Epistemological Accessibility in Inclusive Islamic Education: Adaptive Pedagogical Mediation as a Middle-Range Theory of Disciplinary Participation

Abstract

Inclusive education increasingly emphasises equitable access to learning, yet comparatively limited attention has been devoted to how learners gain access to the disciplinary reasoning through which specialised knowledge is interpreted, justified, and applied. This article addresses this theoretical gap by developing Adaptive Pedagogical Mediation (APM) as a mechanism-based middle-range educational theory explaining inclusive disciplinary participation within authority-based disciplines. Using an interpretive qualitative case study, data were generated through semi-structured interviews with five teachers and seven students, classroom observations, and document analysis within the Syahadah Ulya Ulul Albab Programme in Malaysia. Reflexive thematic analysis combined with abductive theorisation identified five interconnected constructs: epistemic diversity, adaptive pedagogical mediation, mediation of scholarly authority, epistemological accessibility, and epistemic readiness. The findings indicate that meaningful inclusion was achieved not by simplifying disciplinary knowledge but by progressively enabling learners to understand disciplinary language, evidential standards, interpretive principles, and scholarly reasoning while preserving disciplinary integrity. Based on these findings, the study proposes Adaptive Pedagogical Mediation as a middle-range educational theory explaining how pedagogical mediation transforms differences in learners' epistemic preparation into meaningful disciplinary participation. The study contributes to inclusive education by introducing epistemological accessibility as a complementary dimension of educational inclusion and by providing an empirically grounded explanatory framework that is theoretically transferable to other authority-based disciplines.