Inclusive Learning and Educational Equity 5

Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 
International License (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
), which permits use, sharing, 
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit 
to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if 
changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons 
license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book’s 
Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the 
permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication 
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant 
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book 
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the 
editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any 
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional 
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Editors
Alvyra Galkien
ė 
Educational Aacademy
Vytautas Magnus University
Kaunas, Lithuania
Ona Monkevi
čienė 
Educational Aacademy
Vytautas Magnus University
Kaunas, Lithuania
. This book is an open access publication.

---

v
Preface
The European Agency for Special and Inclusive Education
1
expressed the commit-
ment of all European countries to developing more inclusive education systems, 
which aim to ensure that all learners of any age are provided with meaningful, high- 
quality educational opportunities in their local community. Although the indicators 
of inclusive education quality are related to individual success and the high achieve-
ments of every learner, the conditions for achieving these results are predetermined 
by the processes that occur at all levels of the inclusive education ecosystem, that is, 
from education policy makers’ decisions to educational practices at school. 
Therefore, contextualisation of inclusive education in the cultural and educational 
experience of various countries allows identification of the universal factors that are 
also of significance to inclusion quality.
The research presented in this scientific study continues the search for the factors 
that are significant for the high-quality implementation of inclusive education. The 
previous analysis on the good practice of inclusive education in four European 
countries
2
allowed revealing the existing factors that promote the good practice of 
inclusive education in four countries with different socio-cultural and political 
development experiences, that is, in the contexts of Lithuania, Poland, Austria and 
Finland. During the research, the recognition of a person’s individuality and 
prioritisation of their strengths were identified as the epistemological goal and the 
reference point in inclusive education.
The research presented in this book links the application of the Universal Design 
for Learning (UDL) approach with research on possibilities for enriching the already 
existing educational practices of inclusive education, thus providing teachers with 
more tools for achieving the efficiency of education. The research was carried out in 
the contexts of the same aforesaid countries that participated in the research. The 
1
European Agency for Special and Inclusive Education. Position on Inclusive Education Systems. 
Retrieved from 
https://www.european-agency.org/sites/default/files/PositionPaper-EN.pdf
2
Galkien
ė, A. ed. (2017). Inclusion in socio-educational frames: inclusive school cases in four