Διαφοροποιημένη παιδαγωγική & ενταξιακή εκπαίδευση: θεωρητικές επισημάνσεις, προβληματισμοί και προοπτικές

Abstract

In the context of rapidly changing socio-political conditions and attempts, both nationally and internationally, and in the effort to harmonize educational policies with the prevailing social and economic data on the one hand, and, with international declarations and conventions on human rights in education on the other hand, differentiated pedagogy is consistently being suggested in the Curricula of various countries as a teaching practice potentially capable of responding to the heterogeneity of the student population and contributing to the improvement of the academic performance of all students without exception. This suggestion is accompanied by the promise of the contribution of differentiation in the prevention of school failure and, in the promotion, in pedagogical practice, of the principles of inclusive education, a request that has been already emphatically formulated in 1994 under the Salamanca Declaration and which reflects the vision of an "Education for All".

This demand, which in essence defended the necessity of tackling inequality and discrimination in education was often, during its course, called upon to be articulated in the midst of conflicting political and opposing forces.

On the one hand, the issue of/debate on/ differentiation was often linked to the partially in a sense imperative need of the educational systems to harmonize, at least at a level of appearances, with the adoption of the inclusion perspective.

In this respect, differentiated pedagogy was interpreted as an attempt to create those learning conditions that would allow students, through their participation in the collective learning experience and supported through the organization of the process, the interaction in the classroom and the enrichment of teaching, via the appropriate teaching methodology and supervisory tools and materials, to follow their personal learning path.

In this context, such an approach was linked to the need to transform, on the one hand, what had been considered as a problem/challenge to the creative power of the educational process (Zoniou-Sideri, 2016) and, on the other hand, transforming the pedagogical practice itself towards a process of unlocking the potential of students' different experiences, interests, needs and ways of learning. Differentiated pedagogy, however, as a concept and as a practice, was also influenced by practices of discrimination and segregation of students by level of performance and what was perceived as ability, which in various ways are still used in education systems internationally (Zoniou-Sideri, 2016).

It has also been influenced by a number of dominant trends in the field of education policy formation, which run counter to its democratic orientation. The most characteristic of these are a) the trend that Apple has called "neoconservative modernization", b) the trend that promotes business management reasoning and vocabulary about effectiveness and maximizing educational efficiency, as a “magic" solution to the problems of educational systems (Ball, 1998, p. 121; Barton & Slee, 1999; Levin 1998) and c) The tendency to harmonize with the rhetoric and vocabulary of international declarations and conventions on human rights, the fight against discrimination and exclusion in education and the transformation of educational systems through the concept of inclusion (Zoniou-Sideri, 2016).

This paper will attempt to present the theoretical context in/against which differentiated pedagogy is articulated together/along with the development of inclusive pedagogical approaches, the connection between theoretical discourse and pedagogical practice in the field of differentiation and to highlight a range of broader concerns and contradictions which are inherent and related a) to whether the response to student heterogeneity through the adoption of educational and teaching practices, such as differentiated pedagogy, is reflected in corresponding changes in the structural features of the educational system and b) whether the differentiated pedagogy in its existing context of educational policy is finally interpreted as a technique for managing students who are classified as "special" groups of the student population (students with disabilities and special educational needs and students who are classified as vulnerable social groups) with the ultimate goal of their "normalisation" and the consequent legitimising of existing practices of discrimination and segregation of students