Research on teaching strategies in inclusive learning environments: a case study

Abstract

Considering the students’ diversity with regards to abilities, skills, access school conditions, health conditions, ethnic background and even immigrant students who are not fluent in the Spanish language, most Primary and Secondary Schools are assuming an inclusive education. In the European Higher Education Area, and more specifically, in the Teacher Training degree, School Placements constitute the basic starting point and, in fact, they are a challenge for pre-service teachers. Undoubtedly, these students do not only carry out School Practice in normalized Primary Schools, rather they need to know the school’s real functioning, its internal management and organization, the human, material and technical resources to face up students’ diversity and offer them the necessary educative attention. Roughly speaking, the I School Practices are aimed at getting engaged in the knowledge of official and institutional documentation. For this reason, this case study analyses how the I School Placements are carried out in a Spanish inclusive Primary School, located in Zaragoza which belongs to the region of Aragón. The research developed focuses on the analysis of the School Education Project, as far as we believe it is devoted to reflect how school works on (general and specific syllabus designs, guidelines, teaching-learning processes, didactic objectives, methodological approaches, classroom organization, assessment types and techniques and so on). In this sense, the results illustrate how the theoretical and the practical principles implicitly and explicitly undertaken in this school improve the development of an authentic inclusive education.