Understanding Disability from the Social Representations of students and teachers in rural contexts

Comprensión de la Discapacidad desde las Representaciones Sociales de estudiantes y docentes en contextos rurales.

Understanding inclusive education, understanding it as a cross-cutting and interdisciplinary process that summons different actors from educational communities, is one of the great challenges in the implementation and empowerment of educational policies and in the transformation of practices. The present research project was proposed to characterize the social representations (RS) of students with disabilities (EcD) and of the teachers of the Leticia Educational Institution in their pedagogical practices, so that they contribute to understanding in the face of recognition and acceptance of the disability, in attention the current policies of inclusive education. Oriented from the qualitative methodology with phenomenological cutting and from the theory of social representations, using content analysis as a strategy, based on three categories: social representations of disability, inclusive education and pedagogical practices. Using techniques such as interview and observation, the field diary, having as a center of analysis the voice of the participating subjects. It is concluded that the SRs reveal, that a dichotomy between disability as a limitation and disability as a challenge is evident. The limitation from beliefs and prejudices based in part on medical diagnoses close to the deficiency and as a challenge, for the EcD, because they recognize that they face different situations in different personal and social spheres, from which they learn. On the part of some teachers, the challenge is assumed from their practice as the need to stage their knowledge and experiences to address situations in the classroom for which they do not feel prepared, however, advance efforts to improve their practice. Highlighting the urgency of training all the actors in the educational community to favor environments of welcome and recognition of diversity.