Inclusion in the Workforce for Students with Intellectual Disabilities: A Case Study of a Spanish Postsecondary Education Program.
The Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) is the first Spanish university to provide training to young people with intellectual disabilities (ID) in the university environment, which qualifies them for inclusion in the workforce. In this practice brief we describe the UAM-Prodis Patronage Chair program, a successful model used at Spanish universities within the European Higher Education convention framework, which addresses the inclusion and occupational training of young people with ID in order to help them obtain employment. We begin with a review of the special education system for young people with ID in Spain. We report outcome data for students with ID who completed the program at UAM during its first four years of implementation. These outcomes indicate that the UAM-Prodis Patronage Chair program has become one of the main strategies to achieve independent living and community integration of people with ID through a postsecondary education option.
Current trends in special education in Spain: do they reflect legislative mandates of inclusion?
Over the past decades significant changes have occurred throughout all aspects of the field of Special Education in Spain. One of these changes is related to appropriate and effective instruction for students with disabilities and diverse educational needs in inclusive classroom placements. All of these change efforts have created the need to redefine the roles of regular and special teachers, as well as the services provided for students who may have special educational needs (SEN). This article uses national based data to investigate current trends regarding the inclusion of students with SEN in Spain. The data were examined in order to determine if there were significant variations regarding (a) the number of students with disabilities served in regular classrooms after the publication of PL 13/1982, Act on Social Integration of People with Disabilities, and (b) changes to the distribution of students with SEN by disability category and educational placement. The identified trends are discussed in the context of current legislation on inclusive schooling and special education. Special Education in Spain has a long thriving history. Initial initiatives can be traced back to the sixteenth century and were intended for children with sensory disabilities. Documents dating back to the 1500s report of physicians in Europe who worked with people who were deaf. The Spanish monk Pedro Ponce de León (1520-1584) is credited with being the first teacher of deaf students (Aguado-Díaz, 1995). He invented an oral method to teach his hearing impaired pupils to read, write, and speak, and by 1785 the first school for the education of the deaf-mutes was established in Spain. During the nineteenth century, schools and institutions of a purely charitable and aidproviding nature were set up for the education of people who were deaf or blind and for the care of those with mental illness. The segregation of people with disabilities in institutions providing fundamental aid and medical care went on well into the twentieth century, and the focus on rehabilitation and education was only slowly introduced. Professionals and the public shifted from a belief that people with disabilities should be shunned to the position that they should be protected, cared for, and instructed. After the civil war in 1939, the development of special education was left in private hands, which fostered the setting up of special education institutions (Palmero, 1996). The questionable results obtained by segregated institutions, international normalization trends, as well as a growing social awareness at the end of World War II all led to a change in the educational treatment received by persons with disabilities. The change was embodied in PL 14/1970 [Act on Education and Funding for Educational Reform (LGE), 1970], which for the first time organized and formulated special education in Spain and stated as its goal training through appropriate educational treatment of all children and youth who may have special educational needs to support their integration into as full a social life as possible. Special education was to be provided in special education schools, while at the same time the establishment of special educational units in ordinary schools was fostered whenever possible for those who had only mild disabilities. After the death of General Francisco Franco in the late 1970s, Spain undertook a period of major reconstruction. Among other important political and socio-economic changes, new educational policies aimed to transform an educational system that until then had been selective and dual with its corresponding general and special institutions, curricula and legislation (Parrilla, 2007). The transformation goal was one integrative comprehensive educational system. The 1978 Spanish Constitution guaranteed all citizens’ the right to education and urged public authorities to implement a policy of planning, treatment, rehabilitation and integration of people with physical, developmental, and cognitive disabilities in all social areas and, therefore, in education. The same year, the National Institute for Special Education drew up the National Plan on Special Education based on the principles of normalization, educational integration, and individualization, all of them formulated for the first time. The eighties and the nineties, however, witnessed a flurry of legislative activity that aided growth to special education in inclusive settings and to the transformation of a system incapable of satisfying the individual needs of all students (Parrilla, 2007). Progressively, many parents of children with disabilities and professionals agree that most students with disabilities should receive a substantial proportion of their education in general education classrooms alongside their nondisabled peers. And their education must be accompanied by an array of special services, supports, and curricular options that will meet their individual needs.
Educational innovation in Musical Language Course: responses and the overcoming of limitations
This article presents an innovative methodological proposal for the development of auditory education in the course of the Language of Music. Based on this proposal, we analyze an educational community’s response to the innovations implemented, and we identify the limitations recognized throughout the learning and teaching process, as well as the strategies developed to overcome them. To this end, we applied a qualitative methodology with the classroom-based research method. The compilation of data was carried out through participant observation, captured in the journals of the professor and researcher, interviews and analysis of documents. The research results demonstrate that patience, responsibility and perseverance in their work on behalf of the professors have been key to overcoming the limitations identified and in promoting that students enjoy and learn their class contents in meaningful ways. Recibido 05/02/2018 Aceptado: 09/03/2018