Ignasi Puigdellívol: “When inclusion at school is done properly, teaching quality grows no matter what”

Ignasi Puigdellívol, Professor of Didactics and Educational Organization at the University of Barcelona.
Ignasi Puigdellívol, Professor of Didactics and Educational Organization at the University of Barcelona.
Interviews
(22/06/2016)

The Generalitat de Catalunya has recently approved of the Masterʼs degree in Inclusive Education. Policies, practises and Support in Education for All, by the University of Barcelona, as a specific masterʼs degree teachers , with retroactive effects since its beginnings, in the academic year 2014-2015. “There are other masters in the field of inclusion -says Ignasi Puigdellívol, Director of the master- but regarding school-like orientation, aimed at special education teachers and integration, this one is pioneer in Catalonia”.

Ignasi Puigdellívol, educator and lecturer in different institutions linked to special education since 1972, and Professor of Didactics and Educational Organization at the University of Barcelona, brings the Master in Inclusive Education of the University of Barcelona through the average profile of the registered professionals, the profile of the students to be assisted, profile of the school organization where to work, and the benefits for society, at least qualitative, which can be already seen in general.

 

Ignasi Puigdellívol, Professor of Didactics and Educational Organization at the University of Barcelona.
Ignasi Puigdellívol, Professor of Didactics and Educational Organization at the University of Barcelona.
Interviews
22/06/2016

The Generalitat de Catalunya has recently approved of the Masterʼs degree in Inclusive Education. Policies, practises and Support in Education for All, by the University of Barcelona, as a specific masterʼs degree teachers , with retroactive effects since its beginnings, in the academic year 2014-2015. “There are other masters in the field of inclusion -says Ignasi Puigdellívol, Director of the master- but regarding school-like orientation, aimed at special education teachers and integration, this one is pioneer in Catalonia”.

Ignasi Puigdellívol, educator and lecturer in different institutions linked to special education since 1972, and Professor of Didactics and Educational Organization at the University of Barcelona, brings the Master in Inclusive Education of the University of Barcelona through the average profile of the registered professionals, the profile of the students to be assisted, profile of the school organization where to work, and the benefits for society, at least qualitative, which can be already seen in general.

 

What is inclusive school?
Unlike integration, inclusion focuses on the changes a school has to do to assist everyone, kids with disabilities or coming from a different culture. Therefore, this master has two itineraries, the two postgraduate courses that create it: one is focused on the difficulties of learning and the other is more social, aimed at the attention of diversity. In any of these cases, however, the perspective is the same, the teacher who goes to school willing to organize transforming process, advice colleagues with resources, etc. In this sense, the master covers necessary fields.
Which is the studentʼs profile?
We first thought of the profile of the student, and basically, we thought of the special education teacher, also called support teacher and resource teacher, or therapeutic pedagogue.  Yes, there is a part of the registered students who are interested in working as special education teachers, to accompany teachers or going to a special education school, which is also an option, but a lot of the registered students, and that is very positive, are general teachers who think this training will be useful to help the kids at school. The interest of these students is not only professional; they donʼt expect a change of status, but it is a rather personal and altruist interest: “with these studies I will have more means to help an autistic kid or a blind kid at school”.
What students are involved in this inclusion?

Not only kids with inabilities or learning difficulties, we also think of the social factors, such as newcomers, with a different language. There are countries where inclusion works mostly on and for the girls, because as a group they tend to drop out of school or they donʼt even have access to it. Inclusion has a wide range of actions. In our case, living in a western society, inclusion faces high indexes of educational failure which sometimes point to vulnerable minorities, immigration, the gypsy collective... This would be the case we talked about when referring to assist diversity. Inclusion also has to face learning difficulties, we are not sure if they are caused by the kid or the wrong way the system works in, and the different incapacities.

What is the key element, if any, in inclusion?

One of the keys we try to share with the students is the collaboration between the teacher and the support teacher, as well as the skills of supporting without constraining, helping and understanding how the student sees and experiences everything.

The different typologies of students who need support can involve very different specialities. How do you reach this “diversity” in the master?

The master is very ambitious in this sense. If I had to mention one differentiating trait it would be the teaching staff, because it is very powerful. We have the collaboration of teachers of the University of Barcelona who majored in child abuse, in family assistance, immigration, autism, learning difficulties in mathematics and technology applied to educational support. But we have also found experts from other universities such as the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), University of Lleida (UDL) and University of Girona (UdG), majored in language disorder, prevention of gender violence, intellectual disability or behavioural problems, and entities such as ONCE, Aspasim, the Centers of Educational Resources for Hearing Loss (CREDA), GURU Centre specialized in TEA or the Augmentative Communication Techniques Unit (UTAC).

Which benefits brings inclusion to all school students?

When inclusion is done properly, the teaching quality grows no matter what. Teaching kids who learn “regardless of the teacher” is not difficult, but if you have a Down syndrome kid at school and you want him to learn, as a teacher you will have to use some resources which will benefit all kids in the long run. I have seen this here and in other places when I helped in integration issues. I mean this is a reality. There is a second reality which I give a lot of importance to although not everyone does, and it is attitude. Inclusion makes us live with all kinds of people and makes us see that life is not easy for everyone, and when there are kids with limitations -more complex than the ones we can have- and it makes us include them in our day-a-day,  invite them to our birthday parties, etc. It is a high value task. But of course we donʼt want to forget other quantitative factors. There have been several researches on this topic and now there is one about to finish, by a teacher of the master, based on the experience of Catalan schools with the collaboration of the Ministry of Education. It analyses the relationship between the inclusion of the centres and the academic performance of the students. Research from other countries says that there were no significant differences, but they measured the inclusion through the number of kids with disabilities in the centre. In this case the research has been carried out through a survey where the real level of inclusion is detected. However we have not detected significant differences in this case.

Not in any sense?

Some say there is a positive relation between inclusion and academic performance. However most of them do not see a significant correlation among both things. What we can confirm is that neither of the researches has concluded that the efficiency of the class lowers when their students are trained in inclusion.