This thematic issue of Studies in Adult Education and Learning was born out of the work done at the 10th Conference of the ESREA Research Network Between Global and Local: Adult Learning and Communities (BGL-ALC) which was held in Opatija in Croatia, from the 7th to the 10th of June 2018, organised by the Adult Education Institution DANTE (Ustanova za obrazovanje odraslih), an institution with vigorous roots in local and regional educational networks and active at a European level in numerous EU projects and cooperative efforts. The organisers of the conference together with the convenors of the BGL-ALC Research Network chose as a title for the conference: “Education 2030 & Adult Learning: Global Perspectives and Local Communities - Bridges or Gaps? Agendas, praxis and research”.

This article draws on a 1 year ethnographic study of the process of teacher training from an inclusive position and that of general postgraduate training. Student teachers elected either to teach a given subject or to train in 'inclusive education' which aims to accommodate all learners, regardless of the notion of 'disability' or other forms of difference. The inclusive position challenges the notion of 'difference' and invites examination into how educational policy has the potential to enforce oppressive norms. The research reported here illustrates how socially constructed norms in relation to behavior and achievement are reproduced in the classroom. Ethnographic data demonstrates how educational philosophy is delivered to student teachers that supports either exclusive or inclusive strategies of teaching. The political environment that student teachers are immersed in is examined, together with documentation of the process of training and its inherent politics. Re ective points include how the political environment which teaching is delivered simultaneously creates and enforces dominant discourses of difference. Critical re ection on this research suggests that those involved in inclusive approaches to education need to be vigilant against the inclusive argument becoming a mantra.

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The papers in this special issue of Studies in Adult Education and Learning carry us back to some of the moments of discussion and debate that participants at the 9 th ESREA Conference of the Network Between Global and Local: Adult Learning and Communities (BGL-ALC) at the University of Lower Silesia (ULS) in Wrocław, Poland in May 2017 generated around the conference theme Adult learning & communities in a world on the move: between national tensions and transnational challenges.

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