In educational research, the complexity of interventions and the diversity of contexts challenge the adequacy of existing reporting standards, primarily tailored for health interventions and randomised controlled trials. Recognising the critical need for appropriate tools to support education research, we developed two checklists: the CheckList Of Standards of reporting in Education Research (CLOSER) and the Checklist for Intervention Description of Education Research (CIDER). CLOSER was designed to guide the comprehensive reporting of quantitative educational intervention research from the abstract to the discussion for multiple study designs. Concurrently, CIDER details the precise features of educational interventions. The final refinements of CLOSER and CIDER comprise of 34 and 17 items, respectively, developed through a five-stage process, including tool adaptation, expert feedback, a 2-round modified Delphi consensus survey, and final refinements. These checklists aim to enhance the clarity of educational intervention research findings, facilitating their replicability and subsequent meaningful translation into practice and policy. This addresses the gap in educational research reporting standards and sets the stage for a more robust, evidence-informed approach to educational intervention development and evaluation.

Accessible summary: The COVID‐19 pandemic has forced everyone to live at a social distance from other people. This has changed the way people live and are included socially. This paper focuses on the unexpected ways schools have altered and deepened social inclusion for children with learning disabilities during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We interviewed six people: two people who work for a Local Authority, one Headteacher of a special school, one Special Educational Needs and Disability Consultant, one young person with a learning disability and her mother. The findings and conclusions show the “new normal” caused by COVID‐19 can help to deepen social inclusion for children with learning disabilities. For example, it can help children communicate in alternative ways with their teachers and friends. It can help families to understand more about their son/daughter's educational abilities; this means they can advocate better for them. It can help professionals to meet the needs of children with learning disabilities more quickly. We do not enjoy living at a social distance from everyone else, but we do want to make sure that lessons can be learnt from this moment in time. Background: To slow the spread of COVID‐19, on 20 March 2020, nurseries, schools and colleges across England were closed to all learners, apart from those who were children of key workers or were considered “vulnerable.” As young people with learning disabilities, families, professionals and schools become acquainted with the Erfahrung of the new horizon brought about by COVID‐19, the negativity of altered social inclusion is becoming the “new normal.” Capturing this transitory moment in time, this paper reflexively analyses the curiously productive variables of altered ecological pathways to social inclusion for people with learning disabilities.Methods: Taking a hermeneutic stance, this paper draws on Gadamer's construction of the nature of new experiences. Focussed on the experience of social inclusion during the COVID‐19 pandemic, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with six key stakeholders. As the phenomenon in question was new, an inductive approach to thematic analysis was applied.Findings: The critical tenet of this paper is that the Erfahrung of COVID‐19 has created the conditions for a “new normal” which have afforded children with learning disabilities altered opportunities for social inclusion, whether that be through increased power/agency for them and their families and/or new modes of connectedness leading to enhanced relationships.Conclusion: Whilst the impact of COVID‐19 has been a negative one for many aspects of society, application of Simplican and Gadamer's theories on social inclusion and the nature of new experiences has permitted the surfacing of new possibilities for the social inclusion of children with learning disabilities.

In 2022, the authors of this paper were awarded with three years’ government funding to support seventy-five English schools and Further Education colleges with the running of their own Action Research for inclusion and special educational needs projects (ISEND). Based on the funder’s interest in the identification and scaling-up of the evidence-base for SEND practice, this reflective account analyzes the evidence-base drawn upon and created by the Action Researchers for ISEND and the efficacy of the approach. Adopting an interpretivist, qualitative approach to content analysis, this paper analyzes data from the first seven completed Action Research for ISEND projects. Aligned with Dewey’s scientific model of reflection, analysis shows the Action Researchers for ISEND draw upon a complex synthesis of contextualized understanding, broadened horizons (including collaborative working and study), deepened and/or reshaped understandings, and data analysis to form their theorizations of praxis. Bearing no relation to evidence-based practice, the Action Researchers for ISEND adopt a constructivist ontology towards the inclusion of children with SEND, which challenges positivistic paradigms of “what works” in SEND and embeds a praxis of democracy which frequently includes the voices of learners with disabilities in decision making processes.

This paper describes and defends the counter-hegemonic methods applied to the investigation of a high-profile national policy for Early Education and Care (ECCE) in Ireland. The policy, the Access and Inclusion Model (AIM) seeks to ensure the full inclusion and meaningful participation of children with disabilities in mainstream, state funded ECCE. It makes a significant contribution to data and debate on how research about inclusion can become inclusion in the context of policy evaluation. The design of the policy evaluation included surveys, in depth interviews and qualitative case studies of pre-schools and children supported by AIM which were deliberately designed to be counter-hegemonic through the recruitment of practitioners as co-researchers (as expert representatives within a feminised workforce), and the use of a participative method of elicitation that sough the perspectives and lived experiences of inclusion among fourteen children supported by AIM. This method was multi-modal mapping. With a focus on these counter-hegemonic elements, the paper poses questions about how the approach was counterhegemonic in terms of its theoretical underpinning, practical approach, and outcomes. Thematic analysis of the data collected by practitioner researchers for the child case studies showed that the approach did achieve counter-hegemony through the achievement of redistribution, representation, and recognition in both the enactment of the research, and in the reporting of children’s lived experience in the study as a whole. However, the extent of counter-hegemony achieved was limited when practitioner researchers were unable to deploy the multi-modal mapping method because of limited time, or because the child was not a speaker of English or was as yet, non-speaking. In a context where policy makers have a preference for positivist and rationalist approaches to evaluating the impact of policies, we assert that research about policies for inclusion, should be enacted as inclusion and social justice through the deliberate deployment of participatory and counter-hegemonic methods. We also assert that multi-modal mapping holds particular promise for researching the lived experience of inclusion and participation from the perspective of children and argue that more work needs to be done on developing these methods so that they are effective with all children, including those who are non-speaking. Finally, we posit that Fraser’s triune model of social justice can be applied as a benchmark for designing and evaluating counter-hegemonic modii and outcomes.

Accessible summary: The social inclusion of people with learning disabilities is an important topic because we all have a right to participate in society. Articles in this special issue talk about how education can help to make social inclusion better so that people with learning disabilities can join in and belong, just like everyone else. The articles talk about how changes in the way people think about learning disabilities can help make education better at making social inclusion happen. They also talk about how this can happen by supporting transitions to adulthood (e.g., into paid work), learning in universities and getting people with learning disabilities involved in writing courses about health.