Pedagogical Outlook on How Disability and Inclusive Education are Perceived in Educational Rural Contexts

Abstract

In the process of building educational communities that include students with disabilities, it is a challenge to understand how diverse these students are in terms of their specificities, interests, potentialities, and expectations, to ensure their comprehensive development. The purpose of this study is to analyze the underlying assumptions in discourses about disability and inclusive education in the classroom, based on how these are perceived by teachers and counselors in public education institutions in the Colombian departments of Córdoba and Atlántico. The study is grounded on a qualitative, hermeneutic analysis, conducted in 10 focus groups, which took place virtually through the Zoom platform because of the global crisis generated by the pandemic. The data gathered were examined using the tools provided by Textual Discourse Analysis, focusing on giving visibility to the instructors’ voices and positions. The most relevant results related to the perceptions of disability were as follows: (1) For instructors, disability is associated with a lack, with incompleteness, or with an impairment. (2) For guidance teachers, disability is related to potentiality. Regarding inclusive education, both school counselors and teachers agree on (3) broadening the view towards a comprehensive and integrative approach to pedagogical work with students. (4) training in a pedagogical practice that contributes to different conditions of disability. One of the main conclusions is that the conceptions of disability and inclusive education are barriers present in the reality of rural educational institutions, therefore, they must be transformed systematically and gradually into affirmative actions from the reflexivity on practice.