<p>This article focuses on participation in schools from the perspective of special and inclusive education and addresses the conceptual and empirical vagueness of participation in schools. Based on two qualitative dissertation studies from the field of school research, the question of how participation manifests itself in empirical material is therefore examined. The main research question is how the additive measures of teaching assistants (THA) and ‘Developmental Therapy/Developmental Teaching’ (ETEP) influence participation in schools and to what extent they can contribute to the normative target of inclusive transformations in schools. The ethnographic observation and interview material is analyzed and interpreted using reflexive-constructivist extensions of grounded theory methodology (GTM). Based on the empirical material, we reconstruct two different ways of thematizing participation: First, we analyze social participation in schools in terms of social interactions, relationships and emotions, and second, as an understanding based on participation as taking part in lessons. The article discusses these empirically unfolding dimensions of participation in the field of tension between the normative demand for inclusion, which also goes hand in hand with participatory demands and the promotion of (social) participation. Empirical evidence shows that the additive measures (THA, ETEP) hardly respond to the demands of inclusion and instead adapt to an ableist, performance-oriented school system.</p>