Thinking and researching inclusive education without a banister – visiting, listening and tact as a foundation for collective research on inclusive education

This paper presents some initial findings of a double-sided study on collective research in inclusive education. The aim is to discuss how thinking on inclusive education can be produced and evolved in a community of inquiry consisting of practitioners and researchers. The paper presents both a research process and an explorative theoretical endeavour to rethink how we might conduct research in education and more specifically inclusive education. The theoretical point of departure is Hannah Arendt’s concept of ‘thinking without a banister’ which, succinctly put, means to be able to think without a fixed methodology. We connect Arendt’s idea of ‘thinking without a banister’ with Johann Friedrich Herbart’s concept of pedagogical tact, which deals with the strong connection between theory and practice in educational processes. The paper ends with a reflection on the possible influence on inclusive education of the framework presented, and how it might lead to a more inclusive starting point for thinking about and researching the field of inclusive education.