Contribution
Description: Several of world-wide organizations (for instance The UNESCO) and the educational policies from different countries promote an inclusive education (Stainback, 1996, 2001; Porter, 2001) to attend all students (from a different cultural origin, and with special needs) in the same school in front of a selective perspective in education, to promote equal opportunities for all in terms of social justice (Van Zanten, 2001, Carbonell et al. 2005).
Our research find to work together teachers from six primary and secondary schools, four researchers from the University of Vic, ant two PHD students who develop their own research work in this project The research has a grant from Generalitat de Catalunya (Local Government of Catalonia (Spain)).
This research work has different aims: 1) To Analyse present strategies and resources to implement the diversity in the schools 2) To Plan new inclusive strategies and resources 3) To Apply them 4) To Value them. We will demonstrate, in practice, that different students with different educational needs can learn together in the same school and classroom.
Methodology: In this research we use collaborative action research (Lieberman and Miller, 1984) between teachers from different schools and researchers from the university, to analyse and improve their own professional practice (Rudduck and Hopkins, 1985) following the next steps :
Step 1: (November 2004- January 2005) The research has pointed up the reflection with all participants, (the professionals from the schools, the researchers from Uvic and the PHD students), between theoretical framework about inclusive education (based on four inclusory principles: principle of inclusion, of normality, of personalisation and equal opportunities) and the relationships with attitudes, perceptions and doubts about diversity and different proposals to work on pupils' diversity in compulsory schooling, in practice.
Step 2: (February -May 2005): Decision Process about Data Collection: to know perceptions, attitudes and values about diversity in each school with: families, students and teachers, to share the present actions and to think about new actions.
Research instruments: Three Discussion groups in each school
Data analysis about documentation from each school
Step 3: (June- December 2005) Developing categories of data analysis:
I: Beliefs and attitudes about diversity (Positive Attitudes, Negative Attitudes, Doubts, Perceptions and Difficulties)
II. Present actions of diversity
III. New actions in the future with changes based on the research.
Until December 2005, we have analysed those categories and we have identified beliefs and perceptions from teachers, students, families and social agents about priorities to attend diversity. We have analysed actions planned in the Diversity Plans of all schools, and the inclusive actions in practice. Finally, we have identified indicators which help and obstruct the practice of planned actions or new proposals.
Step 4: (January- June 2006) Discussion Process between all participants of the research about the findings to contrast the collected data and to plan together three kind of actions: to involve all community, to involve the teachers and the students.
Conclusions: Actually we don't finish the research, and we don't still have the results of new actions that the schools could implement in their practice but we can advance the next expected outcomes:
1) It's necessary the involvement of educative community in a reflective process to improve the actions to attend diversity in the schools.
2) It's necessary to know the practice and the basis on this practice to have possibilities to change
3) Sharing difficulties and the actions between different schools is a way to change the practice
4) Sharing knowledge between all participants of the research is a way to improve the practice based on the research process
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.