Exploring learning from success in a special education school for students with severe intellectual disabilities

• Learning from practice is usually based on learning from challenges and failures, while successful practices go unexamined and unperceived as opportunities for collective learning. • The study explored the factors that promote or hinder collective learning from successes when working with students who have severe intellectual disabilities. • The school’s learning culture and structural mechanisms can assist with the sustainment of collective learning from successes. • The principal’s role is important in initiating learning mechanisms as well as promoting a learning culture for productive learning from success in a special education school.