for inclusion and the contexts in which these competences can flourish, is sorely needed. Teacher competence for inclusive education is defined as being a complex combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes that allow a teacher to successfully respond to pupils’ diversity in the classroom [15]. However, it has to be recognized that devel- oping instruments to grasp teachers’ inclusive competences is not an easy task, due to the com- plex nature of the concept of inclusive education, which entails both a broad scope (i.e., not being focused on one specific group but rather transcending any diversity group), and shows institutional complexity by requiring several educational processes at once to realize maximal learning and developmental outcomes for students [16]. Furthermore, the concept of compe- tence itself has been extensively debated as well. While some researchers have defined compe- tence as actual behaviour in real-world situations, it has been suggested that more can be learned by considering competences as a process which results in observable behaviour while simultaneously acknowledging underlying factors such as knowledge and motivation that underpin and affect this behaviour. Hence, Blo¨meke, Gustafsson (17) propose to view compe- tences along a continuum with dispositions (such as knowledge and beliefs) and performance being connected through situation-specific skills. These situation-specific skills then entail

processes such as perception and decision-making, which determine in a specific situation how dispositions are translated into performance [17,18]. As such, these situation-specific skills are akin to the concept of self-efficacy from social cognitive theory, which proposes that human achievement is dependent on one’s behaviours, internal personal factors (such as cog- nitions and beliefs) and environmental conditions [19,20], and is defined as people’s beliefs in their own capability to perform certain tasks [19]. Consequently, in order to get a broad image of aspects central to teachers’ competences for inclusive education, research is needed that combines an investigation of teachers’ beliefs on diverse learners (i.e., the scope of inclusive education) as well as self-efficacy, which in the context of inclusive education refers to teachers’ assessment of their capabilities to create the educational preconditions necessary for students’ maximal learning. Both aspects, being beliefs on diversity and sense of self-efficacy, will be dis- cussed in detail below. PLOS ONE Measuring teachers’ competences for inclusive education PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291033 November 8, 2023 2 / 22 DOI’s associated with the datasets are DOI: 10. 5281/zenodo.8318520 for the dataset with the pre- service teachers and DOI 10.5281/zenodo.8318572 for the dataset with the in-service teachers. Funding: Published with support from the University Foundation (Universitaire stichting) of Belgium to WV. Competing interests: The authors have declared

that no competing interests exist.