Las actitudes de los profesores hacia la inclusión educativa en la clase de inglés como lengua extranjeraUn caso en Valparaíso (Chile)

Zusammenfassung

The inclusion of students with special needs in the regular classrooms is areality for most teachers in the educational system in Chile. The main aim of this investigation was to find out the attitudes towards inclusion of English teacherswho work in public and subsidized schools in the Valparaíso region. This study was organized around four dimensions: teachers’ general attitudes towards inclusion, the curricular and organizational factors pertaining to the implementation of inclusion in this context, their pedagogical practices for inclusion in the English class, and their training and professional development for inclusive education. In order to fulfill the objectives of this study, amixed method exploratory-descriptive design was used,including a quantitative survey and qualitative data obtained with different techniques. Quantitative analysis included descriptive statistics per dimension and the analysis of qualitative data was done following a sociocritical approach.Analytical toolsfrom the field of critical discourse analysis were used for the processing of thequalitative dataobtained with both collection strategies.The results obtained with the survey indicate that the attitudes of Englishteachers in this region are more favorable towards the general principles of inclusion and their own pedagogical practices for inclusion in the English class. They hold less favorable attitudes about the curricular and organizational factors related to inclusion and their professional development for inclusive education. However, the discursive analysis revealed that the interpretative repertoire corresponding to integration is fixed in the language used by the participating teachers. Moreover, these teachers demonstrate lack of critical reflection about the discriminatory procedures inherent to the implementation of the integration programs in the schools. Bycritically analysingtheirdiscourse,it is also observed that Special Education teachers are characterized as incompetent to provide meaningfulhelp in the English class. This is related to EFL teachers' own social representation as experts in thearea oflanguage learning, and not in Especial Education. The results of this investigation indicate that there are little to no opportunities for English teachers to collaborate with other professionals in the schools. These EFL teachers’ discourse also reveals their feelings of frustration because of the many requirements and little help they receive from the authorities in the educational system, which may explain their unfavorable attitudes about the curricular and organizational factors that impact inclusive education in this context.