Reconsidering Comparison in Inclusive Education Through a Neurodiversity-Informed Transcultural Methodology of Care

Abstract

Comparative studies in inclusive education promise cross-national learning yet often rely on standardised designs that flatten cultural, epistemic, and ethical complexity. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed these limits for neurodivergent learners whose participation depends on everyday arrangements that dashboards rarely register. This article is methodological, not a report of new fieldwork. It advances a neurodiversity-informed, transcultural methodology of care that re-specifies the object and warrant of comparison. Drawing on care ethics, neurodiversity scholarship, decolonial thought, and sociological work on space and policy translation, the approach operationalises three procedures: (a) reflexive translation as method; (b) warranted incommensurability as a comparative warrant; and (c) spatialities of care as primary comparative evidence. The documentary, interpretive methods include critical policy analysis, document analysis, and critical interpretive synthesis. We demonstrate the approach with Greece (Law 3699/2008; KEDASY under Law 4823/2021) and the United Arab Emirates (National Policy for People of Determination, 2017; Ministerial Decision 647/2020; Dubai Inclusive Education Policy Framework, 2017). The analysis traces translation chains and practice-proximal descriptions of classroom micro-ecologies drawn from guidance and secondary literature, not new observations, showing how multimodal, neuro-inclusive materials could be treated as comparative evidence rather than context or accommodation. Figure 1 provides an illustrated protocol for analysing drawing and photo-elicitation in empirical deployments; here, it functions as a methodological demonstration rather than participant data. The article concludes with a portable design grammar for qualitative comparison, translation transparency, principled naming of non-equivalence, and admissibility of multimodal evidence, and implications for review criteria and policy evaluation. Comparison is framed as a dialogic, care-centred practice that supports reforms expanding resources, status, and voice across contexts.

1. Introduction

Comparative research in inclusive education inhabits a structural paradox (Figure 1). Globally convergent aims, articulated in the Salamanca Statement, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, Article 24) and Sustainable Development Goal 4, meet locally sedimented histories, languages and institutional logics that make inclusion legible in very different ways (UNESCO, 1994; United Nations, 2006; United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2016). The COVID-19 pandemic increased this tension by revealing the fragility of indicator-centric accounts of inclusion, for learners whose participation depends on micro-arrangements, e.g., sensory routes, routines, and modes of communication, that system-level proxies might ignore.

Figure 1.

Illustrated protocol: Using drawing and photo-elicitation as comparative evidence

Classic comparative debates have long warned that educational models rarely travel intact, as methodological nationalism treats the nation as a natural unit of meaning, while methodological universalism presumes that categories refer to the same things across sites (Bray et al., 2003; Schriewer, 2000). In inclusive education, these temptations produce false commensurability, e.g., placement rates, categorical prevalence, and policy alignment, seem comparable even when local classification regimes, linguistic ecologies and institutional fields are not comparable. Spatial and praxeological strands of research complicate this by showing how participation is produced in schooling, through the distribution of time, bodies and materials and the micro-ecologies that allow co-regulation and voice (Buchner & Köpfer, 2022; Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 2005; Slee, 2011). At the same time, decolonial work asks whose knowledge orders our categories and what is lost when translation is seen as logistics rather than analysis (Escobar, 2020; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). A neurodiversity perspective insists that methods admit multiple communicative and sensory modes as primary evidence and that miscommunication is relational rather than located in autistic individuals alone (Kapp, 2020; Milton, 2012; Yergeau, 2018).

1.1. What This Article Is and Is Not

This is a methodological article, that does not report new interviews, classroom observations, or newly generated participant artefacts. Instead, it proposes and specifies a neurodiversity-informed, transcultural methodology of care for comparative inclusive education research and demonstrates how its procedures work using documentary and secondary materials connected to Greece and the UAE. Accordingly, the claims advanced are methodological, for example, how to compare; what counts as comparative evidence; how to warrant comparison, not national claims of representativeness.

1.2. Methodological Contribution Versus Theoretical Synthesis

By transcultural we mean beginning from entanglement rather than bounded units, e.g., policies, pedagogies and identities are interweaved through migration, markets and media, so comparison needs to trace translations rather than assume equivalence (Ball, 2012; Phillips & Ochs, 2003; Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012). By care we mean an epistemic and ethical orientation that makes spatialities-of-care visible, e.g., quiet corners, sensory routes, and peer routines, and designs research for participants to speak in preferred modes (de la Bellacasa, 2017; Noddings, 2013; Tronto, 2020).

The methodological contribution is threefold, (a) reflexive translation as method; an explicit documentable procedure with a translation log, for term-tracing across languages and institutions; (b) warranted incommensurability as a rule governed decision to identify non-equivalence, when constructs or consequences diverge; and (c) spatialities-of-care as primary comparative evidence, treating spatial arrangements and micro-ecologies as comparative data described with space; field; and street-level lenses, and judged with justice and capabilities criteria (Bourdieu, 1990, 1991; Fraser, 2009; Lefebvre, 1991; Lipsky, 2010; Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999).

The theoretical synthesis on what resources the method draws together, includes care ethics, neurodiversity scholarship, decolonial thought, and sociological perspectives on space and governance. A reflexive translation log accompanies the article as Supplementary File S1, making decisions auditable and portable to other studies.

1.3. Key Comparative Terms Used Consistently

The article uses the following comparative terms in a consistent way (Table 1).

Table 1.

Key Comparative Terms in This Article

Term	Plain definition	How it is used in this article	Example of Greece & UAE
Comparative judgement	An interpretive assessment that relates materials across sites through an explicit lens, for example, care, participation conditions, without necessarily generalising.	Used when the paper interprets and relates participation conditions, e.g., translation and spatialities-of-care, across Greece and the UAE without claiming national representativeness.	Judging that the comparative object is participation conditions, e.g., translation practices and spatialities-of-care, not only indicators.
Comparative claim	A defensible assertion about similarities and contrasts or relationships across sites that is supported by evidence and reasoning.	Used when the paper states what could legitimately be compared, e.g., support pathways and rights effects, and on what grounds.	Claim that comparing rights effects and support pathways is more valid than comparing prevalence when categories are not equivalent.
Comparative warrant; comparative validity condition	The grounds that justify a comparative claim in this methodological stance include, traceability, e.g., audit trail, clarity about what counts as evidence, and reflexive accountability, rather than commensurability by indicators alone.	Used to explain why translation logs, and evidence boundaries, e.g., documentary versus reconstructed versus illustrative, and spatial evidence, justify comparisons.	Warrant includes the translation log, documentary corpus, and explicit coding of spatialities-of-care.
Warranted incommensurability	A documented decision that non-equivalence is the valid comparative result when constructs or consequences are not aligned without distortion.	Used to prevent forced equivalence, as the paper records when constructs diverge legally, morally, semantically, or practically, and shifts comparison to rights effects and support pathways.	SEN in Greece is not equated to People of Determination in the UAE; comparison shifts to rights effects and organizational pathways, see S1-Memo 04.

Note. Table 1 synthesises and operationalises the manuscript’s terminology, drawing on established comparative-methods debates, e.g., Schriewer, 2000; Bray et al., 2003; Phillips & Ochs, 2003; Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012, and qualitative trustworthiness traditions (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Tracy, 2010), and aligns these with the paper’s procedures, e.g., reflexive translation, warranted incommensurability, spatialities-of-care.

1.4. How to Interpret the Materials, Analyses, and Illustrations in This Paper

Because this article is methodological rather than empirical, it uses examples in three analytically distinct ways. To prevent any misreading of the text as classroom observation, the following distinctions clarify how readers need to interpret the status of the materials used throughout the paper.

First, corpus materials refer to documentary sources that are quoted or closely paraphrased, including laws, policy frameworks, inspection guidance, and practice-proximal documents.

Second, reconstructed practices denote synthesized descriptions of classroom routines and spatial arrangements drawn from published literature and official guidance. These reconstructions are used to surface analytic relevance and are not deriving from new observations.

Third, illustrative demonstrations are short, explicitly marked vignettes that show how the proposed methodology operates in practice, for example, how multimodal artefacts could be analysed in an empirical study. These demonstrations are didactic and are not presented as empirical findings.

The article works with critical contrasts of Greece, where a long legislative trajectory in special and inclusive education meets diagnostic gatekeeping and resource constraint, and the United Arab Emirates, where a rights-based policy stack centred on People of Determination, moves through layered governance and multilingual classrooms. Greece makes visible how categories carry classificatory capital and how teachers, as street-level bureaucrats, improvise inclusion amid scarcity (Bourdieu, 1990; Lipsky, 2010). The UAE foregrounds policy translation and translanguaging for neuro-inclusive pedagogy in plural school ecologies (García & Li Wei, 2014; Phillips & Ochs, 2003; Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012). Methodologically, the two contexts test comparative assumptions.

1.5. Relationship to Conventional Comparative Methods

The proposed approach is not about rejecting conventional comparative logics, for example, benchmarking, indicator-based monitoring, or structured case comparison. Rather, it redefines what deems as a rigorous comparative warrant when commensurability is partial, ethically consequential, or linguistically unstable. Where conventional designs seek equivalence through standardised variables, this methodology identifies translation choices and participation conditions, including spatial arrangements, as evidence explicit and auditable.

The design is critical-interpretive, based on primary laws and policy frameworks, inspection guidance and practice-proximal materials, which are interpreted through this framework. Rigour is a relational and contextual adequacy, e.g., translation transparency, historical and institutional positioning, and admissibility of multimodal evidence, aligned with qualitative standards (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Tracy, 2010) and SRQR guidance, where applicable (O’Brien et al., 2014). The sections that follow review relevant literature, formalise the theoretical grammar, detail the analytic framework, and demonstrate the method with the Greek and UAE cases before returning to what good comparison demands in inclusive education.

This study asks three questions, (1) How are core constructs of inclusion, for example, participation, support, and special educational needs, defined, translated, and enacted in each setting? (2) Where do equivalences break down, warranting incommensurability rather than forced sameness? (3) How are spatialities-of-care, the micro-ecologies in which participation is produced, visible or invisible across policy, guidance, and practice-proximal materials?

The epistemic stance of this approach is critical-interpretive and care-oriented, as it identifies comparison as an accountable interpretive practice, warranting comparative claims through traceable interpretation, for example, translation logs, explicit evidence boundaries, and participation conditions, rather than presuming equivalence of categories or relying on indicators alone.

2. Literature Review

2.1. How Local Histories Reshape Global Agreements

The normative case for inclusion is attached to international frameworks, such as the Salamanca Statement, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, Art. 24), and SDG 4, which together have catalyzed reforms across systems (UN CRPD Committee, 2016; UNESCO, 1994; United Nations, 2006). Yet comparative scholarship warned that methodological nationalism treats the nation as a natural container of meaning, while methodological universalism presumes categories maintain equivalent referents across contexts (Bray et al., 2003; Schriewer, 2000). The result is that globally convergent rights claims meet local histories, languages, and institutional logics that render ‘inclusion’ different in practice. See also the 25-year reflection on Salamanca’s legacy (Ainscow et al., 2019).

2.2. Numbers Alone don’t Compare Inclusion Well

Inclusion is operationalized through administrative binaries, e.g., special versus regular, segregated versus integrated, and proxy indicators, e.g., placement rates or declared compliance. These proxies facilitate cross-national benchmarking but are not attuned to the interactional, spatial, and ethical work through which participation is enacted or denied in classrooms (Buchner & Köpfer, 2022; Florian & Beaton, 2017). Moreover, comparability is sustained by false commensurability, as national classification regimes are neither epistemically neutral nor legally equivalent; what is labeled ‘special educational needs’ in one setting may encode different rights, resources, and stigmas in another (Bourdieu, 1990, 1991). A sociology-of-measurement literature shows how data infrastructures make worlds and how international comparison misfires when numbers exist without context (Gorur, 2014, 2016; Skedsmo & Huber, 2022). This critique emphasizes the need for a comparative method that justifies when non-equivalence is a valid finding. These proxy indicators, hence, sustain comparability while overlooking how participation is organized in classrooms, the gap that a spatial, practice lens might address (Buchner & Köpfer, 2022; Slee, 2011).

2.3. Everyday Spaces That Produce or Block Participation

Recent work follows spatial and praxeological turns to examine how inclusion is produced or blocked, in the ordinary arrangements of schooling. According to Lefebvre’s (1991) claim, space is socially produced, and according to Massey (2005), space is relational and political, where in inclusive education map how the distribution of bodies, time, materials, and routines configures who can speak, move, and learn (Buchner & Köpfer, 2022; Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 2005). Slee’s critique of the ‘irregular school’ is instructive, as system dashboards register placement but miss the mundane mechanisms through which exclusion is enacted and normalized (Slee, 2011). To foreground the ethical labour rooted in ordinary organization, we identify these as micro-arrangements spatialities-of-care (de la Bellacasa, 2017). This perspective reframes comparison. Rather than asking whether systems include, it asks how inclusion is spatially enacted, and how such enactments are legible or invisible in policy texts, inspection scripts, and data practices. In our demonstrations, spatialities-of-care are comparative evidence.

2.4. Working Across Languages and With Children’s Ways of Communicating

Comparative projects move across languages, hitherto, translation is seen more as a technical step and less than a site of meaning-making. Cross-language qualitative method has long argued that translation is analytic, shaping validity and interpretation (Squires, 2009; Temple & Young, 2004; van Nes et al., 2010). Accordingly, language-informed approaches insist that key constructs be term-traced across documents, languages, and actors before comparison proceeds (Phillips & Ochs, 2003). In classrooms, serving multilingual communities, translanguaging research validates that learning and participation draw on full linguistic and that comparative accounts assuming neat bilingualism misrecognize how inclusion is achieved (Creese & Blackledge, 2010; García & Li Wei, 2014;). Additionally, child-centred qualitative approaches oppose that children’s communicative preferences, for example, visual, tactile, narrative, are evidence rather than accommodations (Clark & Moss, 2011). These strands motivate the paper’s translation log and its argument for a multimodal evidentiary base in comparative research, even when this article is documentary.

2.5. Global Templates don’t Fit Decolonial Lessons

Decolonial scholarship interrogates the power, knowledge relations, that endorse comparative categories and the epistemic hierarchies sustained by them. It calls for pluriversal logics, i.e., recognizing diverse worlds of meaning, and for epistemic disobedience when translation obliterates local intelligibility (Escobar, 2020; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). In inclusive education, these critiques resonate with analyses of policy borrowing and lending, where global scripts are re-authored through local institutions and inspection rules, producing hybrid forms that confound indicator-led evaluation (Phillips & Ochs, 2003; Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012). Work on policy mobilities and networks shows how global imaginaries and intermediary organizations circulate templates that are localized through governance and practice (Ball, 2012). The implication is methodological, as comparison needs to register warranted incommensurability when constructs, consequences, or accountability relations diverge.

2.6. Designing for Neurodiversity From the Start

The neurodiversity paradigm challenges deficit framings by recognizing autistic, ADHD, and other cognitive differences as legitimate ways of knowing, with consequences for what counts as data, participation, and voice (Kapp, 2020; Yergeau, 2018). Work on the double-empathy problem shows that miscommunication between autistic and non-autistic people is relational rather than located in autistic individuals alone, motivating neuro-inclusive research design (Milton, 2012). Practice-oriented guidance, including the AASPIRE guidelines and participatory autism research, operationalizes these commitments by adapting recruitment, consent, elicitation, and analysis, so that neurodivergent people shape questions, pacing, and interpretations (Nicolaidis et al., 2019; Pellicano et al., 2014). Comparative studies that retain neurotypical defaults might reproduce epistemic exclusion, even when policy conclusions are progressive.

2.7. What Constraints Mean for Justice

Political-economic and sociological perspectives clarify how reforms are enacted under constraint. Lipsky’s (2010) street-level bureaucracy explains why frontline educators improvise to reconcile mandates, resources, and local needs. Fraser’s (2009) conception of justice as redistribution, recognition, and representation situates inclusive reform in a broader normative frame, where systems expand resources, status, and voice, not just access. The capabilities approach similarly evaluates reforms by their contribution to people’s substantive freedoms, redirecting attention from access to what learners can be and do (Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999). These perspectives help comparative analyses to avoid moral minimalism, making clear what better inclusion is about, beyond indicators.

2.8. What This Paper Adds

Across these literatures, there is a methodological gap on how to compare inclusion in ways that are qualitatively thick, language informed, neuro-inclusive, and decolonially reflexive while producing disciplined comparative judgements and claims. This paper formalizes a neurodiversity-informed, transcultural methodology of care that integrates the previous insights into a coherent design grammar, for example, reflexive translation as method, warranted incommensurability as a validity condition, and spatialities-of-care, as main comparative evidence. The demonstrations of Greece and the UAE reveal the practical value of this stance.

3. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical frame starts from the simple premise that inclusion is made in practice, and in places, under rules that might never be neutral. Therefore, comparison is a search for equivalence and an account of how meanings, spaces, and obligations are produced. The framework moves on three planes, e.g., care, language, and space, and uses justice, and capabilities lens to evaluate what is ‘better’ beyond access alone.

In the ethics-of-care tradition, knowing is relational and carries responsibilities of attentiveness and responsiveness (Noddings, 2013; Tronto, 2020). Following de la Bellacasa (2017), care is infrastructural, as it is built into small arrangements that make participation possible, for example, quiet corners, predictable transitions, sensory pathways, and peer routines. A care-oriented comparative method identifies these arrangements as comparative evidence because they shape who can participate, how, and at what cost. That is why we use the concept spatialities-of-care; as the mundane placements of bodies, materials, and time, through which participation either occurs or is blocked.

If autistic and other neurodivergent ways of making sense are recognized as legitimate, then methods need to admit multiple communicative and sensory modes as evidence, and less as accommodations (Kapp, 2020; Yergeau, 2018). The double-empathy shows that miscommunication is relational rather than located in autistic people alone (Milton, 2012). In empirical deployments, this implies multimodal elicitation, for example, drawing, photo-elicitation, and AAC outputs, shared interpretive authority, and warrants, depending less on neurotypical speech norms. In this documentary article, we operationalise this stance by specifying how multimodal artefacts are analysed as comparative evidence and by linking artefact analysis to spatialities-of-care and policy expectations (see Figure 1).

Cross-language qualitative work shows that translation is analysis, as words carry moral grammars and legal consequences across settings (Squires, 2009; Temple & Young, 2004; van Nes et al., 2010). We make this explicit through a reflexive translation log that traces key constructs across laws, policies, and practice artefacts, and records why we retain local terms. Keeping People of Determination in the UAE case and KEDASY in the Greek case is a comparative warrant, validity move, because it preserves meanings and power routes that those words organize.

Following Lefebvre’s (1991) claim that space is socially produced and Massey’s (2005) perseverance that it is relational and political, we interpret classroom layout, movement rules in a corridor, and visual signage, as organizational facts. This also links micro-arrangements to fields and doxa, giving categories symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1990, 1991), and to educators’ improvisations, as they reconcile mandates, resources, and local needs (Lipsky, 2010). Thus, spatial description is a route into the political economy of inclusion.

Furthermore, Fraser’s (2009) three-part account of justice of redistribution, recognition, and representation, evaluate whether reforms expand resources, elevate the status of difference, and widen voice. The capabilities approach adds a test of whether arrangements enlarge what learners can be and do (Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999). These lenses guard against moral minimalism, specifying what better inclusion needs to be.

Finally, comparison is transcultural because borrowing, lending, and policy mobilities show how scripts are re-authored through local institutions, inspection regimes, and professional networks (Ball, 2012; Phillips & Ochs, 2003; Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012). The method’s practical goal is to trace these translations and then decide, explicitly and auditably, when connection is warranted and when non-equivalence is the more truthful comparative result.

4. Methodological Contribution and Procedures

4.1. Qualitative Methods Used

This paper uses three qualitative methods applied to documentary and secondary materials. First, critical policy evaluation and analysis, as we interpret policy as an ethical and political text, for example, how inclusion is defined, who is imagined as the learner, which differences are recognized, and what obligations are created.

Second, document analysis (Bowen, 2009), as we systematically map, compare, and interpret laws, policy frameworks, and guidance documents to identify key constructs, pathways, and accountability relations.

Third, critical interpretive synthesis (Dixon-Woods et al., 2006), as we develop mid-range analytic categories by iteratively relating documents and scholarship to the paper’s lenses, for example, care, translation, space, justice, and capabilities, while preserving difference rather than forcing convergence.

This study formalizes a three-part contribution to qualitative comparison in inclusive education, as it identifies translation as analysis, identify non-equivalence when warranted, and understand spatial arrangements of care as evidence. The design is critical-interpretive, attached in the ethics of care (Noddings, 2013; Tronto, 2020), decolonial ideas to pluriversal meaning (Escobar, 2020; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018), and sociologies of space (Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 2005), while drawing on neurodiversity-informed participatory commitments (Nicolaidis et al., 2019; Pellicano et al., 2014). Quality is pursued as relational and contextual adequacy, in accordance with trustworthiness and ‘big-tent’ criteria (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Tracy, 2010). Analytically, document analysis (Bowen, 2009) is combined with critical interpretive synthesis (Dixon-Woods et al., 2006) to build mid-range categories across cases without erasing difference. Reporting follows SRQR where applicable to methodological papers (O’Brien et al., 2014).

4.2. Making Translation Analytic

Translation is about analysis, as terms with high discursive load, e.g., People of Determination in the UAE and ΚΕΔΑΣΥ/KEDASY and Παράλληλη Στήριξη/parallel support in Greece, are term-traced across laws, policy, guidance and practice artefacts to observe shifts in meaning, authority and legal effect (Phillips & Ochs, 2003; Squires, 2009; Temple & Young, 2004; van Nes et al., 2010). We keep a reflexive translation log (Supplementary File S1), record back-translation drift, and retain key local terms at first mention with an analytic approach where equivalence flattens meaning (Clark & Moss, 2011; García & Li Wei, 2014). Thus, People of Determination is retained to preserve its dignity and capability (S1-Memo 01), while KEDASY is retained to preserve its statutory identity, and gatekeeping authority (S1-Memo 02), and parallel support is retained to avoid merging with basic co-teaching (S1-Memo 03).

4.3. When the Result is Non-equivalence

Comparative studies might force ill-fitting equivalences (Bray et al., 2003; Phillips & Ochs, 2003; Schriewer, 2000; Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012). Therefore, if, after reflexive translation, a construct remains non-alignable because (a) it encodes different legal consequences, e.g., KEDASY classifications triggering resource pathways under Law 4823/2021; S1-Memo 02, (b) it sits within a moral-semantic grammar falsified by harmonization, e.g., the Emirati discourse of determination; S1-Memo 01, or (c) it organizes practice differently, evidenced in inspection criteria or school-level guidance (Lipsky, 2010), we mark warranted incommensurability, as an analytic finding. We document the decision in S1 and state its implications for judgement using justice and capabilities lenses (Fraser, 2009; Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999). For example, SEN categories in Greece and People of Determination in the UAE are not perceived as exchangeable classes (S1-Memo 04); instead, comparison shifts towards rights effects and support rather than prevalence.

4.4. Perceiving Spaces of Care as Evidence

According to spatial theory and care ethics, material and temporal traces of care are perceived as first-order comparative data, for example, classroom micro-geographies, seating, and movement allowances, sensory accommodations, corridor and break-time routines, multilingual signage, and scripts for peer support, arrangements through which, participation is enacted (de la Bellacasa, 2017; Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 2005; Tronto, 2020). In this documentary article, UAE, such traces enter the analysis in two ways; (a) as practice -proximal descriptions and expectations integrated in emirate-level guidance and inspection texts (Knowledge and Human Development Authority, KHDA, 2017; 2019a; 2019b); and (b) as reconstructed practices synthesized from secondary literature, signposted as reconstructions and not observations. This enables comparison, of how care is organized in schools without collapsing contexts into one metric (Slee, 2011). Where Greek Τμήμα Ένταξης functions as a school-based support unit, we retain the term and interpret its pull-out profile, as a spatial practice with consequences (S1-Memo 05).

4.5. Corpus and Analytic Approach

The corpus (2015-2025) comprises, (a) primary policy and legal texts (Greek Laws 3699/2008; 4823/2021; UAE National Policy for Empowering People of Determination, 2017; UAE Ministerial Decision No. 647/2020; Dubai’s Inclusive Education Policy Framework, 2017); (b) peer-reviewed scholarship on inclusive pedagogy, spatial and practice lenses, neurodiversity-informed methods and comparative methodology; and (c) practice-proximal artefacts from teacher education and school-level guidance. Searches used ERIC, Education Source, and Scopus with terms such as inclusive education AND (comparative OR comparison) AND method; neurodiversity AND qualitative; policy borrowing/lending. Inclusion required explicit relevance to inclusion policy or enactment and traceability to named institutions or journals; non-sourced opinion pieces and outdated versions were excluded. We do not claim systematic review status but instead, we pursue critical interpretive adequacy until additional sources cease to alter analytic categories (Dixon-Woods et al., 2006).

References to classroom routines or spatial arrangements draw on (a) documentary expectations in policy, guidance, and inspection materials; (b) reconstructed practices synthesised from published sources; or (c) explicit illustrative demonstrations of how the method operates in an empirical study.

Analytically, contextual mapping situated each setting historically and institutionally, e.g., classification regimes, funding logics, and governance layers. Term-tracing followed focal constructs, e.g., ‘participation’, ‘support’, ‘special educational needs’, People of Determination, KEDASY, across languages and documents to track shifts in meaning and authority (Phillips & Ochs, 2003; S1-Memos 01-04). Critical interpretive synthesis developed mid-range categories, e.g., diagnostic gatekeeping, policy velocity, spatial accommodation, by abductively relating texts to the lenses above (Bowen, 2009; Dixon-Woods et al., 2006). Finally, cross-case confrontation tested where similar indicators masked different institutional practices, justifying warranted incommensurability, and recording implications for comparative judgement (Escobar, 2020; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018).

4.6. What Counts as Neuro-Inclusive Comparative Evidence

This article does not report newly collected drawings, photographs, or photo-elicitation materials. However, multimodal artefacts matter methodologically because they render participation conditions visible beyond text-only accounts, a point well established in neurodiversity-informed and participatory research (Kapp, 2020; Nicolaidis et al., 2019; Yergeau, 2018). Accordingly, we (a) specify how multimodal artefacts function as comparative evidence in empirical deployments of the proposed methodology, for example, what analytic questions to ask, how artefacts might relate to policy and guidance expectations, and how comparative claims are warranted, and (b) provide an author-created schematic (Figure 1) that demonstrates this protocol without implying the use of new participant data. Figure 1 summarises the analytic protocol for using drawing and photo-elicitation, as comparative evidence.

Author-created schematic for methodological demonstration. In empirical deployments, drawings and photographs are participant-generated with consent and assent and appropriate ethical safeguards. Artefact analysis codes participation conditions as spatialities-of-care and links them to policy and guidance constructs through the reflexive translation log (Supplementary File S1).

An illustrative demonstration; not reported data. In an empirical study, a non-speaking learner could produce a sequence of drawn panels marking moments they experience as difficult, for example, transitions, noisy corridors, public questioning. Under the proposed analytic grammar, such panels could be examined for sequence, repetition, and spatial emphasis, and then related to documentary expectations regarding support, e.g., co-teaching scripts, and sensory accommodation. Comparative claims would not rely on individual testimony alone; instead, artefact-based participation conditions would be interpreted in relation to translation chains and organisational pathways that shape what support means across contexts.

This illustrative demonstration clarifies the analytic logic of the proposed approach; the sections that follow apply this logic to the documentary corpus to examine how participation conditions are organised and translated across contexts.

4.7. About Trustworthiness, Ethics, and Scope

Credibility is sought through sustained engagement with primary texts, triangulation across policy, scholarship and practice artefacts, and negative-case analysis where documents resist neat synthesis (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Tracy, 2010). Dependability and confirmability are supported by an audit trail of analytic memos and the S1 translation log; translation choices are cited in-text as S1-Memo ## at points, where meaning endorses claims. New human-subjects data were not generated and thus, ethics approval was not required. The design does not claim representativeness or causal generalization. Its value is methodological as it provides a replicable set of procedures that could be used in future participatory field studies, aligning policy analysis with classroom micro-ecologies and multimodal evidence.

5. Demonstration of Method Through Comparative Case Analyses of Greece and UAE

The case sections below are methodological demonstrations grounded in the documentary corpus and secondary literature described in Section 4.4. Descriptions of classroom routines, spatial arrangements, or learner experiences are either documentary expectations, reconstructed practices from literature, or explicit vignettes, not new classroom observations.

We present Greece and the United Arab Emirates, as testbeds for the approach. In Greece, reflexive translation makes visible the institutional semantics around Παράλληλη Στήριξη (parallel support) and ΚΕΔΑΣΥ (KEDASY) assessments (Law 3699/2008; Law 4823/2021; S1-Memos 02-03). In the UAE, retaining People of Determination registers an ethically saturated construct grounded in national policy and inspection guidance (MOCD, 2017; MoE Ministerial Decision 647/2020; KHDA, 2017, 2019a; 2019b; United Arab Emirates Ministry of Education, 2020 S1-Memo 01). Across both cases, the point is methodological, as reflexive translation, warranted incommensurability, and spatialities-of-care, change what is comparable. Where constructs encode different rights or moral grammars, we avoid forced equivalence, comparing support pathways, rights effects, and organizational spaces (Ball, 2012; Phillips & Ochs, 2003; Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012).

5.1. In Greece, Inclusion Is Routed Through Assessment, Documentation, and Constrained Resources

Greece’s framework for special and inclusive education is set out in Law 3699/2008, with a reorganization of advisory and assessment structures through ΚΕΔΑΣΥ/KEDASY under Law 4823/2021 (S1-Memo 02). Retaining the KEDASY acronym is a translation decision that preserves the term’s statutory authority and gatekeeping in eligibility and support routing. Παράλληλη Στήριξη/parallel support, is likewise retained to avoid conflation with generic co-teaching (S1-Memo 03). These decisions enact warranted incommensurability, as the Greek constructs convey documentary preconditions and staffing consequences that are not harmonized to ‘co-teaching’ or generic ‘SEN support’, without losing meaning.

In the documentary and secondary corpus, Greek inclusion is repeatedly described as moving through administrative thresholds and frontline improvisations under constraint (Hellenic Republic, 2008; Hellenic Republic, 2021). Lipsky’s (2010) street-level bureaucracy explains why frontline educators improvise to reconcile mandates and scarce resources. Bourdieu explains why diagnostic categories convey symbolic capital that opens some pathways while closing others (Bourdieu, 1990, 1991). Fraser’s triad further suggests that redistribution is constrained by austerity legacies, while recognition oscillates between deficit and difference and representation is weak where learners’ and families’ voices are under-institutionalized (Fraser, 2009). From a capabilities perspective, diagnostic labels unlock access to supports while simultaneously constraining other capabilities, for example, through stigma, lowered expectations, or narrowed pedagogical opportunities (Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999).

These dynamics surface spatialities-of-care as (a) documentary expectations for support organization; and (b) reconstructed practices frequently discussed in Greek inclusion scholarship, e.g., routines, seating, pull-out and push-in arrangements. For example, Τμήμα Ένταξης might be interpreted as a spatial practice with consequences, how time and support are allocated, who moves where, and what stigma risks are produced (S1-Memo 05; Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 2005; de la Bellacasa, 2017). The comparative judgement is therefore not whether Greece includes less or more, but that inclusion is organized through specific legal and administrative pathways whose classroom consequences are not visible in placement only indicators (Buchner & Köpfer, 2022; Gorur, 2016).

5.2. United Arab Emirates and Policy Translation Through Layered Governance and Multilingual School Ecologies

The UAE’s inclusion context is institutionalized through a rights-based policy centred on People of Determination, the National Policy for Empowering People of Determination (MOCD, 2017), Ministerial Decision 647/2020 on inclusive education (MoE), and Dubai’s Inclusive Education Policy Framework (KHDA, 2017), with practical guidance in Directives and Guidelines for Inclusive Education (KHDA, 2019a) and in Implementing Inclusive Education: A Guide for Schools (KHDA, 2019b). Federal direction and emirate-level regulation, e.g., KHDA in Dubai; and ADEK in Abu Dhabi, create layered governance. Retaining People of Determination is a decision about moral-semantic meanings that signals dignity and capability in public discourse and documentation (S1-Memo 01). It is not directly exchangeable with SEN categories used elsewhere (S1-Memo 04).

The method follows these translations into practice expectations. In schools serving diverse student bodies, translanguaging is constitutive of participation as learners mobilize linguistic repertoires to access content, and policies that assume stable bilingualism risk marginalizing home languages (Creese & Blackledge, 2010; García & Li Wei, 2014). In documentary guidance and secondary accounts, spatialities-of-care in this context include quiet zones, flexible movement expectations, and language-rich peer routines that make participation tangible, yet these features are rarely captured by system-level indicators (KHDA, 2017, 2019; Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 2005). Following policy borrowing and mobilities research, UAE reforms are interpreted as global ideas translated through local values, regulatory instruments, and inspection regimes (Ball, 2012; Phillips & Ochs, 2003; Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012).

Therefore, the incommensurabilities are mainly moral-semantic, e.g., the horizon invoked by People of Determination, and practical, e.g., how inspection frameworks, professional learning, and school design organize support. Rather than collapsing UAE categories into SEN (Special Educational Needs) the comparison shifts to the rights effects of terminology and organization of care in multilingual school ecologies (S1-Memos 01, 04).

5.3. Cross-Case Reading

The two cases reveal different frictions between formal architecture and classroom life. In Greece, diagnostic gatekeeping and resource scarcity press teachers toward informal care that is hard to document. In the UAE, policy velocity and pluralism press systems toward professional learning and translanguaging practices that sustain differentiation. Both cases converge on the same methodological lesson. First, to protect local intelligibility through reflexive translation and warranted incommensurability, as we do not to equate SEN with People of Determination; instead, we compare support pathways and rights effects (S1-Memo 04; Phillips & Ochs, 2003; Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012). Second, spatialities-of-care are central comparative evidence because participation is organized through space, routine, and material arrangements (Buchner & Köpfer, 2022; de la Bellacasa, 2017). Finally, indicators need to be situated within the data infrastructures that produce them (Gorur, 2014, 2016; Skedsmo & Huber, 2022). Under this logic, comparison becomes a dialogic practice for supporting reforms that expand resources, status, and voice while respecting diverse ways inclusion becomes meaningful across contexts (Fraser, 2009; Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999).

6. Discussion

The analysis invites a re-specification of what is considered as a rigorous comparative claim in inclusive education. Adopting a neurodiversity-informed, transcultural methodology of care, produces three shifts; (a) what is compared; (b) how comparative warrant is established; and (c) to whom comparative work is accountable.

Indicator-led designs presume inclusion is captured by proxies, for example, placement rates, categorical prevalence, or compliance with policy templates. The demonstrations suggest that these proxies miss what is consequential. In Greece, the consequential object is the pathway through which KEDASY assessments and diagnostic classifications open or foreclose support, and how educators assemble workable participation conditions under constraint. In the UAE, the consequential object is the translation chain from federal policy to emirate-level inspection expectations to multilingual classroom participation conditions. In both settings, the relevant comparative phenomena are translation practices and spatialities-of-care, and less the proxy indicators that populate accountability dashboards (Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 2005; Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012).

Comparative warrant, comparative validity condition, is reframed here, as relational and contextual adequacy rather than commensurability alone. Adequacy is sought by documenting translation choices, situating interpretations historically and institutionally, and admitting multimodal evidence consonant with neurodiversity commitments (Kapp, 2020; Noddings, 2013; Yergeau, 2018). Retaining People of Determination and KEDASY is therefore a warrant, validity move rooted in decolonial commitments to pluriversal meaning (Escobar, 2020; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). Where categories do not align, warranted incommensurability avoids forced equivalence and supports truthful comparison.

A methodology of care shifts accountability beyond academic peers to communities described by comparative work. In empirical deployments, admitting multimodal evidence and co-analysis redistributes interpretive authority and mitigates the double-empathy problem by designing communicative fit into research (Milton, 2012; Nicolaidis et al., 2019). At policy level, Fraser’s (2009) redistribution; recognition; representation triad and the capabilities approach provide criteria for judging whether reforms move beyond access to reconfigure resources, status and voice (Fraser, 2009; Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999).

Through this perspective, the Greek case is less an implementation lag, and more a configuration where field effects and street-level improvisation co-produce inclusion under constraint. Indicator gains may therefore mask inequalities in recognition and representation (Bourdieu, 1990; Fraser, 2009; Lipsky, 2010). The UAE demonstration is less of a progressive policy but rather a configuration where policy velocity and layered governance create uneven capacity for neuro-inclusive pedagogy, with translanguaging emerging as a vital condition for participation that indicator systems tend to under-recognise (García & Li Wei, 2014).

Three critiques are foreseeable, as firstly, some argue that incommensurability undercuts comparison. Here, incommensurability is bounded, and rule governed, invoked only when constructs or consequences diverge, and the decision is documented in the translation log rather than asserted rhetorically (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). Secondly, one might worry, the approach turns into advocacy rather than analysis. To address this, the method specifies analytical procedures, for example, term-tracing, cross-case confrontation, and spatial description, and makes normative criteria explicit, e.g., justice, and capabilities, rather than implicit (Fraser, 2009; Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999). Thirdly, multimodality and co-analysis might be seen as impractical. Practice-based guidance shows feasibility and the costs of excluding such evidence are borne by the populations that inclusion purports to serve (Kapp, 2020; Nicolaidis et al., 2019).

For researchers, the framework provides a design grammar, as it maps context; follows contested terms across languages and institutions; and specifies when equivalence is warranted and when it is refused, identifying spatialities-of-care, as primary comparative data. For reviewers and editors, quality criteria include translation transparency, relational and contextual adequacy, and range of evidence alongside analytic coherence (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Tracy, 2010). For policymakers and inspectorates, complement dashboards with practice-proximal indicators that make care visible through multilingual, and multimodal routines, the distribution and use of sensory and quiet spaces, and documented adjustments that constitute participation.

7. Conclusion

This article has proposed a neurodiversity-informed, transcultural methodology of care that re-specifies both the object and the warrant of comparison in inclusive education. Rather than aligning indicators alone, the method follows translation chains and identifies spatialities-of-care as comparative evidence. Warranted incommensurability is identified as a sign of validity when constructs or consequences diverge. The accompanying Supplementary File S1, Reflexive Translation Log, renders these decisions auditable and portable.

Two field-level propositions include, (1) reflexive translation that yields bounded non-equivalence, enhances, rather than diminishes, comparative warrant, validity; and (2) spatialities-of-care provide a more sensitive and just evidentiary basis for cross-national judgement than indicator-only models premised on formal equivalence. The Greece and UAE demonstrations are not national representations; they show how the method behaves under different institutional and linguistic conditions.

There are also limits, as the analysis is documentary and conceptual, and claims are bounded by the languages analysed and the corpus accessed. The value is generative, as it provides a replicable design grammar, e.g., translation transparency, principled naming of non-equivalence, and admission of multimodal, neuro-inclusive evidence, to be transferred to participatory field studies.

A forward agenda includes multi-sited, participatory comparisons that synchronise policy texts with classroom micro-ecologies and learner-generated artefacts; development of translation logs as citable research objects; and review criteria that assess comparative work against translation transparency, relational and contextual adequacy, and range of evidence. Comparison is critical across contexts; under a methodology of care, we compare less when sameness is imposed and more when difference provides insight.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material - Reconsidering Comparison in Inclusive Education Through a Neurodiversity-Informed Transcultural Methodology of Care

Supplemental material for Reconsidering Comparison in Inclusive Education Through a Neurodiversity-Informed Transcultural Methodology of Care by Efthymia Efthymiou in International Journal of Qualitative Methods.