Collaborative work and co-teaching: an approach to educational inclusion

Abstract

The Educational Reform implies a series of systemic changes that have aimed at building an inclusive educational system that promotes comprehensive quality education. Such changes constitute challenges for institutional and pedagogical management, and must guarantee that all students can access a quality education with equivalent opportunities to learn and participate, considering their individual, economic, social and cultural characteristics. This documentary research, framed in the qualitative paradigm, seeks to show how the concept of educational inclusion has evolved and how collaborative work is the cornerstone for the deployment of inclusive pedagogical practices. In this way, teachers have had to face the challenge of enriching educational practices, in order to respond to and attend to diversity, emphasizing the collaboration and participation of different actors, understanding, for example, that the definition and implementation of a plan of curricular adaptations must be elaborated and executed in a participative and collaborative way, which demands the development of collaborative work strategies. In particular, the co-teaching practice is proposed (MINEDUC, 2009 and 2012), which implies a change in the structure and organization of teaching and learning experiences in schools, where teachers in the regular classroom and Education Special work collaboratively at all times.

Keywords: Inclusion. Diversity. Collaborative work. Co-teaching. Co-teaching.