When Capability Does Not Become Practice: Capability-Practice Mismatch in Inclusive Lower-Secondary Education

Abstract

Teachers may know how to teach inclusively without enacting that knowledge consistently, while some teachers who rate their capability modestly may still display adaptive practice. This explanatory sequential mixed-methods study treats capability-practice mismatch as an empirical phenomenon rather than measurement noise. Data comprised surveys from 120 lower-secondary teachers, interviews with 14 teachers selected from four capability-practice profiles, interviews with 10 students with disabilities, and 12 classroom observation episodes. Self-perceived capability was positively but modestly associated with inclusive practice (Spearman's ρ = .291, p = .001), whereas contextual support showed a stronger association (ρ = .393, p < .001). The two mismatched profiles accounted for 35% of the sample. High-capability/low-practice teachers described bottlenecks involving time, class size, monitoring, and coordination; low-capability/high-practice teachers relied more on cycles of trying, observing, and adjusting. Integration showed that monitoring mattered when it recalibrated support, coordination mattered when responsibility continued beyond information exchange, and support remained inclusive when student agency was preserved. We propose the provisional Inclusive Enactment Conversion (IEC) lens to explain how personal capability is converted, or fails to be converted, into inclusive action under contextual constraints.