ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the use of “inclusion” as a term and concept. The levels of application of most definitions range from the individual to the classroom and the school, which is understood both as a larger social organisational unit and as an institution within society, but they rarely shift to the societal level, and if they do, then at most in an affirmative way, i.e. as a call for society as a whole to change. In community-based understandings of inclusion, the relationship between individuals and the classroom community receives special attention. The assumption of a historically consistent line of development from segregation to integration to inclusion, as is often expressed at least in the German-language debate, cannot be defended either. A definition of inclusion which, like one of those mentioned earlier, combines description with evaluation seems intuitively most appropriate for the phenomenon of inclusion.
