Navigating professional dilemmas in inclusive classrooms: pre-service teachers’ reflective narratives, wellbeing, and emerging professional agency

Abstract

Inclusive education has become a central policy orientation in contemporary school systems. Yet pre-service teachers often encounter inclusive classrooms as complex pedagogical environments in which no standardised response is sufficient. While extensive research has examined teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education and the pedagogical strategies that support inclusive practices, less is known about how pre-service teachers interpret situated professional dilemmas and how these experiences contribute to their professional judgement, wellbeing, and emerging agency. This article addresses this issue by examining reflective narratives produced in initial teacher education. This qualitative study analyses 107 reflective narratives produced by pre-service teachers enrolled in a French master's programme for initial teacher education. The narratives were written as part of a module devoted to inclusive education and the accessibility of learning, and focused on professional situations encountered or observed during placements in primary and secondary classrooms. The data were examined through reflexive thematic analysis, combining an inductive approach with a theoretically informed reading centred on inclusive classrooms, professional dilemmas, emotional work, teacher wellbeing, and professional agency. Four interconnected themes were identified: encountering classroom heterogeneity; navigating pedagogical and ethical dilemmas; engaging in emotional work and constructing fragile forms of teacher wellbeing; and developing professional agency in no-size-fits-all pedagogical environments. The findings show that pre-service teachers progressively move beyond the identification of pupils’ educational needs towards an analysis of the situated conditions that make learning activities more or less accessible. The narratives also reveal recurrent dilemmas involving individual adaptation, collective progression, support, autonomy, assessment, participation, and the risk of stigmatisation. The study argues that inclusive classrooms can become formative professional spaces when such dilemmas are analysed within structured reflective settings. Preparing teachers for inclusive classrooms therefore requires more than transmitting knowledge about educational needs or pedagogical adjustments; it also requires supporting their capacity to interpret situated complexity, work through emotional and ethical tensions, mobilise collective resources, and construct sustainable forms of professional agency.