Percepción social del alumnado y profesorado de educación primaria sobre los derechos de las personas que se encuentran en situación de discriminación por bajo desempeño funcional: una mirada a través de la Convención Internacional de la ONU (CDPD)

Abstract

The general aim of this doctoral thesis is twofold: on the one hand, it studies the perception that primary education teachers have of the training they have received on the CRPD (UN lnternational Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities -UN, 2006-) and its regulatory transposition into the legal educational scenario, analysing the possible effects that this training could have on the performance of their professional practice, and with respect to certain issues referred to in the Spanish legal body in the field of educational inclusion. Likewise, the perception that primary education students themselves have of people with low functional performance is also studied. lt should be noted that, in arder to achieve these aims, the so-called languages of denial and the repercussions that their use can have on students with low functional performance have been taken into account. In this way, the information collected, studied, compared and discussed has made it possible to draw up a whole catalogue of proposals far improvement that highlights a large number of variables that both the Administration and the teaching teams should take into consideration in arder to transform the situations of discrimination and exclusion experienced by students with low functional performance in the schools of the Region of Murcia. Furthermore, it is important to point out that this doctoral thesis is structured according to a compendium of publications which is organised around five research articles published in journals indexed in high impact data bases (JCR and SCOPUS), as well as a book chapter from the prestigious Dykinson publishing house. In terms of the nature of the research, a mixed methodology (qualitative and quantitative) was used, firstly by carrying out a qualitative analysis of the main databases and, consequently, of the most representative specialised literature for this research. Secondly, through the quantitative analyses, it has been possible to analyse various basic descriptive statistics, as well as to consider a series of tests that have made it possible to observe the inferences regarding the different variables considered for the study. Moreover, on the basis that this doctoral thesis has been developed -mainly- taking into account this quantitative methodology, two instruments have been developed which have been designed, validated and, finally, approved by the Research Ethics Commission of the University of Murcia until their massive application by more than twenty educational centres that have participated in the study. Specifically, the scales published have been called EPREPADl-1 (Scale of Perception of Primary Education Teachers on their Training and Professional Practice in relation to Pupils with Disabilities) and EPADl-1 (Scale of Perception of 6th Grade Primary Education Pupils towards People with Disabilities). These are two scales made up of a large number of Likert-type items which have made it possible-on the one handto revea! the vision and knowledge that teachers have about sorne educational legislation that seeks the inclusion of pupils with low functional performance, and - on the other hand - to show the vision that sixth-year primary school pupils have about peo ple with low functional performance, of course taking into consideration their school experiences. For both scales, the Crombach's alpha value is above 0.9, thus confirming their reliability and making it possible to apply them to both teachers and pupils. For this purpose, the STATS 2.0 statistical programme was taken into account and a degree of confidence of 95% and, therefore, a sampling error of 5% was found, given that -for both scales- the total sample exceeded these indices, obtaining a total of 839 participants (410 teachers and 429 pupils). In short, the conclusions of this doctoral thesis confirm that teachers have little knowledge of regional, national and international regulations related to the attention to student diversity, and furthermore, the expectations they project towards those with low functional performance continue to be different from those of the rest. AII of this is a determini ng factor in the creation of situations of discrimination and exclusion for students with low functional performance and the maintenance of an educational structure that is totally exclusive for all of its students. In addition, it is observed that the language of denial and -therefore- pejorative language is used in educational regulations, among teachers and students themselves, which is one of the main reasons for the creation of discriminatory situations towards students with low functional performance.