Educational inclusion of students with intellectual disabilities: a pedagogical challenge for formal education

Abstract

Children and adolescents with mild and moderate intellectual disabilities have the right to integrate into the Ecuadorian education system, thanks to the inclusive education project that began in 2010. There are laws and regulations that guarantee the integration of all Students, however, is a process that in practice presents different challenges for society and especially for teachers, as protagonists of the pedagogical process. The objective is to evaluate the pedagogical process in the educational inclusion of students with intellectual disabilities in the regular education system of Ecuador through a descriptive qualitative investigation. For which documents were reviewed up to seven years ago in Spanish and English indexed in high-impact digital repositories such as Scopus, Scielo, Redalyc among others, in addition, the main legal frameworks were reviewed, which allowed defending the objective of the research into experiences executed in different educational centers to improve teaching in students with intellectual difficulties. In conclusion, the positive attitude of teachers towards students with special needs is the first step in recognizing their role in the application of innovative strategies in the classroom, which are beneficial for students in general. Other aspects to highlight are that the teacher should not feel alone when teaching, should be supported by the support of family members, other school actors and other professionals such as psychopedagogues.