Inclusive education is a reform aimed at educating all students in general classrooms, independent of diversity features such as special educational needs, giftedness, or migration. Its successful implementation requires teachers with professional knowledge about inclusive education, skills to address the diverse needs in the classroom, and positive beliefs toward inclusive education. Teachers are provided with professional development opportunities, but are these effective in improving their learning process and positively impacting students’ behavior? We conducted a meta-analysis to address this question. The screening of 12,050 search results revealed 342 eligible studies with more than 155,000 participants and 1123 effects from four outcome categories: teachers’ knowledge, skills, and beliefs and students’ behavior. We observed positive, though varying, effects on all four outcome categories: large effects on teachers' knowledge regarding inclusive education (g = 0.93), moderate effects on teachers’ skills (g = 0.49), small effects on teachers’ beliefs (g = 0.23), and small-to-moderate effects on student behavior (g = 0.37). We also examined factors that might explain the differences in the strength of training effects. The data suggest that long-term training with high practical relevance and active learning opportunities facilitates transfer to schools.

In recent decades, researchers’ interest in the role of emotions in individual political learning has grown. However, it is still unclear whether and how discrete emotions are associated with political learning. Through a cross-disciplinary systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis, we reviewed which discrete emotions have been analyzed in the context of political learning so far and meta-analytically synthesized how these emotions relate to political learning. We addressed this question by synthesizing associations between discrete emotions and various aspects of learning about political matters, such as political attention, information seeking, discussions, knowledge, and knowledge gain. The final dataset included 66 publications with 486 effect sizes, involving more than 100,000 participants. Most of the effect sizes were based on negative-activating emotions (65%; mainly anxiety, 32%, and anger, 19%) and positive-activating emotions (32%; mainly enthusiasm, 15%), while studies on positive-deactivating emotions (e.g., contentment) and negative-deactivating emotions (e.g., sadness) are largely lacking. We uncovered small positive associations (r = .05 to .13) for activating emotions, of both negative (especially anger) and positive valence (e.g., enthusiasm, only in cross-sectional designs), but no associations for negative-deactivating emotions. We discuss theoretical implications and recommend future research to include previously unconsidered emotions in order to extend existing findings.

Teachers require support to implement inclusive education effectively, and teacher training is a key to providing this support cost-effectively. However, while education research has established theories on student learning, there is still a lack of understanding regarding how teachers learn and integrate new ideas, making it essential to investigate the transfer process to improve the implementation of school reforms. The many overlapping theories on teachers’ learning in in-service training, as presented in the literature, have been summarized here in five models. These five models were tested regarding their fit to empirical data in secondary analyses using meta-analytic SEM. The literature search revealed 228 studies that met the inclusion criteria, comprising 244 samples and 117,609 participating teachers and students. Only one model had an acceptable model fit. This model is characterized by the assumption that teacher training affects willingness to change, which in turn influences the subsequent transfer process. Further research should be theory-based, testing theories using primary data, particularly in the context of willingness to change.

Inclusive education is a reform aimed at educating all students in general classrooms, independent of diversity features such as special educational needs, giftedness, or migration. Its successful implementation requires teachers with professional knowledge about inclusive education, skills to address the diverse needs in the classroom, and positive beliefs toward inclusive education. Teachers are provided with professional development opportunities, but are these effective in improving their learning process and positively impacting students’ behavior and achievement? We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to address this question. The screening of 12,050 search results revealed 342 eligible studies with more than 155,000 participants and 1,123 effects from four outcome categories: teachers’ knowledge, skills, and beliefs and students’ behavior and achievement. We observed positive, though varying, effects on all four outcome categories: large effects on knowledge regarding inclusive education (g = 0.93), moderate effects on teachers’ skills (g = 0.49), small effects on teachers’ beliefs (g = 0.23) and small-to-moderate effects on student behavior (g = 0.37). We also examined factors that might explain the differences in the strength of training effects. The data suggest that long-term training with high practical relevance and active learning opportunities facilitates transfer to schools.

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