By: maría antonia casanova

Maintaining the mentioned expectations forces a satisfactory coexistence level within the society. Implementation of the scholarly model most fit is of utmost importance, since the consequent social climate will be derived from this selected model because of the induced principles it generates in the first stages of education. If society desires to integrate, education will have to be the means through which that is done. It is necessary to obtain a school for all, maintaining an enriching level of difference. Consequently, the subsequent educative necessities of these differences can be more or less demanding for the following reasons: differences of cognitive styles, rhythms of learning, motivations or interests; special educative necessities for the gifted and talented, handicapped, or those with disorders (motor, sensorial, psychic, others). Furthermore, compensation must be rendered to ethnic or cultural minorities forced to the social margin or underprivileged atmospheres.

The attention to diversity in the educative system: the intercultural education

Of particular use to those who are not specialists in education is the following catalogue, which provides the guidelines which govern the educative system at the moment. These guidelines allow hope that interculturalism and diversity will continue in our schools.

The curricular design from the educative administrations and the teaching institutions can and must:

1. Adapt the general missions to the particular developmental stage, sequencing them by cycles and courses,

2. Adapt the content blocks, sequencing them by cycles and courses,

3. Provide methodological options for the different stages and curricular areas,

4. Decide the evaluation model of the processes of education and learning, and how that institutional evaluation that will be carried out,

5. Define an organizational model for centers practicing designed curricular projects.

In virtue of the curricular autonomy that each center has assigned, it is possible to educate while including interculturalism as a cross-sectional factor in all the curricular elements, whose application must be facilitated by the organizational model that is established for that center. Both decisions –curricular and organizational– will have to be coherent to be viable.

Curriculum elements

I want to focus upon, and synthesize each one of the curricular elements. I will elaborate, mainly, on the two I consider most fundamental: the methodology and evaluation, with special reference to its role in education.      

Objectives and contents

The adjustment and sequencing of general objectives regarding stages of development and content areas favor regulation of the learning process by setting stage specific goals. Learning centers may not eliminate any basic objective expressed in the catalogue, but they may flexibly modify it, making the adaptation and coherent sequence of objectives possible. Based on goal objectives, suitable contents will be selected. These objectives and contents strive to allow individual development of each student according to their personal characteristics, thereby offering them the best educative attention possible. Objectives of intercultural character must also be devised, otherwise that expected intercultural education will remain as a declaration of good intentions without practical results. The determination of objectives and the selection of contents condition the teaching staff’s curricular development.