Educating in and for a Diversity of Students in Elementary School Classrooms in Mexico City

Abstract

This paper analyzes how the challenges of inclusion, a perspective incorporated into the current Mexican educational policy, are faced in primary classrooms. Several ethnographic registers of the practice of five teachers in primary schools in Mexico
City are considered. From school ethnography and theoretical references on teaching practice, politics and educational inclusion. It is analyzed: the teachers’ perspectives on the diversity of their students, the challenges that this diversity poses to their daily work and the ways in which they faced them. It was found that the inclusion approach was present in the classrooms observed, not only because of the greater presence of children because of their conditions and characteristics before they had been outside the common school or in segregated schools, but also because of the attitudes of teachers toward the difficulties of their students and the actions they implement to promote progress in their learning. But practices that were still strongly influenced by medical and psychological perspectives on learning, behavior, and the difficulties associated with them were also identified. Emphasis is placed on the need to broaden the focus on teaching work and generate the necessary conditions to enable an inclusive education in the classroom.