»If you look in there, there really is a vast desert …«

Abstract

Professional development is a prerequisite for school staff members to face the continuously changing requirements in education. In the context of inclusion most teachers do not feel adequately prepared in handling certain needs of a heterogenous student body (Seitz and Haas 2015). For implementing inclusive education in school there is an unavoidable need to get teachers into appropriate measures (Stellbrink 2012). For teachers, a first challenge is to get knowledge about their personal professional needs and further on to find respective in-service training programs. The following article asks for how schools organize the partici--shy--pation of their staff members in training activities. Based on qualitative content analysis of interview data it can be shown that the present training offers do not meet the needs that are asked for. We evaluated that the related structures are seen as fairly untransparent and inconsistent. So, with a focus on realizing a continuous in-service teacher program for inclusive education it might be helpful to implement structures that center resources and expertise to provide comprehensive and coherent teacher training programs.