Evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of educational process in preschool, primary and secondary schools from an inclusive perspective

Abstract

This paper presents a study conducted in five schools (four preschool and primary schools and one secondary school) in order to evaluate, from the preschool, primary and secondary teachers’ perspective, the strengths and weaknesses of the educational process to develop educational improvement plans. The research design was a descriptive and quantitative, including some influential variables in educative process like: planning and organization of teaching, active students’ involvement and student participant interaction, as examples. We used Part C of "School based self-assessment of diversity awareness from an inclusive approach” (ACADI), completed by 97 teachers from public schools in Region of Murcia. Results show that the main strengths identified by teachers were those concerning learning styles, planning and organization of teaching, active involvement of students in their own learning, progressive evaluation, tutorial organization, interaction between students and community involvement in the school. However, attention to learning speed and attention to students’ characteristics obtained lower scores from all the schools. Comparing between schools, teachers in preschool and primary school disagree significantly with secondary teachers about tutorial organization, while in other aspects, such as methodological diversity, collaborative support, knowledge of the objectives and content of the curriculum by the students, the differences were not significant.