Inclusiveness of School Education from the Perspective of Family
Dr. Emilio Crisol-Moya
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Inclusive education and attention to diversity is an important element in national and international policy agendas. As reflected in the foundation 2 "Innovative Europe" of the new Horizon Europe 2021-2027, specifically in the social challenge Culture, creativity and inclusive society, as well as in goals 4 and 5 on "Quality education" and "Gender equality" of the Sustainable Development Agenda, it is not possible to build inclusive societies without inclusive schools that guarantee quality education for all students and equal opportunities regardless of gender, family of origin, ethnicity, etc.
Talking about inclusion at school level implies talking about an active and positive relationship between family and school. Both, family and school, are experts and fundamental educational models for those who want to learn. To approach inclusion, we must conceive it as a continuous process of deconstruction and reconstruction of the school culture, policies and practices of each school. We cannot understand inclusion as "(...) a minority feature of the education system, but as an essential part of the construction of the desired social system". It is a question, from the outset, of providing answers to three major questions about inclusive education: how we understand it, what we do to achieve it and how we can continue to improve our practices and inclusive professional communities in order to build, develop and consolidate, among all of us, a true educational system that places the fundamental right to diversity as the backbone of change in educational centres. We are talking about Inclusive Education, which is made concrete and precise in the three dimensions that the proposed articles in this monograph will address:
· Creating inclusive cultures: This dimension encompasses two major blocks of action: building safe, collaborative and stimulating school communities for all those involved: students, teachers, families and the local community; but also establishing inclusive values as guidelines for decision-making and open ways of thinking that determine the perspective of analysis of each reality. The values, which support and shape the creation of inclusive cultures, are: equality, rights, participation, learning, community, respect for diversity, trust and sustainability, but also the qualities of compassion, honesty, courage and joy.
· Developing inclusive policies: The principles that derive from this school culture guide the decisions that are embodied, secondly, in the 'school policies' of each school. These are the ones that must ensure that shared values towards student diversity are at the heart of the planning, coordination and evaluation decisions of the teaching and learning processes that the school wants to promote, permeating all curricular decisions (objectives, content, methodology, assessment, support, etc.) and organisational decisions necessary to improve the learning and participation of all students. Towards inclusive education for all.
· Developing inclusive practices: classroom practices should reflect the culture and collective decisions taken to underpin them. This includes trying to ensure that classroom and extra-curricular activities encourage the participation of all learners and take into account the characteristics of each learner, based on a multidimensional view of intelligence and knowledge and the experience of each learner outside the school environment. For a task of this complexity and difficulty to come to fruition, it is essential for teachers to be able to mobilise resources, support and help of all kinds, from the school itself and from local communities, without which it is difficult to face the uncertainty of educational change. The relationship between these three levels (culture, policy and practice) is not linear and hierarchical (from cultures to practices), but circular and partly diffuse, imprecise: a spontaneous innovation for better classroom management and learning can trigger deep reflection on its meaning and implications for the school, which can, in turn, lead to a review of shared values and beliefs (school culture) and initiate plans to systematise its use in the future by other colleagues (policy).
However, in order to achieve all this, the basic methodological principles are the following:
· Setting up inclusive professional communities: creating working groups made up of all members of the educational community (families, students, teaching staff, management team, administration and services staff), and others from the community (volunteers, people belonging to non-profit associations or non-governmental organisations, trainees from university degrees or vocational training related to education, etc.).
· Teaching-learning methodologies based on cooperative learning and work, i.e. we all learn from each other, in dynamics where horizontal participation is promoted. To this end, it is recommended to propose a teaching-learning methodology where cooperative work is the fundamental basis. It requires the formation of heterogeneous working groups, where students with disabilities, specific learning difficulties, high intellectual abilities, chronic illnesses, immigrant population, developmental disorders, etc., are working in these groups together with the rest of their classmates.
· Didactic resources and means of expression that comply with the principles of "Universal Design for Learning", as each person has a specific learning style. From these references, the present monograph wishes and invites to rethink Inclusive Education from its conceptualisation to its development in experiences developed in different contexts and realities based on different axes of content, which can provoke the reader to reflect on the state, as well as the questioning of where Inclusive Education is going.
This Special Issue aims to collect the latest research on the socieducational responses offered by different countries on inclusiveness of school education from the Perspective of Family, and cultures to quality education in general. We welcome a diversity of articles, such as conceptual and empirical articles, reviews, critical comments, and meta-analyses, for submission to this Special Issue. We will accept manuscripts from different disciplines, addressing topics related to the scope.
Dr. Emilio Crisol-Moya
Guest Editor