Thesis advisor: David Scanlon / Despite the often-claimed purpose of equity, inclusive education has been defined and interpreted in different ways that paradoxically marginalize students. Teachers play a primary role in enacting inclusion, their concept of inclusion is, therefore, critical to inclusive practices and outcomes. This qualitative case study explored the impact of dialogue on preservice teachers’ understanding of inclusive education, using three major research questions: a) How do five preservice teachers conceptualize inclusive education before and after participating in a series of group dialogue? b) How do preservice teachers negotiate meanings of, perspectives on, and beliefs toward inclusion during the group dialogues when they face challenges around the concept and practice?, and c) How do facilitations—content/topics, guiding/follow-up questions, and supplementary materials and activities—mediate those negotiations?The participants were five female under-/graduate students in a teacher education program at a private Catholic University in the Northeastern United States, who were completing practicum at the time of the study. Data were collected from multiple sources, including surveys, follow-up conversations, pre/post-dialogue journal entries, individual semi-structured interviews, six group discussion sessions and accompanying artifacts (mind-maps and self-reflections), and field notes. For the first research question, qualitative content analysis and pre/post comparisons of individual participants’ journals and interviews were examined, to identify how the pre-service teachers changed their conceptualizations of inclusive education through their participation in the dialogue series. The commonalities and variations in their conceptualizations following the dialogue series were synthesized through cross-case analysis. For the second and third research questions, discussion segments and post-dialogue interviews were analyzed via constructivist grounded theory along with review of the supplementary artifacts. The findings suggested that group dialogues provided a learning space for the preservice teachers to deepen their understandings of inclusive education. A synthesis of the five single case studies revealed that, after the dialogue series, the preservice teachers conceptualized inclusion as a) a channel to prepare students for transition from the classroom/school to society, and b) a means to empower marginalized students under the rhetoric “for all,” as well as c) viewed teachers as a mechanism of inclusive action/enactment. Five themes emerged, revealing the ways in which the preservice teachers negotiated meanings of, perspectives on, and beliefs toward inclusion as they addressed challenges around the concept and practice through interactions, as well as the ways in which the facilitation mediated their negotiations. The five themes included: a) Convergence, b) Expansion Through Convergence, c) Divergence, d) Inconclusiveness, and e) Multiple Patterns. Further, the facilitation set the context where the preservice teachers could think through concrete examples in practice, provoked them to develop new ideas and perspectives and to (re)think about the issues critically enriching the discussions, and fostered their collective and individual sense-making. This study adds to knowledge on inclusive education and teacher dialogue as a learning tool, providing in-depth descriptions of how pre-service teachers developed a deeper understanding of inclusive education through facilitated group discussions that problematized taken-for-granted notions and practices of inclusion. It also provides a new instructional method of research that elucidates preservice teachers’ negotiation processes in dialogues. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This thesis examines the responses of the educational system of Cyprus to increasing student diversity. The study it reports was set in a sensitive socio-political context, within which the previously homogenous Greek-Cypriot society faced an unprecedented and unanticipated rise in net migration rates from the mid-1990s. The need to respond effectively to the challenge of increasing population diversity and to issues of ethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural diversification was evident within the wider Cypriot society, and was reflected within the educational system. Despite this, there is an identified gap in knowledge and research on the topic of increasing student diversity in Cyprus. With these concerns in mind, the research focused on exploring the experiences of secondary school students of ages 11-14, who had recently arrived in Cyprus and were categorised as foreign-speaking. The aim was to explore factors hindering and promoting these students’ inclusion in schools through identifying barriers and resources to their presence, participation, achievement and socialisation. The study used a qualitative exploratory case study design. Data were collected in three secondary schools through a multi-method approach that considered the views of various school stakeholders, particularly the “voices” of foreign-speaking students regarding their school experiences. Data analysis involved the constant comparative method which allowed the consistent scrutiny of findings from various research methods using a theoretical framework based on the idea of inclusive education. A model was developed and used to discuss the perceived barriers and resources to foreign-speaking students’ inclusion. Barriers and resources were identified as stemming from educational policy, educational practice in schools and classrooms, students’ traits and characteristics, and finally students’ home and community environments. The barriers created a context of inequality of opportunities for foreign-speaking students’ school experiences and future life achievement in comparison to their other classmates. The findings of the study provide a basis for evaluating exclusionary pressures that prevent foreign-speaking students from engaging meaningfully with their school lives equally to other classmates, and propose that inclusive education within the Cypriot educational context can have a wider scope that does not rest only with traditional research on special needs education. It also confirms the importance of conducting contextualised educational research on issues of inclusion, as relevant literature presents inclusive schools as organisations that should address challenges in reflection to their own cultural and political context. The thesis also suggests that the identified barriers and resources have implications for policy and practice that need to be addressed in order to adopt more inclusive educational pedagogies for foreign-speaking students, and considers it important that the formulation of any response should be informed in reflection to similar international studies. Its implication lies with identifying unused resources that could otherwise be mobilised to enhance schools’ response to increasing diversity. Finally, it makes recommendations for future research on the identified resources for promoting inclusion. Such research should be directed at further exploring the factors contributing to providing equal educational opportunities for all learners within an approach that promotes respect for diversity and considers diversity as a source of inspiration and learning.