Educative Potential: Analyzing Practices of Chilean Public Schools from an Inclusive Lens

Abstract

In the quality and accountability logics that frame Chilean education, the concept of inclusion has generated actions that are not always consistent with inclusive practices. To critically look at these practices together with school communities, it is necessary to have participatory and situated tools based on theoretical-methodological explorations that conceive inclusion beyond the dichotomy of an inclusive state or an inclusive process. The objective of this paper is to systematize an analytical proposal with a focus on inclusion to identify the educational potential in practices of Chilean public schools. This proposal derives from ethnographies carried out in nine Chilean schools in 2017-2018. This tool proposes a three-phase analysis procedure, that generates maps of educative practices which provide a consensual view of what is happening in schools and their possible transformations. Due to the analysis, it is possible to identify which dimensions of the practices are more sedimented, with more stable aspects difficult to change, and which dimensions are more dispersed, this implies making visible the transformative potential of each practice. These results allow us to rethink inclusion from the educational complexity.