THE TRAINING OF COMPETENT EDUCATORS IN ATTENTION TO DIVERSITY

Abstract

Cultural anthropology has confirmed the thesis of the reversibility of the most persistent process of all those that affect human beings: socialisation. According to Boas and Mead, culturally learned patterns are modifiable and socialisation processes are reversible. Such postulate is the reason for this study, since, despite the fact that there is scientific evidence that in species with sexual reproduction no two individuals are alike, and that intragroup diversity is greater than intergroup diversity, in socialisation processes human beings learn to symbolically integrate into compact groups according to variables such as ethnicity, religion, gender or social class and to construct and reject the strange, the foreign, the other. Well established and positioned in their culture, people perceive the world from an ethnocentric point of view and, therefore, in a biased way. According to the Thomas Theorem, if situations are defined as real, they are real in their consequences. Actually, cultural definitions of reality are assimilated by the subjects and condition their behaviour. The aim of this research is to find out the cultural clichés of the students enrolled in the Master’s programme in Inclusive Education at the University of Córdoba (Spain) in the 2018-2019 academic year. We opted for a qualitative methodology and the interrogation technique, using the semi-structured and open interview as a tool. The analysis of the data reveals that the participants apprehend the world from their particular angle, from their personal and cultural contingency, from their myopia, showing ethnocentric prejudices and making unfounded judgments, which is why it is proposed that teachers’ training processes be directed to make them acknowledge, neutralise and dismantle such crystallised perceptions and help them build an idea of diversity based on individual, not group, differences.