Evidence‑Informed Inclusive Education: Teachers’ Professional Development, Practices, and Innovations

Education systems worldwide are under increasing pressure to respond to learner diversity. At the same time, schools are being challenged by policy reforms, accountability agendas and resource constraints that can both enable and constrain inclusive practices. Recent literature suggests that well‑designed, sustained professional development can strengthen teachers’ capacity to respond to diverse learners, adopt collaborative problem‑solving, and embed inclusive approaches in their daily practices. This research topic responds to these developments by focusing on how teachers’ professional development, school and classroom practices, and educational innovations can become more explicitly and critically evidence‑informed to teacher initial and continuous training. The research topic aims to gather international, context‑sensitive, and methodologically diverse contributions that illuminate both the potential and the tensions of evidence‑informed teachers’ professional development for inclusive education. Furthermore, this editorial effort hopes to advance theoretical, empirical, and practice‑oriented understandings of how research evidence and other forms of knowledge are mobilized to support inclusive education through teachers’ professional development and training, everyday practices, and educational innovations.Key questions:• Which models, designs, and conditions of teacher initial training and professional development most effectively support sustained changes in inclusive teaching practices and school cultures?• How do teachers transform evidence into concrete inclusive pedagogies, assessment practices, and collaborative routines in diverse classrooms?• What kinds of innovations should be addressed in teachers’ professional development to enable evidence‑informed inclusive practices?To reflect the complexity of inclusive education and teachers’ professional development, the research topic encourages methodological pluralism and diverse article types, provided they are grounded in rigorous and transparent approaches.Thematic scopes: • Conceptualizing evidence‑informed teachers’ training and professional development.• Systematic, scoping, or realist reviews of research on teacher professional development and evidence use in inclusive education.• Teachers’ inclusive practices in classrooms and schools.• Design‑based, intervention, or evaluation studies of professional development or school‑wide initiatives.• Methodological papers addressing innovations in teacher training for inclusive contexts.The above list is indicative rather than exhaustive; manuscripts addressing other aspects of inclusive education are also welcomed, provided they align clearly with the aims of the research topic. Topic editors: Marco Ferreira, Anabela Cruz-Santos, Sofia Freire Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/77952/evidence-informed-inclusive-education-teachers-professional-development-practices-and-innovations