Inclusive Learning and Educational Equity 5

11.3 Research Process, Results, and Discussion
The following section will describe, in detail, the results of the process undertaken 
in the application of the (Participatory) Action Research approach and the role the 
collaborating teachers played in enabling access to the field and shaping the data 
collection. In essence, it presents the outcomes of the process and related questions. 
The theoretical and practical implementations that derive from these findings will 
also be discussed. In view of the fact that it has not been possible to conclude the 
final Research Action cycle (and thus the implementation steps and the discussion 
of the findings, especially with students), the following will focus solely on data 
concerning the teachers and parents.
 Applying Participatory Action Research to Reassess 
Teaching Practices
As suggested by Armstrong and Moore (
2019
), setting up a small group of practi-
tioners and researchers which will work on all stages of the project may be the most 
important early step. In our case, the team was already in place due to a pre-existing 
collaboration in the Erasmus+ 
− project “TEP.” Hence, three academic researchers 
(Gottfried Biewer, Michelle Proyer, and Gertraud Kremsner) worked closely 
together with three female practitioner-researchers from SZD (Gudrun Messenböck, 
Katrin Krischke, and Beatrix Wagner). These six people were fundamentally sup-
ported by three research assistants (Sophia Baesch, Johanna Grath, and Susanne 
Prummer). The application of a Participatory Action Research approach in our proj-
ect meant that we tried to share as much power over the research process as possible 
with all team members irrespective of previous research experience.
For our project, all three practitioner-researchers were clear from the very begin-
ning about their expectations from the TEP project and indeed from us as academic 
researchers. Aware of the many challenges that they have to face on a daily basis 
(and always at the risk of self-exploitation) to reach their goal, they wanted SZD 
(and with it their own teaching) to become (more) inclusive, or at least as inclusive 
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as possible. The collaboration provided a space for reflection upon their ongoing 
teaching practices and enabled shared nonjudgmental spaces to discuss ideas and 
problems. Their hope was that the UDL-centered reinterpretation process might not 
only serve as a strategy to attain their individual goals, but also to motivate their 
teacher colleagues to join them and, thus, guarantee a sustainable implementation 
of – or reference to – UDL. Both Action Research cycles were developed according 
to this goal in close collaboration with all three teachers. Additionally, researchers 
supported them by translating English academic material (such as the UDL guide-
lines) into more comprehensible and easy-to-digest German texts suitable for every-
day school life. At this point, it has to be mentioned that the research team as well 
as the three involved teachers were well aware of the challenges of sustaining or, 
even more so, implementing UDL at school. This is especially true as change in a 
dynamic field such as school tends to appear slow and is hard to implement.
An initial assessment of what facilitated and hindered the students’ learning pro-
cesses was the starting point for the data collection process and was inspired by a 
CAST workshop (
http://www.cast.org/
) that formed part of the first project meeting. 
As well as allowing the three teachers to present the main ideas of UDL to their col-
leagues, the assessment of barriers and facilitators also initiated a discussion pro-
cess among teachers, parents, and the school heads. Interestingly the main research 
interest – enhancing the learning environments for students – coincided with topics 
related to the ongoing inclusive school development process. The three collaborat-
ing teachers made it clear right from the beginning that the initial questions might 
necessarily have to be adapted for several reasons. First, it was hard to grasp the idea 
of UDL as there was no usable material in German. Although two of the teachers 
had majored in English it was hard for them to find time to read complex academic 
texts and take on board the underlying UDL model. Second, the three teachers sus-
pected that some of their colleagues at school would not be eager to reflect on their 
own teaching, especially not using a complex model. And third, it was quickly con-
cluded that many of the boxes describing UDL in practice could already be ticked 
for many of the practices in place. The teachers made it clear that it was important 
for them to work with concrete cases and further develop any good teaching prac-
tices already in place. So, even before entering the cycle of research activities, a 
detour to breakdown the complexity of UDL in its interpretation by CAST was 
necessary.
The findings of the assessment of teachers’ opinions will be presented below. As 
the identification of what hinders and what facilitates learning was considered to be 
crucial, the three teachers decided that it would be better to collect the data from 
their colleagues themselves. Different data collection techniques were implemented 
among the different teams. These included collecting hindering and enabling factors 
in the course of teacher team meetings and leaving posters with the two questions in 
the teachers’ room which they could fill in. The following factors were recorded 
(Table 
11.2
).
Interestingly, the teachers listed a number of factors that are related to the learn-
ing environment at the school and in the students’ homes. These include references 
to suitable learning environments, which includes aspects such as furniture but also 
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to the importance of silent environments. They also referred to personalized factors 
of the children, such as a lack of cognitive ability or a limited ability to concentrate. 
Many of the challenges reported are related to these personal or societal factors, 
while the facilitation of teaching is often referred to using technical terms such as 
learning strategies. Problems about staying focused and restless environments are 
referred to as especially challenging and were mentioned more than once. This 
became an even more pressing issue when the findings of the parents are considered 
(see below).
Following up on this initial data collection, a number of interviews were con-
ducted over the course of the research process in order to clarify open questions and 
learn about current teaching contexts and the UDL perspective on them. The factors 
restricting and facilitating the learning environments were discussed among the 
teams and with the researchers in the course of four interviews with teachers and 
groups of teachers. These were analyzed by applying methods from Constructivist 
Grounded Theory. Not only did this entail the preparation of all the materials that 
had been collected (in terms of transcription or at least active listening to audio- 
tapes multiple times) but also thorough discussions and exchanges of the prelimi-
nary findings among both the research team members and the extended team 
including the teachers themselves. It should be noted that the three main practitioner- 
researchers were highly critical of the researchers’ findings and constantly demanded 
breakdowns of how the findings could be transferred into practice or made more 
comprehensible. This inevitably posed additional challenges to the research and 
analysis process. The data from the interviews were manually screened for thorough 
discussion with the practitioner-researchers but then also coded using MaxQDA in 
order to facilitate collaborative coding activities. The following illustrations – with 
T standing for “teachers,” “S” for “students,” and “Pa” for “parents” – offer insights 
into our research process by showing a clipping of preliminarily condensed ini-
tial codes: