
María Luna and Elena Martín
Autonomous University of Madrid
Analysing Counselling Processes for Educational Inclusion
Participants: José Ramón Lago1; María Luz Fernández-Blázquez2; Alicia del Río2 and José Ricardo García3
1Central University of Catalonia; 2Autonomous University of Madrid; 3University of Salamanca
Symposium Summary
The challenge of educational inclusion is to achieve maximum learning for each student. In order to face this challenge successfully, it is important that the different educational agents and institutions involved collaborate effectively. However, there is evidence of the difficulties involved in the collaboration between counsellors and other members of the educational community. In this symposium, four research papers are presented that contribute to understanding the collaborative counselling processes that best allow for a move towards collaboration for inclusive education. With the first of the papers, we will learn about a process of training and joint work with guidance professionals. The final objective was to improve their counselling strategies in order to achieve, finally, that teachers introduce changes in their usual teaching practices. The second paper presents a case study on a guidance department that deeply reconfigured its practice in order to develop more collaborative work with the teaching team from a curricular assessment point of view. The last two studies continue to delve into the keys to collaborative assessment in order to adjust teaching to the different levels and rhythms of learning. The third study shows an assessment process with English teachers in a high school to incorporate methodological changes, promoting the use of multi-level teaching tools, cooperative learning and autonomy work. The last research invites us to reflect on some conditions that can facilitate the counselling and, through it, the incorporation of new ways of working in the classrooms. To this end, two experiences of external assessment of reading comprehension for primary school teachers are compared. The objective of this comparison is to identify some elements that could be related to greater effectiveness, such as how to promote learning, positive attitudes toward change, and teacher commitment.
Short CV
Elena Martín Ortega is Professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology at the Autonomous University of Madrid. Director of the Official Master's Degree in Educational Psychology at the UAM. She was Deputy Director and General Director of the Ministry of Education and Science (1985-96), being part of the group responsible for the preparation and implementation of the Educational Reform of the LOGSE. She is a member of the Institute for the Evaluation and Assessment of Teaching Centres (IDEA) of Santa María Foundation.
His publications and research focus on issues related to teachers' and students' conceptions; reading and writing in learning processes; personalization of learning; psycho-pedagogical assessment; and educational evaluation from the perspective of learning, of the centres and of the system.