Attention to diversity in Primary Schools: an inclusive perspective on its potential and its limits

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. The present article is the fruit of a research about strengths and weaknesses of the attention to diversity in Elementary Education in the Region of Murcia. METHOD. This study was based on the descriptive-exploratory design and it is geared to draw general conclusions to a better understanding of the school context; all the information was gathered by using the ACADI, a self-evaluation questionnaire which is composed by four areas, 63 indicators organized in categories and a total of 576 items. For this study, we highlighted the punctuation of the 34 most representative items of the instrument. The sample was composed of 173 teachers from 6 Elementary schools. RESULTS. The main results highlight more strengths than weaknesses, most of the weaknesses being related to the “school context” area; the Mann-Whitney U test showed differences depending on the variable called “years of experience”, most of these differences are identified in items of the “educational process” area; finally, the results showed that the attitude towards inclusive processes is similar in all specialties of teachers. DISCUSSION. Different studies agree on the presence of a clear and positive attitude of teachers towards inclusion at school; this aspect is showed in the present study as a strength, being the main weakness the attitude of families towards the presence of pupils from different cultures in the same class of their children. These results agree with other studies in which some teachers declare that the presence of immigrant pupils or children of immigrants are the cause of difficulties in the teaching-learning process.