Inclusive education is usually presented by political documents, such as the UNESCO Salamanca statement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2015). It is based on the rights of the disabled people and children and is fundamentally grounded in the Declaration of Human Rights. It should be understood more as a process than a state (UNESCO, 2018).

In an inclusive educational culture, the basis of cooperation is a confidential and good relationship between schools and the parents (Kozleski and Waitoller, 2010). Inclusive culture in schools and its implications for everyday work are founded on the principles of democracy (Mitchell, 2012). Inclusive culture respects differences and encourages engagement to provide all pupils with access to education (Ainscow, 2014). In inclusive environments, parents are recognized, respected, and active members in the classroom and school community (Mitchell, 2012), and teachers value parental involvement (Okkolin et al., 2018). Parental cooperation is also considered to be an effective inclusive practice (Mitchell, 2014), and the non-participation of parents is seen as a barrier to inclusive education (Kozleski et al., 2009).

According to the European Agency for the Development of Special Needs Education (EADSNE), working with others is seen not only as a practice but also as a value in competencies of teachers (European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education [EADSNE], 2011). Furthermore, a well-functioning, inclusive school community can be seen as a resource to parents in terms of supporting the well-being of their children (Illsley and Redford, 2005; Koskela et al., 2020). Similarly, teachers can see parents as a resource in terms of solving problems, cooperating, and supporting their work (Okkolin et al., 2018; Väyrynen and Paksuniemi, 2020). There is a need for an epistemological shift to make understanding of environments and local cultures of schools more visible in the everyday decision-making of teachers (Payne and Zeichner, 2017) and use interactive structures to support the well-being of both students and families with multiprofessional personnel from schools (Ainscow et al., 2006).

In a study by Runswick-Cole (2008), parents identified attitudinal barriers, hostile school cultures, and inflexible teaching styles as obstacles to successful inclusive education. There are also barriers to parental participation. When teachers position themselves as experts, families tend to be in a lower position in the hierarchy and discussions (Kozleski and Waitoller, 2010). However, the role of teachers is crucial in promoting inclusive education in schools (Savolainen, 2009). In addition, all school personnel can promote their own decisions to redefine inclusive practices in the school context (Ainscow et al., 2006). At the same time, teachers have the ability to change school culture if needed (Kozleski and Waitoller, 2010). It is important to encourage parents to challenge the decisions of authorities and professionals, as well as environments and school cultures if they are to change (Thomas, 2013). In this sense, the interpretation of inclusive education of school culture as a multi-agentic community breaks the traditional framework of power by creating more space for parental voices.

Agency is a widely used concept in sociology and is connected to theories of practice, and the stratification model of intentional and rational action (Giddens, 1984). It is understood in relation to cultures and structures (Archer, 2010). It is seen as the intentional content of ambition, personal ability, or quality, and it is discussed in relation to questions about its position between individuals and structures as well as the interplay between agency and context (Archer, 2010). In this research, agency is based on relational and transactional relations, and as such, it refers to free will in modern, postmodern, and transmodern society, with a need or a right to express oneself and to take initiative in his/her own processes. It represents attempts at intentional and meaningful actions with aspirations for consequences (Grillitsch and Sotarauta, 2020).

Biesta and Tedder (2007) approached agency from a life-course perspective. For parents, parental agency is not a choice, and the life-course perspective better gives the suitable relation to the given, specific situation of their child. Lucas (2019) connected the parental agency as individuals to a multi-agency environment and revealed that the parental agency is limited and that parents struggle to establish a positive and active role for themselves. Parents have to repeatedly renegotiate their roles (Tveit, 2009). According to Biesta and Tedder (2007), individuals can achieve more or less agency depending on their own engagement and also recognize resources in the context at hand. In this study, agency is understood as an ecological phenomenon. Edwards (2017) highlighted the dynamic and intertwined relation between agency and cultural practices to clarify the meaning of organizational changes in a way that enables criticism of the present and makes it possible to create new visions of the activity. Agency is based on the past, happens in a certain moment, and aims for the future (Biesta and Tedder, 2007). It is difficult to understand agency without taking into account the context and social environment, and personal life course also plays an important role. Furthermore, agency is connected to adult learning processes in the context of professionality (Biesta and Tedder, 2007; Eteläpelto et al., 2013; Edwards, 2017), but learning in the parental positions as active agents has not yet been widely covered.

According to Emirbayer and Mische (1998), the conception of agency is based on a chordal triad of iterational, projective, and practical-evaluative dimensions of agency. First, the iterational dimension lies in the earlier experiences of past interactions of actors. It concerns the schematization of social experience, and those schemas “consist in the interpretation of mental categories, embodied practices, and social organization” (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998, p. 975) as social environments. Experiences are notable in transactions when an actor is, for example, directing selective attention in a flow of situations. Second, the projective situation focuses on future possibilities. According to Emirbayer and Mische (1998), “an imaginative engagement of the future is also a crucial component of the effort of human actors” (p. 984). It aims to promote purposes and goals and can be described in terms of hopes, dreams, aspirations, and fears. In this dimension, agency is based on the hypothesization of experience. The third part of the triad is the practical-evaluative dimension that focuses on the present moment. All decisions, judgments, and choices have to be made in reality in certain contexts and circumstances. There are confusing contradictions and emergences to face. Designation of the practical-evaluative dimension is connected to practical wisdom, prudence, application, and intelligent improvisation. Agency in this dimension is understood as contextualization located in social experience (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998).

In the Finnish educational system, one of the leading ideas is to give all citizens the opportunity to educate themselves. Education, including study materials and daily warm meals for all students, is free of charge in K-12 education. Supportive elements, e.g., school transportation (when needed), are also free. Therefore, education as a system is strongly connected to the well-being of children (Koskela et al., 2020).

The educational system in Finland is seen as rather inclusive (Halinen and Järvinen, 2008; Chong, 2018), and the latest National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (NCCBE) guides schools to make all developments in ways that promote inclusive education (Finnish National Agency for Education [FNAE], 2016). One aim is to deliver national consistency in educational policy by unifying institutional structures in the country and bringing together students with diverse backgrounds and needs (Chong, 2018). However, the text refrains from using the concept of “inclusive education” (Väyrynen and Paksuniemi, 2020), and it is explicitly mentioned only once: “The development of basic education is guided by the inclusion principle” (Finnish National Agency for Education [FNAE], 2016, p.19). Every year, there are only fewer students attending special schools. There are, however, special groups in mainstream schools. In 2016, among students receiving special support, 11.0% were at special schools; in 2019, the number had dropped to 6.9%, while the percentage of special-needs students in mainstream education increased from 18.9 to 22.5% (Official Statistics of Finland [OSF], 2020). The other students receiving special support were in special groups in mainstream schools, and participation in mainstream class teaching was flexibly organized. Among receivers of special support, the group of students who participated 21–99% of yearly teaching hours in the mainstream classroom increased from 28.8% in 2016 to 30.3% in 2019 (Official Statistics of Finland [OSF], 2020).

There is still a gap between inclusive education as a normative goal and its implications. The legislation exits, and its execution is still proceeding. Conceptually there are still reasons for using expressions of integration (see Hotulainen and Takala, 2014) instead of the concept of inclusion. Previous research has confirmed the differences in results and conclusions between sources of information. According to students, the inclusive agenda has not yet changed pedagogy or the learning environment enough to accommodate diverse learners (Vetoniemi and Kärnä, 2019), and when teachers are asked, there are several pedagogical solutions in use (Okkolin et al., 2018). However, parents see differences between schools in terms of well-being; for example, studying in the same school as their neighborhood peers improves the self-worth of children (Hotulainen and Takala, 2014).

The parental voice in research is relatively narrow. Most of the research concerning collaboration in Finland is written based on the points of view of teachers, and the bulk of the literature seems to report several, partly contradictory conclusions. Parents, in general, can be seen as overly demanding partners from the point of view of teachers (Takala et al., 2012), whereas parents report a clear hierarchy during discussions and see themselves as laymen and teachers as experts (Böök and Perälä-Littunen, 2015). According to Rogers (2007), parental experiences are negative when their children are in mainstream classrooms. However, the majority of parents have rather positive attitudes toward inclusive education and having children with special needs in the same classrooms as other students when possible, but they had concerns about emotional development, individualized instructions, and the availability of services in inclusive contexts (de Boer et al., 2010).

Teachers credit parents as valuable collaborators (Okkolin et al., 2018). According to teachers, parents are a diverse group, and there is a need not only to identify differences between parental groups but also to adjust the working methods of schools and teachers (Äärelä et al., 2018). However, there are inequalities between home and school, and parents have to fight to support the well-being of their children in the context of education (Honkasilta et al., 2015).

The support provided in the three-tiered system, according to the idea of response to interventions, the teacher is relatively autonomous, and the aim is to organize support for students as close as possible to their own class group (Björn et al., 2016; Engelbrecht et al., 2017). In Finland, there is no legislation-based need to have a medical diagnosis to have support in education. Legislation gives school authorities and municipalities the right to make decisions about the support for students by pedagogical conclusions, but in decision-making, there is a need to work in multidisciplinary teams, there must be members from health care or social work, and the voices of children and parents should be heard (Basic Education Act [BEA], 2010). In yearly negotiations, the level and methods used to support the well-being of children have to be considered as well.

According to the interviews with parents, opportunities for collaboration were various, including IEP meetings (which are mentioned and demanded in the NCCBE); other multiprofessional or evaluative meetings; shared evenings for all parents; and occasional informative messages by phone, paper notes, and email or electronic communication tools. The ways and tools of mutual interaction were given and decided at school without negotiating with parents, and they varied between teachers.

From the perspectives of parents, the most important contextual aspect was the teacher responsible for a group of students: primary education teacher, class teacher, or group tutor. The attitudes of parents toward teachers and their actions led the narratives in all episodes. A change of teacher was usually the breakpoint in the continuum of experiences. There were many descriptions and interpretations of hopes, threats, possibilities, worries, and actions associated with a change of teacher. A change of teacher led to the change of the whole context.

Acknowledgments of the remarkable roles of teachers were present in all interviews. The teacher at hand is the key person who leverages the position of a parent. In this sense, the parental agency is more dependent on social contexts as a structure of networking and especially on relations between persons than on the written documents or structure of context in a school unit. Based on the parental experiences, there are many networks of different dynamics, maneuvers, and aims within the same school unit.

During the whole interview, all the data were connected to the question of the teacher as a person and the wide autonomy of teachers. As an example, according to the descriptions of parents, teachers are able to make individual decisions either to listen or not to listen to the parental voices. If the teacher is not willing to encourage the participants in a discussion, it is difficult for all other participants. The presumed leader in discussions is the teacher.

While trying trials to find their positions in diverse contexts, parents used not only their own earlier experiences but also their networks. Networks gave parents important information on how to act, what to demand as a right, and how to protect themselves and their children from unpleasant solutions.

Until it was not obvious to have the role of respected peer in negotiation, parents used different strategies based on their experiences. Parents have to learn their positions to hold their agency without any instructions. In the interview, data had no descriptions of instructions telling parents what to do or how to do it. The only way to learn how to be a parent in this kind of situation is by negotiating with teachers and other experts as representatives of educational institutions—i.e., trial and error. In these data, there were no accounts of school personnel telling parents their rights or helping them to find their role in a new kind of discussion. Parents, however, found their own networks important to reflect on discussions. In some cases, they brought someone, such as grandparents, with them for discussions at the school to help themselves manage challenging situations.

Every parent had positive experiences with certain teachers in certain contexts. They all had experienced, at some point when their children were at school, situations in which it was possible to participate, be agentic, and collaborate, which led to positive outcomes. Descriptions of such situations were qualitatively similar. All parents had also experienced many conflicts and agency-limiting situations.

Parents interpreted social transactions as embodiments of school practices and schools as social organizations. Parents interpreted and described the explicit behavior of teachers, relations between other agents in multiprofessional meetings, and communication between actors as meaningful parts of the process of understanding their own positions as actors in those practices and in their specific contexts or school organizations. The important things are to clarify parental agency in the process of decision-making concerning their children and, in an inclusive framework, to participate in the discussion of school culture as a member of school society; they realized what their space was to be initiative and deliver agency.

The described practices as experienced by parents were versatile and fragmented. Parents had to recognize how wide the implication gap is between one individual teacher and written local and national norms in a specific context, school (as an organization), and actual practices.

Several things complicated the situation described in the quotation. The interpretation of operations model at school was unorganized and process drift more by accident as designed. There were problems compared to norms. First, the multiprofessional team should not discuss individual issues without the permission of the child and parents. There has to be consent. Furthermore, the parents should have had better information earlier. Now, parents have experience with a situation in which they have not heard in time of preparation. The idea of revoking intensified support was unexpected, strongly against the will of parents and their understanding of the well-being of their child at school. In addition, the idea was not discussed with school personnel; the special education teacher had thought differently, did not contribute to the meeting, and was only consulted later.

Parents found differences between teachers, even in the same school—sometimes in discussions with other parents—but usually, they had different experiences with several teachers. Parents compared, for example, choices about physical meeting locations. They generated interpretations about how they were located in the classroom and where the meeting took place.

When parents found themselves in erratic situations, interpretations of their agency were severely limited. The school manifested the use of power by using the numerous persons of expertise and professional language and the effect of overtaking by situation. Some of the experienced meetings in interview data represented a manifestation of using institutional force and power and positioned parents in a powerless role.

On the other hand, in every interview, there were references to the availability of teachers. As a practice to promote trust between parents and school personnel, the clear information of contact area between parent and at least one teacher is crucial. It seems to be important to understand local schools as coherent organizations. Parents understood to be treated as respected adults when they had the possibility to be active in the processes concerning their child. The processes and the course of action were clear. When they got answers, parents did not report being confused.

When parents had no information about the teachers of their children, and when they did not know how and when to make contact with each teacher, taking initiative was difficult. When there were difficulties in reaching and speaking with teacher, there was a lot of tension in certain interactions.

Interpretations are distinctive in situations where the parental experiences reflect a culture of respect and good organization. Parents know exactly whom to contact and how processes are run. They get answers to their questions, and there is no confusing information. Parents felt empowered and accepted, with all of their feelings, and both challenges and successes were shared. The understanding of the well-being of children is openly discussed and coherent.

In the projective dimension, the parental voices are united. The qualitative differences between their descriptions of aims, hopes, and fears are few and narrow.

The aim of collaborative negotiation, according to the parental point of view, was clearly more about the well-being of their children than in learning. Especially the relation between teacher and child was important. Good relation was described as a central aim and hope. Parents had also fears in case they believed teacher–student relationship was problematic. They wanted teachers to be fair and flexible. They hoped that teachers would be positively interested in the situations of their children and be willing to make contact and give instructions on how they could approach them. The biggest concerns of parents were situations in which teachers did not care about their children or their children were not accepted in front of the teacher. Fears of stigma and bad reputations (e.g., of a naughty child or a demanding parent) were clear in the parental interviews.

According to the parental experiences, the beginning of a teacher–student relationship is very vulnerable. They hoped and aimed to promote the ability of teachers to be in contact with the children, and at the same time, they were worried about their own role in this process. One of the biggest worries was how the teachers reacted if the parents were active. Parents hoped that they could affect and support the position of their children during collaborations. They highlighted the ability of teachers to use the given information.

Parents hoped that teachers could see strengths in each child, and this point of view was sometimes discussed with the children and parents. The positive approach, in general, was evident.

Parents hoped to receive more informative messages from schools alongside the problem-focused reports of situations of their children. They wished to have more information about what teachers and other adults in schools were doing—i.e., how they were taking into account individual characteristics and supporting their children.

Compared with teacher–student and teacher–parent relationships, all other themes, such as hopes to improve the positions of children with their peers, services, and learning goals, represented more of a sidetrack in the interviews.

In this dimension, the focus is on the descriptions of the actions and decisions of parents. The roles of parents were changed by contexts during the interviews.

In situations where parents had the opportunity to make contact and take initiative, they informed the schools about their observations at home concerning the school routines of their children. They recognized changes in the behavior of their children and negotiated with teachers about the actions needed. They made contact and received many responses.

Parents strengthened their ability to collaborate by studying and reading literature about the needs of their children, and they had plenty of everyday information about their children to give teachers.

Parents took initiative in multiprofessional processes. They delivered proxy documents and information, dealt with medical or psychological examinations of rehabilitation, and connected with people to maintain and promote the continuum of the multiprofessional network. In schools, the willingness to receive and use information from other professions and take part in and give space for other professions and their contributions was not self-evident. When schools and teachers were able to join and work in multiprofessional collaboration to find solutions, parents were satisfied. The will of teachers to find and try alternative working methods and communicate with support networks to help their children was respected by parents. Parents expressed this by talking about the positive attitudes of teachers, school atmospheres, and their preparedness to teach diverse students.

Parents made “meta-negotiation,” meaning negotiating about the possibilities to negotiate more; they build and held together complex networks, including teachers, school transport drivers, therapists, child neurologists, doctors, psychiatric nurses, lawyers, administrative personnel, and school assistants. Usually, the interplay was running rather fluently, but parents were also present in situations where the opinions and conclusions of specialists were strongly contradictory. The experience was at first confusing for parents, but in continuum of negotiations, they had the possibility to learn better how to act in between diverse points of view of specialists. Parents were worrying about the willingness of teachers to collaborate with other professionals. When school personnel at any level were unwilling to negotiate the number of difficulties and contradictions, the situation became complex for parents. However, in meetings and after them, parents had to make sense of fragmented information from different specialists, because they had to deliver information to several other important persons. If the network was large, they had practically no possibility to be present at one time all together.

The parental agency was also connected with processes. Parents were practically responsible for ongoing claims and petitions. The parental agency was directed at multilayered medical processes and administrative processes. If, for example, a child had a new diagnosis, it could lead to a new right to have more out-of-school services, but parents had to fill out applications, collect written expert opinions, and deal with everyday solutions with schools concerning, for example, physical rehabilitation periods during the school day.

The possibility of parents to prepare themselves for the meetings beforehand varied. In some cases, routines were clear and parents were well informed, but there were accounts in which parents could not know what would be the content of the meeting. When there was strong trust between teachers and parents, meetings were fruitful and it was easy to talk about all important things. One element of a good teacher–parent relationship was explicit positive information, which led to the active participation of parents and freedom to deliver their agency and share challenges. Unclear information was problematic and hindered the ability of parents to effectively engage in multiprofessional collaboration.

In IEP meetings, there was usually space for parents to discuss their perspectives, and if they were not asked for them, in some situations, parents took initiative and interrupted discussions to voice them.

Agency in contradictive situations was connected more or less intensively to own networks of parents. They got support from their families, parents (the grandparents of the child), friends, other parents, and professionals. Negotiations were prepared carefully. Parents collected documents and studied (e.g., juridic points of view and phases of processes) with their peers. Their networks were arenas to consciously reflect on messages, aims, and strategies both before and after meetings.

Parents used their agency to balance situations by asking some trusted person to accompany them if they had frustrating experiences at previous meetings. Some parents needed to devise strategies and ways to act. In some cases, they needed someone to help them participate and stay calm in challenging and oppressive situations.

Even after a strong feeling of worry about the well-being of their children at school, active discussion and initiative from parents can be a good solution to release tension and maintain trust between parents and school as an institution. There were instances where, during interactions, parents recognized that something at school was really wrong. The parents received messages with requests for permission to use unacceptable and inappropriate methods to control the behavior of their children. Parents did not accept the requests, and they wanted to take the issue up with headteacher of the school.

There were descriptions of differently escalated situations. After trying to take initiative and negotiate and the school refused to discuss, parents asked about the rights of their children by making complaints to Regional State Administrative Agencies, which are governmental enforcement authorities. In an escalated situation, however, the child stayed in the same school. The trust was lost between certain persons, not concerning the school as an institution.

One possibility for parents in contradictory situations was to give schools negative feedback over by active choice of being in silence. They felt that the continuous flow of e-messages containing only negative feedback and requests to talk with the child about poorly described problematic episodes during school days was frustrating both for themselves and the child. They had no power to stop the negative messages. As a parental choice, they talked about conscious decisions not to act. The aim was to hold their own position as parents. The information they had from the teacher was too narrow and especially they had no information about pedagogical implications at school. They could not solve the contradiction in differences between the version of the child and a short written note from school without discussing school personnel. In that sense, it seems that the trust of parents in teachers and the ability of whole school to treat children and their parents with respect are important elements in cooperation. If the content of information of their own child is entirely negative, the need for parents to consider how negative feedback affects the well-being of their child and how to get along with a very negative educational environment.