INSTILLING TEACHERS' WILLINGNESS TO FOSTER INCLUSIVE CLASSROOM PRACTICES: CAN SIMPLEXITY ADDRESS THIS COMPLEXITY?

In a time when teachers have been identified as the key agents to shape educational policy reform, much attention has been oriented towards the factors that impinge on what determines teachers’ decisions to act. The overarching aim of this book is to investigate how willingness to implement inclusive classroom practices can be instilled during initial teacher education and continuous professional development. To this end, a historic account of the developments regarding inclusive education, competency-based curricula and teacher competency profiling is provided. The objective is to set the scene in which teachers work, outline the goals students need to reach, and define the competencies teacher education programmes should address. Secondly, the theories and models rooted in an agentic perspective from neuroscientific, sociological and psychological inquiry are discussed. These have guided the plethora of studies carried out since the 70s, whose findings continue to inform and reorient teacher education course programming. In conclusion, the author looks into how the theory of simplexity can serve as a suitable framework to guide teacher education and to instil willingness in teachers to adopt inclusive practices in schools