Introduction. Creating conditions for every citizen to receive a quality education is one of the priority government tasks. One of the ways to solve this problem is the inclusive transformation of education. At the same time, in pedagogical science there is a problem of insufficient theoretical and methodological justification for the formation and development of inclusive education, which leads to a variety of inclusive educational practices and sometimes their low effectiveness. Theoretical analysis. The analysis of scientific works made it possible to clarify the content of the main categories of the research and reveal the essence of the scientific and educational complex. The novelty of our research lies in the comprehensive substantiation of the theoretical and methodological foundations of the research subject at various levels of methodological knowledge, which are represented by the philosophical directions of existentialism and constructivism, ecosystem, phenomenological, anthropological, systems-mental-activity and synergetic approaches. It is shown that inclusive education in terms of the scale of transformation corresponds to a collective subject of activity. Conclusion. As a result of the study, the theoretical and conceptual foundations have been substantiated and the essential characteristics of the formation and development of inclusive education have been identified. It has been proven that to ensure these processes a collective subject of activity is necessary. The task of forming inclusive thinking and inclusive culture of the professional teaching community becomes paramount.