Students with special educational needs (SEN) in the mainstream class: the image of the child and how teachers address SEN in Vietnamese contexts

In 2015, the United Nations introduced its Agenda for Sustainable Development vision 2030 with 17 goals. Goal number 4 is devoted to education with one target being to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all people at different educational levels. Different researchers agree that the concept of inclusive education gained significant attention with the introduction of the Salamanca Statement in 1994 (UNESCO, 1994) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006 (UN, 2006; Cate et al., 2018; Heyder et al., 2020). To be specific, the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education (UNESCO, 1994) recognises and accepts unique abilities and learning needs of every child, and asks regular schools to provide children with special educational needs (SEN) with child-centred pedagogy so as to meet their needs (UNESCO, 1994). The children with SEN include those with different types of (intellectual/physical) disabilities, face other challenges related to their socio-economic status, behaviours, emotions,… (e.g., behaviour difficulties, emotional conditions, language disorder, challenges related to ethnic minorities, etc.) or gifted talents. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities mandates that signatory states ensure individuals with disabilities are not excluded from the general education system due to their disabilities, but are instead able to participate fully and equally in education and community life (UN, 2006).

Up to now, inclusive education has evolved to embrace students with and without special educational needs (SEN) into mainstream schools, aiming to build inclusive communities, so as to ensure the presence, participation and learning of all students in various educational contexts (Heyder et al., 2020; Llorent et al., 2024; Pantić and Florian, 2015). It is noteworthy that in a broad sense, inclusive education (IE) does not concentrate on particular minorities; rather, it emphasises acknowledging and addressing the diverse characteristics of all students with more consideration and support for the vulnerable groups (Heyder et al., 2020; Llorent et al., 2024). The fact that IE is broadened does not mean that students with SEN are forgotten, instead their differences are treated as a part of the diversity nature rather than to consider them as abnormal to be separated. This study focuses on IE for students with SEN in the context of Vietnam, examining whether teachers' conceptions of and ways of addressing the needs of these students align with global understandings and aims of IE, or whether gaps exist between global IE principles and educational realities in Vietnam.

From an empirical perspective, Vietnam is a developing country whose classroom conditions share several characteristics with other developing contexts, including large class sizes (e.g. Materechera, 2020; Nguyen et al., 2020a) and a shortage of teachers trained for inclusive education (Dinh et al., 2022; Nguyen et al., 2020b; Tran et al., 2020). Following the 1975 reunification of North and South Vietnam, the country adopted a unified general education system with standardised curricula implemented nationwide (Nguyen et al., 2020a). Moreover, due to the long-lasting influence of Confucianism, which shaped Vietnamese society for nearly 1,900 years, the educational culture places strong emphasis on examinations, student achievement and hierarchical teacher–student relationships (Ly, 2015). Understanding the Vietnamese educational context provides valuable insights into how IE operates in resource-constrained settings. Features such as large class sizes, limited teacher training, strong focus on performance, centralised curricula and hierarchical teacher–student relationships allow this study to serve as a useful reference for other contexts with similar characteristics. Examining these conditions helps reveal how global IE frameworks may need adaptation to function effectively in specific contexts.

Research consistently highlights the essential role of teachers in fostering inclusive learning environments. However, existing literature indicates that professional competence alone does not guarantee effective inclusive practices. Teachers also need to demonstrate positive attitudes towards students with SEN and their inclusion in mainstream classrooms, as such attitudes can influence students' social participation, academic progress, and the overall success of inclusive education (Cate et al., 2018; Heyder et al., 2020; Llorent et al., 2024; Pantić and Florian, 2015; Sharma and Sokal, 2016). For instance, Heyder et al. (2020) emphasised that teachers' beliefs and perceptions shape their classroom practices and behaviours, thereby affecting both the learning environment and student outcomes. Similarly, Sharma and Sokal (2016) reported a significant correlation between teachers' favourable attitudes towards inclusion and the adoption of inclusive instructional strategies, such as setting individualised learning goals and promoting peer-assisted learning.

So far, despite the fact that there are several studies investigating IE for students with SEN in Vietnam (e.g. Dinh et al., 2022; Dinh et al., 2024; Nguyen et al., 2020a; Tran et al., 2020), there is an inadequacy of studies examining teachers' attitudes towards students with SEN (e.g. Austin, 2011) and their practice to integrate those students into the mainstream classroom. Therefore, investigating how Vietnamese teachers view students with SEN and what practices they have been applying for the inclusion of those students in the mainstream class is necessary. This can point out Vietnamese teachers' strengths and limitations so as to timely recognise their effort, as well as provide them with training and support to enhance their practice for educational inclusion of such students in the mainstream class.

This current study focuses on primary school teachers for some reasons. Primary education is the first level of the Vietnamese official education system, which could affect students with SEN'sperception and attitudes towards pursuing mainstream education in their later life. Different reports have demonstrated that after primary education, the number of students with SEN participating in the mainstream school declines (Dinh et al., 2022; Nguyen et al., 2020a; Tran et al., 2020). This raises a concern about the actual practice of Vietnamese teachers towards students with SEN in primary schools that can affect their education pursuit in the future. With these aims, the research questions of the study are the following.

1. Research question 1: How do Vietnamese primary school teachers perceive students with SEN in the mainstream class?

2. Research question 2: How do Vietnamese primary school teachers address the educational needs of these students in the mainstream class?

Researchers agree that teachers are among the factors impacting the success of inclusive practice, and there is a relationship between teachers' attitudes towards students with SEN and their competence in creating inclusive education. Pantić and Florian (2015) propose a model of teacher agency for social justice and inclusive education, including: sense of purpose (teachers' beliefs and values of inclusive education and their role as agents in social justice), competence (the central concept is inclusive pedagogy for teachers' practice and to collaborate with other agents), autonomy (teachers' perception of external factors that influence teachers' practice) and reflexivity (teachers' ability to evaluate their own practice and institutional settings). Notably, in the competence aspect, Pantić and Florian emphasised the shift of view from learners' ability to the concept of “transformability” meaning that ability is not fixed but can be impacted by teaching and learning. What Pantić and Florian (2015) propose is significant as it takes into account not only teachers' competence and values but also asks them to reflect on their own context that can influence their attitudes and practices. Aligned with the view of teachers as the agent of IE, a large amount of research has studied teachers' attitudes towards students with SEN and their practices to build inclusive learning environments for them.

Regarding teachers' attitudes towards students with SEN, studies in different contexts (e.g. Zimbabwe, Trinida, Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom) have reported a mixed attitude of teachers, ranging from negative to positive towards such students (see Hodges et al., 2020; Leonard and Smyth, 2020; Magumise and Sefotho, 2018; Parey, 2019; Wilson et al., 2019). For instance, some Zimbabwean teachers felt very optimistic, especially about the lives of children with disabilities (Magumise and Sefotho, 2018). However, the study of teachers in Ireland by Leonard and Smyth (2020) reported that more than half of teachers surveyed had negative attitudes towards students with SEN while only 10% had positive perceptions.

In addition, teachers also based on students' characteristics to describe their opportunity to participate in mainstream education. For example, teachers in Australia acknowledged that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) students' specific factors significantly impact their capacity to participate at school such as, their ability to calm and in a state for learning in the classroom, build and maintain relationships, engage in classroom activities and adapt to transition at school throughout the day (Hodges et al., 2020). The study of Parey (2019) found that teachers in Trinidad were concerned with the students with SEN'sability to interrupt the flow of education in mainstream class. Similarly, Hind et al. (2018) reported comparable findings, noting that teachers perceived students with SEN as potentially disruptive to lessons in mainstream classrooms when examining teachers' beliefs about students with SEN in the United Kingdom.

About teachers' practice, so far, researchers have agreed that inclusive practice requires collaboration among different agents such as teachers, parents and students (Finkelstein et al., 2019; RyanSheehan, 2023); teachers' individualised instruction with adaptation to cater different needs of students; scaffolding and universal learning design with the application of multimodal resources; different types of grouping and collaborative learning in class (Larina and Markina, 2020; Losberg and Zwozdiak-Myers, 2021; Rix et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2025); assessment of students for timely interventions (Chan et al., 2025; Finkelstein et al., 2019); and social, emotional and behavioural support (Finkelstein et al., 2019). For instance, Rix et al. (2009) systematically reviewed the pedagogical approaches for children with SEN to be integrated in the mainstream classrooms, which require the participation of all children and other practitioners rather than only teachers as the sole actor. The results show that effective practice includes peer-group interactions which support co-operative learning, teachers as the agents to shape peer interactions and influence learning opportunities through those interactions (Rix et al., 2009).

It is noteworthy that among different strategies to address the needs of students with SEN, there are two strategies that are more controversial among teachers and educators: individualised or differentiated instruction for students with SEN and grouping learners. According to Cate et al. (2018), in the United States and Europe, effective inclusive practice asks for individualised educational planning to stimulate learning and achievement of all students rather than offering general curriculum teaching. However, many teachers in different contexts (e.g. Singapore, Indonesia, Australia) have shown their worry that individualisation and labels can cause associated stigma and that society tends to judge quickly (Chan et al., 2025), and grouping learners on their needs can create discrimination (Utami, 2025). Furthermore, the label itself can reduce attention to the differences among individuals (Hodges et al., 2020), as it is often associated with assumptions about learners' behavioural or cognitive patterns. Aligned with what research has reported, Pantić and Florian (2015) argue that inclusive pedagogy, on one hand, concerns individual differences, on the other hand, actively avoids marginalising learners with SEN. And we should see differences as ordinary in contrast with doing “additional” or “different” for some persons, and we should move from the view of “some” or “most” to “everyone” can do.

On the one hand, the ideas of IE that acknowledge individual differences as ordinarily available, and we should move from the view of “some” or “most” to “everyone” can do that Pantić and Florian (2015) contend is noteworthy, as they tolerate differences and accept that diversity is our nature. On the other hand, it is arguable when it comes to the abilities that “everyone” can do and the application of the individualised approach for inclusion. Individual differences already imply that providing the same conditions may not be enough to address different needs and abilities. There are things that everyone can do, but different individual strengths or instincts can drive each one to different achievements that they can accomplish. Therefore, applying individualised approaches does not mean to do additional work, to exclude or marginalise differences, but to provide timely support or catalysts for development and booming. The questions then come to decide the standard that “everyone” can do, how to gradually increase that standard and how and when to timely apply individualised approaches for individual development and success.

In the context of Vietnam, inclusive education began in 1991 with the establishment of the National Centre for Special Education (NCSE) in Hanoi, which initially focused on identifying children with disabilities (Dinh et al., 2024). Significant progress followed with the Ministry of Education and Training's 2006 Decision No. 23/2006/QD-BGDĐT, mandating that all educational institutions admit and provide accessible facilities for learners with disabilities (Dinh et al., 2024). Further advancement came with the 2018 national scheme aiming for 90% of children with disabilities to access education services by 2025 (Decision 1438/QĐ-TTg of the Prime Minister, 2018). Finally, the 2019 Education Law formally recognised inclusive education as a mode of education promoting equality and respect for learner diversity (Vietnam National Assembly, 2019).

Despite progress in the policy regarding inclusive education, there are not many studies investigating teachers' attitudes and practice to address the needs of children with SEN in Vietnam (e.g. Austin, 2011; Dinh et al., 2024; Tran et al., 2020). Overall, they reveal considerable concerns and pessimism about implementing IE. For instance, Austin (2011) surveyed 435 teachers and teacher educators across most of Vietnam's provinces and found that 86% of respondents perceived individuals with disabilities as less intelligent than their peers, although they believed these individuals could live socially integrated lives outside of segregated “special” communities. In addition, Tran et al. (2020) argued that community support for IE often remained superficial and lacking concrete actions. Consistently, Dinh et al. (2024) reported ongoing teacher concerns regarding the feasibility of inclusive practices in rural regions. The participation of students with SEN at schools in Vietnam was limited by various obstacles. To begin with, many pre-primary, primary and lower secondary schools did not have sufficient facilities to accommodate students with disabilities (Dinh et al., 2022; Tran et al., 2020). Furthermore, teachers often lacked formal training in inclusive education, making it difficult for them to recognise and effectively support students with SEN (Dinh et al., 2024; Tran et al., 2020).

In the context of inadequate training and the lack of equipment, it remains unclear how Vietnamese teachers address the educational needs of students with SEN in mainstream classrooms. Although previous studies have predominantly focused on teachers' attitudes towards these students, limited attention has been given to examining teachers' actual classroom practices. Addressing this gap is crucial for developing a more comprehensive understanding of inclusive education for students with SEN in Vietnam, and informing effective professional support for teachers.

The research applied constructivism as the research paradigm. According to Savin-Baden and Howell Major (2025), a paradigm is defined as a belief system or worldview that guides the researcher and the research process. The research paradigm that this current study was based on is constructivism. Constructivists are likely to believe that “reality” cannot be split from knowledge of it, and knowledge and truth are created rather than discovered (Savin-Baden and Howell Major, 2025). Thus, they seek to understand how meanings are presented through language and actions. Constructivists try to inductively develop a theory or patterns of meanings from the research process. Furthermore, with constructivism, researchers can recognise that their own backgrounds can shape their interpretation (Creswell and Creswell, 2018). Therefore, this current study acknowledges the researcher's personal background to interpret the data collected in the research process. With the constructivist research paradigm, this current study applied interviews to collect data so as to find out how the reality of students with SEN is conceptualised in the teachers' mind.

The interviews were conducted in November 2023; however, this is still valuable for the research of IE in general, and IE in Vietnam in particular. Firstly, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of how teachers interpret and enact inclusion within a context characterised by large class sizes, limited resources and centralised curricula. Secondly, it provides empirical insights into the practical strategies that educators employ, thereby enriching the global discourse on inclusive education in developing countries. Finally, the findings offer a timely reference point for policymakers and practitioners seeking to align international IE frameworks with the realities of the Vietnamese education system. The participants of the interviews, the instruments and the procedures of the research are presented below.

The participants of the study include nine classroom teachers in Hanoi (both the capital city and the outskirts of the city), Vietnam. They were between 23 and 50 years old when the interview was conducted in November 2023. Before the interview, the researcher received permission to conduct interviews from the Head master of the school where the interviewees were working. In addition, all the interviewees were informed of the purpose of the research and asked for consent to participate in the interview. All participants were females and they voluntarily gave permission to be interviewed, and their detailed information is shown in Table 1.

Based on the conditions of the researcher and the research context, the participants were recruited through a snowball sampling technique in which the researcher first contacted 15 teachers who had experience of teaching students with SEN in the mainstream class, and received acceptance to participate in the interview of 09 teachers. The sampling technique of a study is related to the data saturation, in which an appropriate sample size is encouraged. For example, exploratory studies often benefit from smaller, focused samples that facilitate in-depth exploration of participants' experiences (Ahmed, 2025). In addition, there are different types of saturation and strategies to achieve saturation, and sampling technique is one among others (Ahmed, 2025). In addition, there is an argument among researchers that human experiences are inherently complex and nuanced; therefore, it would be unrealistic to have absolute data saturation in any samples. Therefore, there cannot be a kind of saturation that can serve as a one-size-fits-all measure. Instead, researchers should focus on the depth and richness of their analysis.

Thus, this study acknowledges its limitations in the number of participants, which is inadequate to become a representative sample of Vietnamese teachers who have experience in working with students with SEN. However, the current study approaches saturation based on a systematic approach, specifically, by applying qualitative content analysis. This allows researchers to iteratively review and refine data to ensure that themes are consistently observed and no new patterns emerge (Saunders et al., 2018). The process of doing content analysis is presented in the next section – data analysis. About the context where the interviews were implemented, all participants were working in Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam. With a population of more than 100 million, Vietnam has been facing the problems of large class size in the general education system, with 40–50 students in big cities (Nguyen et al., 2020a). The class size of the teachers interviewed in the study ranges from 35 to 48 students per teacher, which is a large class size that can be typically found in many schools in Vietnam. It is noteworthy that all participants were female and from Hanoi, the capital city. Therefore, the generalisability of the study is limited, and the findings should be interpreted with caution.

In the study, the semi-structured interview was applied to collect data. The interview includes the following questions:

1. Have you ever had students with SEN in your class?

2. What do you think of students with SEN?

3. What do you often do to attend to students with SEN in your class?

They are the key questions that the researcher bears in mind to conduct interviews with teachers, and based on their answers, additional questions could be added to clarify or verify their perceptions and practices to address students with SEN. With the interview questions, six interviews were conducted in person (participants 4–9), while three were carried out via telephone (participants 1–3). The face-to-face interviews took place at the participants' schools during their break time and lasted approximately 15–20 min each, whereas the telephone interviews lasted about 20–30 min per teacher. Following the interviews, the researcher transcribed the audio recordings and anonymised all personal information of the teachers to prepare the data for analysis.

Data analysis was conducted by applying qualitative content analysis, with the use of Atlas.ti 23 (for Windows) for data analysis and visualisation. To analyse the data, the study applied the two relationships among ideas: similarity and contiguity relations (Maxwell and Chmiel, 2014). These relationships help to establish categories and sub-categories as well as point out the connection among different codes and groups in order to build up networks. The data were coded three times by one researcher. For the first time, the researcher identified the coding frame, following the requirements of qualitative content analysis (Schreier, 2014, p. 175), including: (1) uni-dimensionality, (2) mutual exclusiveness and (3) exhaustiveness. Uni-dimensionality means that each primary group can encompass only one dimension of the material. Mutual exclusiveness means sub-groups under a group are mutually exclusive. This requires one item to be coded once in a group and cannot belong to more than one sub-group under the same group. Exhaustiveness refers to the need that all relevant aspects of the material must be covered in a main group. After establishing the coding frame, the researcher coded the data according to the definitions of categories and codes in the frame during the second and third coding rounds. Then she checked the data coded in two rounds (the second and third coding), identified any differences that emerged and compared the codes with the definitions in the coding frame to resolve conflicts and ensure consistency between the coding frame and the coded data.

Finally, the study applied a constructivist interpretation (Savin-Baden and Howell Major, 2025), using memoing as a technique to reflect on the data collected from teacher interviews. As a Vietnamese person working within the education sector, the researcher acknowledged that her professional background, ongoing interactions with Vietnamese teachers, and lived experience within the Vietnamese community facilitated deeper engagement with the meanings embedded in the teachers' narratives. In addition, the researcher followed the tenets of constructivism by remaining open to the teachers' responses and ideas emerging in the process of data analysis, simultaneously focusing on meaning to delve into how reality is conceptualised inside the participants' mind (Gibson and Hartman, 2014).

The findings are presented based on the research questions, organised into several sections. To be specific, to answer the first research question – how do Vietnamese primary school teachers perceive students with SEN in the mainstream class? - section 4.1 and section 4.2 present the findings in two aspects: (1) the concept of students with SEN and (2) teachers' expectation towards the academic achievement of students with SEN. The second research question – how do Vietnamese primary school teachers address the needs of students with SEN in the mainstream class? – is answered in two sections, focusing on the following aspects: (1) teachers' way to address students' behavioural problems and (2) teachers' practice to support students' cognitive difficulties.

After the analysis of the data collected, the study found that students with SEN are perceived with the main following features: (1) their illness and disability which are used to identify and define SEN students by all teachers participating in the study (such as mental retardation – n = 2; autism – n = 4; ADHD – n = 7), (2) their overall cognitive ability, (3) the specific, special talents, (4) their social competence, (5) their behavioural problems, (6) their status in a group of students and (7) their needs (Figure 1). While mentioning the features of students with SEN, teachers also showed their affection towards these students. At the same time, some of them labelled these students as “problems causing consequences” (three teachers).

Teachers most frequently reported behavioural difficulties and limited cognitive abilities among students with special educational needs (SEN). Regarding cognition, seven teachers noted restricted attention spans, and several highlighted language difficulties: students often struggled to articulate ideas, relying on basic vocabulary without forming comprehensible sentences. Two teachers also referred to bilingual challenges, explaining that while some students excelled in foreign languages such as English, they had limited Vietnamese proficiency, which impeded idea expression and literacy development. Despite these concerns, all teachers acknowledged the students' distinct strengths, including strong visual memory, vivid artistic expression, aptitude for foreign languages, numerical and spatial reasoning and skills in martial arts. Behaviourally, five teachers observed that students with SEN frequently moved or spoke without permission; three reported difficulties with self-control and occasional aggression; and one teacher noted challenges with maintaining eye contact during interactions.

A majority of teachers also expressed concerns about SEN students' social competence. Five teachers reported that these students had limited emotional regulation, and one teacher noted that they often struggled to communicate their desire to play and make friends with peers. Another teacher observed that students with SEN frequently appeared anxious in group settings. After behavioural problems and cognitive ability, the third most popular idea among all teachers is the students' needs. A majority of teachers (five) believed that students with SEN needed a special environment where there are trained teachers and educators to support them. Teachers also thought that these students needed additional support (two teachers) as well as greater attention and care (two teachers).

While describing and giving opinions about students with SEN, teachers also showed their affection towards them. There are three teachers explicitly expressing their empathy for these students. Other teachers shared the understanding that students with SEN have many disadvantages (five teachers). For instance, one interviewee said:

It can be seen that participant 2 simultaneously showed her affection towards students with SEN but also her hesitation to have them in her class. The teacher's expression of affection and empathy towards students with SEN also carried signs of a patronising stance. In her answer, she explicitly differentiated “normal students” from those with SEN. Moreover, the words she used to describe students with SEN, such as “pitiful”, “karma” and “disadvantaged” revealed an underlying perception that these students are inferior to their peers. Her empathy and affection, therefore, appeared to stem from this perceived inferiority rather than from an understanding of inclusive principles.

Figure 2 illustrates the associations among different categories coded from the data. The findings suggest that the cognitive abilities of students with SEN, such as difficulties in expressing their needs and communicating with peers, affect their social competence. As a result, these students often face obstacles in participating fully in group activities and become isolated in class. Additionally, difficulties in social competence, such as challenges with emotional regulation, can contribute to observable behavioural problems, including behaviours that may hurt themselves or others. Although these students possess specific talents, they frequently face challenges with attention and language, and thus require specialised support. Several teachers perceived these students as “problems” and expressed reluctance to include them in their classes. Moreover, teachers' responses indicated that students' talents were often viewed as separate from, or even contradictory to, their cognitive abilities. Consequently, rather than leveraging students' talents to support their cognitive development, these abilities were frequently overlooked as presented in Section 4.4.

Regarding teachers' perspectives on students' achievement, teachers in this current study tended to have lower expectations. Most teachers believed that students with SEN could not have average performance like other students and teachers should lower their expectation of these students' achievement (n = 5). In addition, one teacher argued that teachers should be realistic and practical, based on students' ability in reality to expect their achievement. Furthermore, two teachers acknowledged that while students with SEN could not have average performance like other students, they could excel in a specific field. These expectations reflect a perception that students with SEN are generally less capable than other students.

To tackle students' behavioural problems, teachers applied the following measures: (1) creating a safe environment (e.g., building trust and showing empathy), (2) creating a fair and disciplined environment (e.g. setting up classroom rules), (3) psychological practices aiming to help children recognise their emotions, reflect and practice mindfulness (e.g. focusing on one physical activity such as watering a plant to help students calm down), (4) providing explanations and suggesting solutions to students' problems, (5) promoting communication and mutual understanding, (6) assigning physical activities for students with SEN to release their energy and (7) self-professional development and (viii) teachers' negative behaviours such as threatening SEN students (Figure 3).

Among different categories, most teachers agreed that setting up an environment which needs to be safe, fair and disciplined is pivotal to tackle students' behavioural problems. In order to create such an environment, specific practices include showing affection and love to students, getting to know students' interests and habits, focusing on their strengths and building trust. This helped teachers to calm students, which in turn contributed to the safety of the educational environment. In addition, a majority of teachers (n = 5) required a fair and disciplined environment in which there is a combination of both discipline and concern for individuals. That means children with SEN do not have priority to be free from rules and punishments in comparison to other students. Instead, teachers need to consider all students' opinions, maintain fairness in the class and at the same time adapt their approaches to each child, including students with SEN. For instance, one interviewee argued:

From her argument, it can be seen that fairness is essential to manage students' behavioural problems. The data indicate that teachers employed both positive strategies, such as empathy, and negative measures, such as threats or criticism, to address students' behavioural issues. However, one teacher reported that positive strategies were more effective than negative measures.

In terms of psychological practices, two teachers shared that they used reflective questioning to help students put themselves in others' shoes, recognise what had happened and acknowledge both their own emotions and their peers' feelings in order to de-escalate anger. Moreover, one of these teachers encouraged students to think positively and practise meditation and mindfulness by recalling moments of joy they had experienced during the day and by engaging in physical tasks demanding concentration, such as watering plants without spilling any water.

Finally, some interviewees also described their professional development efforts they undertook to address students' behavioural problems. For example, they contacted the parents to better understand the students, sought advice and shared experiences with colleagues, and engaged in self-directed learning through books and online forums to identify appropriate approaches to support students with SEN.

For students' cognitive difficulties, teachers' attitudes and their actions to support those students' cognition were limited, including (1) accepting that it takes more time for students with SEN (n = 2), (2) sitting arrangement with the support of a stronger peer and the teacher (n = 2), (3) more tasks and repetition for SEN students (n = 1) and (4) spending more time for those students (n = 2). For example, one teacher said:

In addition, while sharing solutions to support SEN students' cognitive difficulties, several teachers noted that although these students could make progress given more time, their problems might become more serious in general education settings because teachers could not devote sufficient time to them. This reflected a lack of faith in inclusive education within mainstream schools, stemming from the conditions and challenges teachers faced in practice. For instance, two teachers said:

From what the interviewed teachers perceived about students with SEN, it can be seen that teachers simultaneously acknowledge different problematic domains of such students, and it is not an isolated phenomenon; the result or a phenomenon that we can observe is always in a network of diverse areas. Therefore, the study's teachers did not use a single label to call students with SEN, they used a variety of words and phrases to describe those students. This again points out the problem of using labels in IE that previous research has argued. Hodges et al. (2020) contend that the use of labels can diminish attention to individual complexity, as individuals are far richer than any single label can capture. In addition, the fact that different domains are connected to contribute to students' difficulties in different aspects (language, social competence, behavioural control) requires a network and transdiagnostic approach (Deniz et al., 2025) to approach the child's difficulties.

A network approach views that the child's difficulties in one area of functioning, such as short-term memory, activate difficulties in another area of functioning, for example, oral language ability. Thus, development is a series of dynamic and mutually reciprocal processes across developmental domains. About the transdiagnostic approach, it acknowledges co-occurrence and avoids focusing on a single diagnosis (Deniz et al., 2025). Furthermore, Deniz et al. (2025) also found that in childhood, there are two distinct but related domains of development: (1) cognition and language, (2) social and emotional functioning. Aligned with previous research approaches and findings, teachers of this current study also recognise different domains of difficulties of the child; however, they lack a transdiagnostic and network approach to solve a problem. Therefore, their perception of children with SEN'sdifficulties is restricted to separate and discrete problems, and there is a lack of connecting solutions for children's cognitive difficulties and behaviour problems. This may explain why students' talents were recognised but not leveraged to support their learning across subjects beyond their areas of strength.

From the data analysis, it can be seen that a majority of teachers require a fair and disciplined environment in which there is a combination of both discipline and individual concern. That means children with SEN do not have priority to be free from discipline and punishments in comparison to other students. In addition, teachers also need to consider students' personality, listen to them, build trust and adapt their approaches for different situations in class so as to manage students' behavioural problems. Through teachers' accounts, a safe, fair and well-disciplined educational environment is grounded in both students' needs and their rights – two essential lenses for approaching inclusive education (Rodden et al., 2018). From the perspective of students' needs, teachers attend to each learner's personality and unique characteristics; and from the perspective of students' rights, students with SEN are included in, rather than exempt from, the class's disciplinary expectations. While previous research (Llorent et al., 2024; Rodden et al., 2018) often acknowledges students' rights to participate in mainstream education, the teachers of this current study also emphasised their right to be held to the class's disciplinary standards so as to maintain fairness and justice.

Another notable aspect of teachers' practice in building a safe environment for children is their use of listening and psychological techniques, such as reflection and mindfulness with meditation. Teachers reported that these strategies were effective in helping students calm down and preventing aggressive behaviours. This aligns with previous research demonstrating the positive effects of psychological practices (Barker and Mills, 2018). In addition, the study's findings highlight the potential value of applying psychological practices and interventions at school to reduce learners' behavioural problems.

From what teachers shared, it can be seen that they required a specialised educational environment for students with SEN, which can challenge the concept of inclusive education. However, based on the context where the interviews were implemented, this idea is reasonable. All participants were working in Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam. The class size of the teachers interviewed in the study ranges from 35 to 48 students per teacher, which is a large class size that can be typically found in many schools in Vietnam. Therefore, the ability to pay attention to all students is limited and hurdled by its contexts. In the study of Finlay et al. (2019), the authors discussed the separate setting or pull-out model for students with SEN, specifically, for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. They reported that this special class model inside a mainstream school was perceived to be positive in supporting such students. Similarly, Wang et al. (2025) also found that the pull-out model was believed to be based on children's needs, to provide better and timely support to students with SEN. Therefore, this study suggests an implication for IE in Vietnam that can benefit from the pull-out model inside the mainstream school, where children with SEN can still integrate in a bigger community, but also receive individualised support from trained teachers. This can provide a balanced approach that maintains students' opportunities for social integration while ensuring that they receive specialised, timely, and consistent support that may not be sufficiently provided in large mainstream classrooms. In addition, teachers can collaborate and rotate in providing support and co-teach within the pull-out model, thereby forming a professional community that shares experiences and intervention strategies. Such rotation also reduces the risk of students with SEN being perceived as a burden on individual teachers.

The results of this study show that interviewed teachers lack profession to support SEN students' cognition. To support them, Vietnamese teachers often applied peer interaction and repetition to help them focus. However, teachers relied solely on repetitive skill drilling, without employing individualised approaches for these students. According to Pantić and Florian (2015), teachers' competence for inclusive pedagogical practices includes:

1. Demonstrating how the difficulties students experience in learning can be considered dilemmas for teaching rather than problems within students.

2. Modelling new creative ways of working with and through others. (Pantić and Florian, 2015, p. 344)

Although Vietnamese teachers encouraged peer interaction to support students with SEN, they lacked specific strategies to foster collaborative learning. Students' learning difficulties were often viewed as individual problems rather than challenges for teaching, as teachers primarily attributed them to cognitive limitations (Figure 1). Based on the principles of inclusive pedagogical practices (Pantić and Florian, 2015), the teachers in this study demonstrated limited competence in this area. Moreover, teachers reported difficulties in including students with SEN in group activities. These findings suggest a need for professional development focused on inclusive collaborative learning strategies and individualised support, based on the holistic approach. Teachers could benefit from training in designing activities that actively leverage students' strengths, involve cooperation among students, and help to meet the diverse learning needs of students with SEN effectively.

Finally, there is a need to shift teachers' perceptions of students with SEN, who are often viewed as performing below their peers and as a burden to teachers. The Vietnamese education system prioritises examination results and measurable achievement, and operates under a highly centralised curriculum (Ly, 2015). This can reduce teachers' flexibility and their focus on individual learners. As a result, teachers tend to be more concerned with exam performance. Therefore, students' difficulties are likely to be perceived as their own shortcomings rather than teaching dilemmas. This limits teachers' ability to explore and develop instructional solutions that could better support such learners. Therefore, teacher training should emphasise teachers' reflexivity (Hà, n.d.), supporting them to critically examine how their beliefs, assumptions and prior experiences influence pedagogical decisions and learner interactions, and whether these support or constrain learners' educational opportunities (Hà, n.d.).

The article studies Vietnamese primary school teachers' perception of students with SEN and their practice to address those students in the mainstream class. All teachers showed that they understood and empathised with the disadvantages that these students faced. However, the major belief is to create a special environment for them to satisfy their needs. Furthermore, several teachers showed their lack of faith in inclusive education for students with SEN in the mainstream class. It is also noteworthy that, in some teachers' opinions, there is a tendency to adopt a patronising attitude towards students with SEN.

Although Vietnamese teachers used peer interaction to support students with SEN, they rarely implemented specific or creative strategies for collaborative learning. Cognitive support primarily relied on repetitive skill drilling, without individualised approaches. Students' learning difficulties were often seen as their own problems rather than challenges for teaching, highlighting the need for targeted teacher training. Effective programs should go beyond theory, emphasising practical strategies such as differentiated instruction, leveraging learners' strengths, collaborative learning design and individualised support planning based on a holistic approach. Training should also address teachers' beliefs about SEN and inclusion, fostering reflective practice to challenge deficit-based or patronising assumptions.

Regarding students' behaviours, teachers emphasised a safe, fair and disciplined environment combining both discipline and concern to individuals to deal with students' behavioural problems. Moreover, the application of psychological practice such as mindfulness with meditation has been shown to help students calm and prevent their aggressive behaviours. This can suggest the application of psychological interventions in schools to reduce learners' behavioural problems.

The study is not without limitations. First, teachers' perceptions and practice were investigated through interviews without direct in-class observation, which could not provide the whole picture of teachers' perspectives of students with SEN and their practice to address those students in class. Future research could employ a combination of methods, such as ethnographic observation, classroom video analysis or large-scale surveys with structured questionnaires to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how teachers perceive students with SEN and respond to their needs. Second, the participants of the study were from the area of Hanoi, which is the capital city located in the North of Vietnam, and there were only nine female participants. Hence, the findings are limited to generalisation. Therefore, future research should examine teachers' attitudes and practices towards students with SEN across other regions of Vietnam, including both male and female teachers, and with a larger sample to provide deeper insights.

The research received Ethics approval (no. 24–19) from the Ethics Committee of the University of Córdoba, Spain. The research received consent to participate from the teachers participating in the study.

The research received consent for publication from the teachers participating in the study.

The first and corresponding author: Conceptualisation; Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Literature review; Methodology; Software; Visualisation; Roles/Writing – original draft; and Writing – review and editing.

The author expresses her sincere gratitude to Professor María Elena Gómez Parra, Department of English and German Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Córdoba, Spain for her trust, support, encouragement and all learning opportunities given to the author during the process of conducting this research.