Abstract
It is important for teachers to have at their disposal teaching methodologies that embrace all the students who become part of a class. Chilean undergraduate students of English pedagogy programs do not necessarily possess these requisites which are mandatory due to the current laws that go in favour of students with special educational needs. From this basis, the English pedagogy program at Universidad Mayor has designed a program to fulfil this need, meet national standards, and ensure access to fair and dignified education with opportunities for each student. This chapter offers a detailed description of the process, from design to implementation, to the assessment of a course meant to provide pre-service teachers with the knowledge and teaching strategies for the inclusion of school children with special educational needs commonly present in Chilean classrooms.
TopFirst Steps Towards Inclusion In The Classroom
In 1852, the first special school for deaf children was created in Chile which was also the first of its kind in Latin America (Caiceo, 1988). After that, in 1928, through the Chilean Educational Reform, the institutions training and preparing teachers modified their curriculum by including some “therapeutic pedagogy courses” (Caiceo, 2010). This became the beginning of special education in Chile. From then on, different measures and legal procedures have been considered for the teaching of students with different disabilities and, equally importantly, the preparation of teachers to work with them in regular classrooms. Nowadays, the national educational system considers the concept of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) in the curriculum, not only for special education but also for regular education.
Chile is a geographically long and small country, and its population is concentrated in its capital city, Santiago, which has around eight million inhabitants. According to the last census, Chile has a total population of twenty-two million inhabitants, and there are five million students who attend schools or educational institutions throughout the country. The total number of educational institutions as of 2018 was 16,152, including every kind of institution approved by the Chilean Ministry of Education. The following table shows the distribution of schools and other educational institutions according to their funding sources; it also shows the total number of enrollments.
Table 1. Schools and institutions by funding sources.
Adapted from the Statistics Department of the Chilean Ministry of Education.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Practicum Center: Schools that have entered an agreement with the English Pedagogy Program of Universidad Mayor in order to receive students to carry out their practicum in their premises.
Special School: A school that caters for students who have a special educational need and disability of a severe to moderate degree.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities: Learning challenges or limitations that make it more difficult for children to learn than other children of the same age that do not have such needs.
Subsidized School: The Chilean equivalent of Charter School.
Integration Program: A government-led initiative to promote the effective blending of special education and regular education in the Chilean educational system based on the premise that all children are unique and learn differently.
Accreditation: A process of determining if educational programs fulfill predefined quality requirements.
English as a Foreign Language: ENGLISH that is learned in addition to someone’s native language in a country where it is not an official language.