Presentation: Inclusive Practices in the Classroom

Abstract

Since the Latin American Journal of Inclusive Education commissioned us to coordinate this volume with the theme ‘Inclusive Practices’, we thought it was necessary to have a broad representation of authors who contribute their experience on new forms of teaching and organisation from an inclusive perspective. In this sense, the issue addresses approaches, practices, experiences and proposals aimed at raising the levels of inclusion, participation and learning in schools and classrooms.

At the moment, we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation: the discourse of inclusion has developed at a dizzying theoretical level in recent years, but it has remained stagnant there, in theory. It seems that little by little inclusion, as a value, is becoming part of the collective imagination of education professionals and educational communities. But it has been forged as an abstract concept, desirable but difficult to achieve, as a utopian educational goal that exceeds the reality of the classroom and what happens there, as a theoretical and rhetorical discourse. However, inclusion is nothing more than a matter of common sense, which aims to materialise the right of students to be and feel included in their immediate educational environment, with full guarantee of accessibility and participation in it and in the community. It is time to leave behind prejudices, professionalism and labels, specialisations, differentiated and differentiating treatments and all those practices which, legitimised by law, mask a selective ideology and which, in the name of guaranteeing equal opportunities, allow segregating and discriminatory responses to be perpetuated.