Building inclusive learning communities: the collaborative role of parents and school leaders in supporting students with additional needs

Abstract

Inclusive education is widely endorsed as a policy priority; however, less is known about how school leaders practically enable collaboration with parents to support inclusive schooling. This qualitative study examines how secondary school leaders enact and sustain collaboration with parents in support of inclusive education across four national contexts: Australia, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with ten secondary school principals, the study adopts Wenger’s (1998) Communities of Practice framework to analyse collaboration as a leadership-mediated, relational process. Reflexive thematic analysis revealed that effective collaboration was actively produced through leadership practices that fostered mutual engagement, negotiated shared purpose, and institutionalised collaborative routines. Across contexts, leaders played a central role in aligning parental aspirations with school capacities, mediating tensions related to inclusion, and creating structures that supported sustained parent involvement. While national policy environments shaped the form collaboration took, common processes of relational work, negotiation, and adaptive design were evident. The findings contribute practice-oriented insight into leadership for inclusive education by demonstrating how collaboration with parents is constructed rather than assumed. The study highlights the importance of leadership preparation and policy frameworks that recognise collaboration as complex, negotiated work essential to inclusive schooling.