Headteachers and Inclusion: Setting the Tone for an Inclusive School
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic of the article is interesting and relevant. The theoretical approach focuses on three major complex issues - leadership, organizational culture and inclusion. The articulation between these three topics is not always clear. The authors should clarify the central argument of the text, showing how they perceive the relationships between leadership, organisational culture and inclusion, trying to avoid normative and prescriptive judgments.
In the methodology, the authors should characterize the school contexts in which the principals interviewed work, since in Portugal there are school clusters and schools that are not grouped. Do the directors interviewed work in school clusters or schools not grouped? Are the school situated in socially vulnerable contexts or not? These data are very important in the analysis of perceptions about inclusion.
The tables presented are very extensive. The discussion of the data could be more in-depth, taking into account the specificities of school organizations.
Author Response
We like to thank all the comments and suggestions for revision made and that we consider enriching the proposed article. In the introduction, we clarified the articulation between the three main concepts: leadership, inclusion and educational organization. We sought to explain that the literature reveals a correlation between leadership and inclusion in schools and highlights the need for a better understanding of the importance of leadership in promoting inclusive processes and practices, with these arguments considering that the text's central idea is more precise. The methodology characterised the school contexts by identifying the most vulnerable contexts. However, as only 4 of the 11 schools are vulnerable contexts, this variable is insignificant to our conclusions (in the concluding remarks). The tables were removed and synthesized in text. We want to point out that this study is an exploratory study with a follow-up plan with other empirical interventions and, therefore, cannot be more in-depth in some dimensions.
Reviewer 2 Report
The study is very original and provides a lot of new data on the subject of educational inclusion, it addresses a group that has not been studied much.
It is necessary to delve into the literature to see the gaps and justify the contribution made by the article, as well as it would be convenient to quantify the results of the categories to be able to see the significance of the answers and to be able to subsequently carry out a discussion of the results with other studies highlighting the contributions from it.
Author Response
We like to thank all the comments and suggestions for revision made and that we consider enriching the proposed article. In the introduction, we clarified the articulation between the three main concepts: leadership, inclusion and educational organization. We sought to explain that the literature reveals a correlation between leadership and inclusion in schools and highlights the need for a better understanding of the importance of leadership in promoting inclusive processes and practices, with these arguments considering that the text's central idea is more precise. The methodology characterised the school contexts by identifying the most vulnerable contexts. However, as only 4 of the 11 schools are vulnerable contexts, this variable is insignificant to our conclusions (in the concluding remarks). The tables were removed and synthesized in text. We want to point out that this study is an exploratory study with a follow-up plan with other empirical interventions and, therefore, cannot be more in-depth in some dimensions.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
This new version of the article is more consistent and clearer, especially from the point of view of methodology. However, the central argument and the discussion of the results remain in-depth. In lines 13-16, the authors present the following objective “Through interviews with eleven school principals, we sought to identify these transgressive tendencies, recognising the concept of inclusion of these school principals and how they promote it in the organisational culture they lead.” In the discussion of results and in the final remarks, the articulation between leadership, organizational culture and inclusion remains insufficiently detailed.
Author Response
Once again, we thank you for the valuable comments presented. Regarding the question in lines 13-16, where the reviewer indicates that we defined as an objective, “Through interviews with eleven school principals, we sought to identify these transgressive tendencies, recognizing the concept of inclusion of these school principals and how they promote it in the organizational culture they lead", we did not find this reference. In the last version of the paper, this issue was not present. In this sense, we moved away a little from the concept of organizational culture, which we consider to have no basis in this reflection. Three final paragraphs were added to try to clarify this issue.
