Scottish Universities Inclusion Group

Formerly the Scottish Teacher Education Committee Inclusion Group, we are a collaborative group of teacher educators working in universities across Scotland to prepare teachers to work inclusively to support the learning of all young people.

The Scottish Universities Inclusion Group (SUIG) is a working group of the Scottish Council of Deans.

If you wish to contact the group, please email Dianne Cantali (Group Chair) at d.l.cantali@dundee.ac.uk.

Download the 2023 Annual Report

Download the 2022 Annual Report

We work collaboratively to:

Ensure that teacher education programmes across Scotland embed inclusion in their initial teacher education courses and support new teachers to understand their professional responsibilities to support the learning of all children.
Support teachers at all stages in their careers to recognise, value, and respond positively to the diversity of children in schools.
Support teachers in all stages in their careers to draw from contemporary research-informed understandings of inclusion as they reflect on, and develop their practice.
Challenge, where appropriate, practices or attitudes that act as barriers to inclusion.
Undertake research to inform and develop ongoing work relating to inclusion in schools.

We work with other organisations to support the development of our aims. These include the Scottish Government, Education Scotland, and Dyslexia Scotland. Several SUIG members sit on national committees and working groups including the Scottish Professional Learning Network steering group and Scottish Parliament Dyslexia and Autism working parties. Several SUIG members are founder members of the SERA Inclusive Practice network, with the three convenors all being SUIG members.

What do we mean by 'inclusion'?

Inclusion is an ongoing process to enhance the participation of all children in the life and learning of the school whilst acknowledging and addressing issues that may create barriers to participation. As school communities become increasingly diverse, teachers are called upon to work creatively to respond to the rights of all children by provision of learning opportunities which are available for everybody.

Our understanding of inclusion takes an open-ended view of learning, believing that all children can improve their capacity to learn. Whilst recognising that any learner may require additional support at some stage, inclusive schools would seek to provide support in sensitive ways that do not stigmatise or mark children out as different. This may involve re-consideration of professional roles, responsibilities and relationships between classroom teachers and their professional colleagues.

We are a group of teacher educators, including course directors and inclusion specialists from all the Scottish Universities offering initial teacher education. We work in collaboration to ensure that professional learning in inclusive education is embedded in university teacher education programmes.

Our experience ranges from early career researchers through to Professors and a strength of the group is the way in which we support one another to develop as academics. Each university has up to three core members, with departments nominating their representatives.

Group core membership

University of Aberdeen: Shannon Babbie, Archie Graham

University of Dundee: Di Cantali (chair), Donna Dey

University of Edinburgh: Kirsten Darling-McQuistan, Lisa Fernandes, Yvonne Foley

Edinburgh Napier University: Heather Earnshaw, Colin McGill
University of Glasgow: Ines Alves, Lauren Boath, Margaret Sutherland
University of the Highlands and Islands: Hayley Barnett, Mona Wilson

Queen Margaret University: Caryll Jack, Sian Jones, Alice Munro

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland:
University of Stirling: Stella Mouroutsou, Andrea Priestley
University of Strathclyde: Jane Catlin, Jane Essex, Yuchen Wang
University of the West of Scotland: Louise Barrett, Lisa McAuliffe

Honorary Member: Lani Florian

The Scottish Universities Inclusion Group (SUIG) emerged from a long-standing commitment between Scotland’s Initial Teacher Education institutions to meet and share ideas, experiences, research, and practice in inclusive education. With the support of Scottish Council of Deans, SUIG (formerly known as the Scottish Teacher Education Committee Inclusion Group), which consists of teacher education course directors and inclusion specialists from each university, developed a Framework for Inclusion, based around the Professional Standards for Teachers in Scotland (GTCS, 2021). This Framework guides the development of inclusive practice. The 3rd edition was published in June 2022 and can be downloaded freely via the GTCS website. We would like to record our thanks to the GTCS for their support in hosting the online Framework on behalf of SUIG.

View the Framework

Members of the Scottish Universities Inclusion Group, Dr Duncan Mercieca, Donna Dey, Dr Kirsten Darling-McQuistan and Louise Barrett, with the GTCS Chief Executive, Dr Pauline Stephen. Kirsten and Pauline are holding a copy of the National Framework for Inclusion.

We have published a companion resource, ‘Working with the National Framework for Inclusion: a guide for teacher educators’. This contains examples of how the Framework is being used, and of how the reflective questions are linked with specific aspects of the GTCS Professional Standards. It can be downloaded freely below.

Download the companion resource

We have worked collaboratively to develop and implement an inclusive mapping research project, which mapped how ITE programmes across Scotland were taught, and how these aligned with the Inclusive Pedagogical Approaches in Action three key principles of working together, difference being ordinary, and problems being challenges for teachers (Florian and Spratt, 2013).

The National Framework has been used in teacher education programmes across Scotland and introduced to local authority staff through CPD events. We have presented our work at conferences, nationally and internationally, and published in a peer-reviewed journal. We have continued to respond to national conversations and consultations, including the GTCS Professional Standards consultation in late 2019, the Morgan Review consultation and the National Conversation in 2022.

SUIG members work closely with our colleagues nationally and have contributed to working groups which have developed the Strategic Framework for Parental Involvement, Parental Engagement, Family Learning and Home Learning, and the revised Autism Toolbox. We have taken a lead role, in collaboration with our colleagues in the SCDE, to roll out the national ITE autism materials across our initial teacher education programmes.

Our collaborative ways of working, together with the development of the Framework, have sparked international interest, and we enjoy hosting visitors from European nations who are interested to find out about our work.

The 2022 edition of the Framework for Inclusion is available online:

The Scottish Government has recognised that teachers need to be well prepared and appropriately supported throughout their careers if they are to succeed in meeting the increasingly diverse needs in Scottish schools. Both the Donaldson review of teacher education, Teaching Scotland’s Future and the McCormac Review of Teacher Employment called for lifelong learning for teachers.

In 2008, with the support of the Government, Scottish Teacher Education Committee (STEC) (now the Scottish Council of Deans) set up a working group consisting of course directors and inclusion specialists representing all seven universities then involved in initial teacher education to develop the National Framework for Inclusion. The remit of the group was to develop a Framework which would identify the values and beliefs, the professional knowledge and understanding, and the skills and abilities expected of student teachers and qualified teachers at whatever stage of their careers.

This edition of the Framework, which was launched in June 2020 (SUIG, 2020), highlighted the underpinning principles of inclusive practice, social justice, inclusion and learning and teaching in the context of relevant education policy and legislation. It adopted a broad definition of inclusion covering additional support needs, poverty, culture and language informed by and aligning with relevant aspects of UK Government’s Equality Act (2010), in order to promote participation, achievement and equality. The Framework also linked to Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence (Scottish Executive, 2004), which aims to ensure that all children and young people are successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens.

The Framework was a first step in developing a coherent national approach to dealing with inclusion and has been highly influential in supporting teacher education programmes to ensure that all teachers have the knowledge, skills and appropriate attitudes to respond effectively to all learners. Since its publication in 2009, all new primary and secondary teachers trained in Scotland have benefited from the approach to inclusion promoted by the Framework. In addition, some Scottish universities are using the Framework to guide continuing professional development.

Subsequently, with the support of the General Teaching Council for Scotland and the Scottish Government, the Framework was refreshed in 2014 and again in 2022 to remain consistent with the GTC for Scotland's Professional Standards for teachers (GTCS, 2021).

The 2022 edition of the Framework retains its aim to be comprehensive but not prescriptive, leaving Scottish universities free to determine how best to turn the underlying principles into practice. It is question-based to encourage teachers to accept a shared responsibility for finding answers and further questions with the support of the web-based repository, which may be useful beyond Scotland. It attempts to promote inclusion as being the responsibility of all teachers in all schools and has tried to identify and to address the needs of teachers at all stages of their careers and to emphasise the need for career-long and life-long learning.

View the Framework

Additional vignettes can be found in the companion resource ‘Working with the National Framework for Inclusion: a guide for teacher educators’ (SUIG, 2023).

University of Dundee

The Framework is used in the BA Childhood Practice degree, particularly in the ‘Diversity and Inclusion’ module to encourage students to undertake audits of practice and as a starting point for discussion on how children are included in the setting.

The Post-Graduate Certificate / Diploma / Master’s degree in Inclusive Education also draws from the Framework to generate questions and discussion about inclusion within a teacher’s setting; this leads to an action plan being written to improve an aspect of inclusion.

In the MA (Hons) Education and PGDE (initial teacher education programmes) the Framework is used to inform modules, for example:

1st year module design is underpinned by principles of inclusion
PGDE Primary and Secondary both have specific sessions on inclusive practice and sessions on inclusion in a wider sense
PGDE Secondary – the Framework is used to explore inclusion in the classroom with reflective questions used to generate discussion amongst students e.g. Who are the children and young people who are at risk of discrimination and / or being overlooked, resulting in barriers to participation and learning?

The NFI has also been used to support an interactive workshop 'Sharing Inclusive Cycling Practice using the National Framework for Inclusion' with staff and volunteers from the Angus & Dundee Cycle Hub. This saw colleagues using the five-step process of engaging with the NFI to consider their existing inclusive practice and the strengths that this brings in working with a diverse range of participants, identifying aspects of practice that they wished to enhance and discussing how this might be taken forward.

Queen Margaret University

Students at Queen Margaret University on ITE programmes actively engage with the National Framework for Inclusion at the beginning of the PGDE, or in the third year of their BA studies. On the PGDE programmes, they are asked to look at the reflective questions to help them navigate a fictitious case study; how they can work effectively towards the inclusion of the student. The NFI is embedded into one second year module around teacher professionalism and two third year modules. In the first semester, students use the framework similarly to the PGDE students, and to think about planning for inclusion. In their second semester, students are asked to consider the framework with respect to one of the students with ASN (or whose identity puts them at risk of marginalization) and include their reflections in an assessed presentation. The framework is also used in our fourth year placement module, to again interrogate notions of teacher identity and professionalism.

University of the West of Scotland

In UWS, the Framework is used across a range of modules in the initial teacher education programmes and in the MEd in Inclusive Education. For example, questions such as What do we make of difference? In what ways can schools help overcome inequalities and challenge discrimination? What are the policies that influence the development of practice and provision in the area of inclusion? are addressed in the BA1 module Society and Lifestyles, while questions such as What are the conditions that promote children’s development? What are the different forms of support? What are the implications for working with and through other adults? are considered in the BA2 module ‘Inter-professional Working’.

The UWS primary and secondary PGDE students are introduced to the Framework at the start of the programme and are provided with opportunities to engage with the reflective questions it contains throughout the year. When they are on campus, the students consider the questions with reference to academic literature and other relevant resources, while when they are on placement, they explore the questions through professional dialogue with the staff in their school. Towards the end of their PGDE year, the students are given opportunities to synthesise the insights they gained across the two contexts and to reflect on the implications for their practice during the probation year and beyond.

In the UWS MEd in Inclusive Education, the Framework questions aimed at teachers and advanced professionals are weaved through the modules and guide the reflection process that is central to the programme. Questions are revisited regularly and are considered from different angles, depending on the focus of the module. For example, the question What are the opportunities, tensions, dilemmas, contradictions and problems for inclusion when interpreting and implementing current policy and legislation? is examined in relation to Autism Spectrum Disorder, Dyslexia, and Social, Emotional and Mental Health Needs in the respective modules, while the question How might critical engagement in enquiry, research and evaluation enhance teaching and learning? is central to the Inclusive Enquiry module and to the dissertation.