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The idea of inclusion in the sense of participatory access to educational opportunities is widely acknowledged and implemented within the pedagogical discourse. Nevertheless, ensuring social participation of students with and without special education needs in learning situations continues to be challenging. The present study examines promoting and hindering factors for social inclusion with a focus on students with special educational needs. Therefore, semi-structured interviews regarding students’ (n = 12 students with SEN, 12 students without SEN), parents’ (n = 24), and teachers’ (n = 6 regular teachers, 6 special need teachers) perceptions of promoting educational characteristics that might influence students’ inclusion in everyday school life are analyzed through thematic analysis. The findings provide a wide range of pedagogical interventions that have the potential to promote inclusive education processes on educational, intrapersonal, and interpersonal levels as well as regarding different actors who are involved.

The lack of evidence-based quantitative studies prevents further progress in mentoring research. In particular, standardized diagnostic instruments facilitating the exploration, evaluation and production of structured feedback for mentors and mentees are urgently needed. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors and levels that are crucial to the process of mentoring. The study has two objectives: First, to expand the present empirical knowledge of basic dimensions and mentoring styles by developing the first German-language inventory, and second, to examine how the dimensions of the inventory are related to other qualities in the mentoring process. The data were collected at three universities in Austria during and after the school practice periods (student teaching) of advanced student teachers who were under the guidance of mentor teachers. Over the course of the study, 405 mentees (future teachers) evaluated 205 mentors. In order to gather information on mentoring dimensions, a specially designed German-language questionnaire with 53 items was utilized to assess how often certain mentoring behaviors were experienced. Five factors, some of which were validated by independent variables, were identified through an exploratory factor analysis: “Professional Support”, “Collegiality”, “Working Levels”, “Directiveness” and “Confidence”. The resulting inventory promoted two objectives: a theory-focused goal to encourage further research on the complexity of mentoring processes; and a practical goal, the creation of a tool for collaborative reflection between mentor and mentee. The results indicated that mentoring must be conceptualized as a professional practice that should entail specific resources and guideline

Throughout the last 30 years, many European countries have 'modernized' their governance of education. For the Central European school systems of Austria and the German Bundesländer it has been claimed that this 'modernization' was characterised by a sequence of reform 'waves' which culminated in introducing 'evidence-based governance' models characterised by nation-wide comparative performance testing, new school inspections, etc. This paper argues that we recently see the emergence of "revisions of the original 'evidence-based governance' models" which may be understood as a new 'wave of modernization' of school governance. These models aim to react to increasing criticism of the evidence-based philosophy, in particular to its ambivalent attitude to teacher professionalism. The paper at hand analyses the specific aspirations and features of 'revised evidence-based governance instruments' to discuss their potential as a policy future. In a second step, we take the Austrian quality management system SQA as an example for these new governance models. In an explorative study, we use case data to understand how teachers and school leaders evaluate this reform and its impact on their work. In particular, we are interested whether or not educational professionals feel that this reform conveys appreciation of and trust in their professional capacities.