Keys to teacher training for inclusive schools

Abstract

Developing effective inclusive schools that embrace diversity and ensure the participation and learning of all students requires a new teacher profile. Inclusive schools demand different types of competences, as well as different levels of involvement and collaboration between different educational actors. However, the classroom teacher remains the key player and the main responsible for the educational process of all his/her students.

Given the new challenges facing both mainstream school teachers - who have to respond to a greater diversity of student needs - and special education teachers - whose work setting and role change considerably - their initial and in-service training is of utmost importance in order to advance the development of more inclusive school practices and cultures.

Training teachers with the competences to work in increasingly complex and heterogeneous contexts and with increasingly complex and heterogeneous students is the great challenge facing teacher training institutions in Latin American countries. Rethinking professional profiles and training models in the face of the transformations required by a pedagogy based on the principles of inclusion and attention to diversity, in the context of the learning demanded by the 21st century, is an urgent necessity if we aspire to achieve the goal of quality education for all, without exclusion or discrimination of any kind.