The barriers faced by students with or without disabilities for educational inclusion in Higher Education

Abstract

This essay provides a historical and social overview of international and national policies and regulations that support the rights of people with disabilities to education. It describes the intervention models of special education services and their characteristics in Mexico, as well as how the attention given to people with disabilities has transformed with each model to achieve an approach focused on inclusive schools. 

It describes the types of barriers to learning and participation organizational, attitudinal, and pedagogical and indicates those that occur most frequently at each educational level: early education, preschool, elementary school, middle school, high school, and higher education. 

Finally, it emphasizes the formative, orientation, counseling, updating, and training needs of higher education teaching staff to provide support and reasonable adjustments to their teaching practices in order to minimize and/or eliminate barriers to learning and participation for higher education students. 

It also highlights the characteristics of inclusive schools in basic education and, based on this reference, proposes several points to consider for the inclusion of students at the higher education level.