Equal Opportunities in an Inclusive and Sustainable Education System: An Explanatory Model

Abstract

Equal opportunities is an objective to be achieved in a sustainable society, as formulated by various sustainable development objectives. Inclusive education refers to the right of all people to education, guaranteeing the presence, participation, and progress of all students and, above all, equal opportunities. However, today, it is a dual and controversial issue, as it appears among the strategies and objectives planned at international and European levels, but its application and real development is still far from being a right with guarantees. Moreover, the concept of integration remains in most areas and many education policies. Therefore, the objective of this work is to establish which integration and inclusion measures favor equal opportunities. The study offers, as a major novelty, the results of empirical research, which provides a scientific framework to this process of equal opportunities. It is approached from the perspective of teaching staff with a sample of 133 professionals. The results are analyzed through factorial analysis and multiple linear regression. The results show that the aspects related to inclusion (measures of attention to diversity, high knowledge about inclusion, and adapting the system to inclusion) have a significant positive effect. The integration of students reduces equal opportunities in a statistically significant way. The results are of interest for educational policies and for decision-making and strategies to achieve sustainability and inclusion in the school environment.

Inclusive Education and Inclusive School Development: A Key-Area for Sustainability and Teacher Skills

“…Finally, people around the globe recognise that the current development trends are clearly unsustainable and that education can be seen as a critical tool for advancing our society towards sustainability (Hemani & Punecar, 2015). In total, "inclusive education refers to the right of all people to education, guaranteeing the presence, participation, and progress of all students and, above all, equal opportunities" (Medina-García et al, 2020). According to UNESCO (2009), "inclusion is thus seen as a process of addressing and responding to the diversity of needs of all children, youth and adults through increasing participation in learning, cultures and communities, and reducing and eliminating exclusion within and from education".…”

Exploring the Opportunity to Use Virtual Reality for the Education of Children with Disabilities

“…At the beginning, the concept of inclusive education referred to children with disabilities in the regular school system, but the concept has evolved and now it is defined by UNESCO as “the process of strengthening the capacity of the education system reach out to all learners” [ 2 ]. Thus, providing equal opportunities represents one of the greatest challenges of inclusive education [ 3 , 4 ]. To work in a common environment, to reach all students and to include all the children, inclusive education uses specific tools and technology to help both teachers and children in reaching the expected results.…”

Towards interventions on school dropouts for disabled learners amidst and post-COVID-19 pandemic

“…The sustainability of inclusive education entails a systemic process concerned with addressing the present needs without compromising the ability of future generations’ educational and societal needs (host communities, vulnerable population groups such as disabled people), planet (environment and biodiversity), and profit-making (Botha 2020 ; Medina-García, Doña-Toledo, & Higueras-Rodríguez, 2020 ; Turusida 2020 ). At the same time, inclusive education can enable learning outcomes that uphold the ability to adjust and recover from a societal, cultural, and social background that could have been prevented or mitigated with sustainable practices whilst perpetuating a decrease in the dropout of disabled learners (Ostendorf 2020 ).…”