Aprendizaje cooperativo y formación del profesoradoestrategias para la inclusión educativa

Abstract

In a context in which students with permanent SEN (Special Educational Needs) attend mainstream schools with amendments to the guidelines for special education and inclusive education, schools and teachers find themselves faced with the need to adapt to new requirements. Moreover, both the speed at which information and communication technologies available to young people today are developing and the growing heterogeneity that characterises current education in terms of multiculturalism, capabilities, problems and pace and styles of learning, mean that the adaptation of methodologies that address the needs of students and teachers has become essential. There is then an urgent need to train teachers with content that encourages reflection, development and changes in attitudes towards more comprehensive inclusion, and in the methodologies used in order that they are more appropriate to current needs, and more active, cooperative and inclusive. In order to verify the effectiveness of the implementation of cooperative learning strategies in the inclusion of children with SEN in the current educational context, the proposed methodology of this study is the implementation of the Program ACIE (CLIE - Cooperative Learning in Inclusive Education) with training for teachers in these areas and the implementation of cooperative activities in 33 classes in the 1st Cycle of Primary Education from 5 groups of schools in the west of the country (Portugal). A mixed methodological approach was employed, characterised by the triangulation of methods using questionnaires applied to teachers to identify the level of training in cooperative learning before and after participating in the training workshop; sociometric testing of students to check the level of inclusion of children with SEN in mainstream classes before and after the implementation of cooperative strategies; and a discussion group to complement the analysis of the results of the above methods. From the results of the three studies conducted, it may be concluded that teacher training was crucial, with content that helped them in the use of more active methodologies, specifically cooperative learning, a methodology that also proved effective in the educational inclusion of students with SEN, leading to the discovery of a way forward in the paradigm shift towards an education more appropriate to the demands of the third millennium: one that is cooperative and inclusive.