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Mendive. Revista de Educación
ISSN 1815-7696
30--2023
Original article
Respect for diversity, current challenge of the guidance and monitoring process
1Ministerio de Educación República de Cuba.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development establishes as one of its objectives to achieve quality education for all throughout life. Within this framework and in the midst of the III Improvement of the National Education System, it is necessary to temper the guidance and follow-up process, the governing activity of the Diagnostic and Guidance Centers, to the current demands for a higher quality education. The objective of this work was focused on making a critical analysis of the conception of the current model for the implementation of the process in educational practice. For the structuring of the research, a pedagogical experiment was designed; this is carried out on the general philosophical and methodological basis offered by Dialectical and Historical Materialism, a scientific conception of the world that allows the multilateral analysis of social phenomena. The theoretical, historical - logical, analytical - synthetic methods and the inductive - deductive method and the empirical level were used: the interview, the survey and the documentary review. The main result exposes the needs and potentialities of the theoretical and methodological conception of the acting model for the implementation of the orientation and follow-up process in educational practice, which demonstrated the value of the process for attention to diversity, as well as the need of its transformation in the current conditions of the educational system.
Key words: diversity; special educational needs; orientation and follow-up process
Introduction
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, approved in September 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly, establishes a transformative vision towards the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the member states. In this context, education faces a complex challenge, shared internationally: achieving quality education for all throughout life (UN, 2016, p. 6).
Based on these goals, education permanently acquires certain characteristics and obtains different results depending on the context and, to the same extent, receives continuous demands from pedagogical practice. Within this framework, one of the fundamental challenges is the adaptation of the educational system to the differences of the students, which translates into achieving an inclusive and equitable educational system with equal opportunities; Therefore, it is imperative to attend to and respect diversity.
The term diversity, for more than three decades, has gained prominence in the work of teachers. In addition to being a huge challenge, it becomes a great concern for all educational agents, which translates into a recurring question: how to achieve the necessary care and in a coherent way for students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) in different contexts and modalities of care (Carreño & Joza, 2020).
It is common to associate special educational needs with "defects", limitations, problems, difficulties, which must be corrected and/or compensated to achieve a fuller adaptation of individuals in society. However, there are characteristics that are manifested in the development of students that often go unnoticed, which affect the attention offered and limit the achievement of the integral development of the personality.
However, the Cuban National Education System, at present, is immersed in the Third Improvement, which is developed in accordance with international challenges and the social demands of the context. Its objective is to raise the quality of education to higher levels, in order to achieve men: ... "fuller, freer, more self-fulfilling and self-determined; contributing to the people, as part of society, feeling more involved in their necessary transformations" (Navarro et al., 2021, p. 30).
It can be affirmed that the Cuban educational system has demonstrated strengths to obtain the proposed purpose, including Special Education, with more than 60 years of accumulated experiences. The development achieved in this education has materialized in the expansion of educational services and their quality, in the ways and modalities of care for all children and adolescents with SEN. It is worth noting the role that this education has played in the conception of the integral psycho-pedagogical diagnosis in Cuban education from its own theoretical and methodological base.
Within this framework, the work of the Centers for Diagnosis and Guidance (CDO) has been a strength. The mission of the CDO teams, to date, is aimed at contributing to the development of the diagnostic process with quality and a preventive approach, through the guidance and monitoring of students with SEN. For this, the work of specialists in: pedagogy, psychopedagogy, psychometrics, speech therapy, psychology and social work is combined with the educational work of the agents of the institutions at all levels, as well as with the family and the community (Silva & Ortega, 2016).
The orientation and follow-up process is considered the basis of the work of the teams and is carried out with a preventive, participatory and multi- and interdisciplinary nature. It responds to the unquestionable need to support all agents, to improve the quality of the educational process in response to diversity. To do this, it establishes professional relationships that facilitate advice and joint analysis with educational agents, in order to provide better care for students identified with SEN in each of the educational systems. Through these relationships, they contribute to facilitating the work of teaching management structures and other specialists, in the search for solutions to the problems that arise in the face of diversity in daily practice.
In its historical development, the orientation and follow-up process has evolved according to the demands of the educational process. From being conceived as a classification process to assign a special school to children with learning difficulties, it has become an instrument for the comprehensive care of students with SEN in each of the interaction contexts, which has enriched the practices of psycho-pedagogical diagnosis and attention to diversity.
However, when it comes to diversity, studies carried out have made it evident that, in general, the work is oriented towards students with learning difficulties or with some disability. The answers that have been offered have been circumscribed, fundamentally, to proposals for curricular, corrective and/or compensatory adaptations; in some cases, to the reinforcement through individual therapies, to the determination of educational services in special schools with specialized teachers and, in others, from the integration approach to acceptance in regular environments without ensuring the necessary conditions for success (Arnaiz, 2019).
However, at the international level there is a theoretical consensus on inclusive education; The Salamanca Declaration (1994) is used as a starting point, which endorses that: "(...) schools must open up to diversity in order to serve all children, especially those with special educational needs", an idea in force in the current Cuban educational context.
In this order, it should be noted that in the last two decades there have been important changes in the world and in the region that directly affect the development and position of Cuba in the world. The global economic crisis, the strengthening of the right-wing in Latin America, the intensification of the United States blockade of our country, the measures adopted to confront it and, lastly, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, have demanded the political will of our government, mobilizing the revolutionary and human values of our nation.
In addition, the fact that there is a permanent struggle between the relations and values of socialism and the relations and values of capitalism cannot be ignored; the computerization of society with new technologies and the immediacy of communication, in a society that assumes changes in its economic and social model. In this context, there are manifestations of violence, drug use and differences in access to material needs, which are not naturalized, but which have an impact on the different educational contexts and condition the diversity of the students.
Despite this reality, the educational system does not lose its humanist bases, rooted in the deep pedagogical thinking that precedes us, considering the quality of the educational process the greatest challenge. Therefore, despite recognizing the strengths and the innumerable advances in the theoretical and methodological evolution of the guidance and monitoring process, it is necessary to temper it to the current situation, revealing the need to deepen theoretically and methodologically in the current model.
Therefore, it is proposed as the objective of this work: to characterize the current model of the guidance and follow-up process, from a critical analysis of its needs and strengths, a starting point for the improvement of the work of the Diagnostic and Guidance Centers, from the conception of a new model.
Materials and methods
The result presented is part of the pedagogical experiment, developed in the III improvement of the National Education System, specifically in Special Education, in order to raise the quality of the guidance and monitoring process, as an irreplaceable part in the work of the Diagnostic and Guidance Centers and support resource for attention to diversity in the educational context.
From the dialectical-materialist conception that supports the present investigation, the methods selected for its development were determined by the objective to be achieved. The research work was carried out on the general philosophical and methodological basis offered by Dialectical and Historical Materialism, a scientific conception of the world that allows the multilateral analysis of social phenomena.
In the theoretical order, the following were used: the historical-logical method, which allowed studying the evolution of the orientation and follow-up process, in its relationship with the current state of the problem and the demands of a higher quality educational process; the analytical-synthetic, was used throughout the investigative process to study the basic constructs and their dynamics, in addition to specifying the regularities of the implementation of the acting model for the orientation and monitoring process in the educational context and its relationships, based on the established theoretical-methodological guidelines and; the inductive-deductive method, which facilitated the processing and evaluation of information as well as the establishment of generalizations, taking as a reference the demands of a higher quality educational process.
From the empirical level, the following methods were used: the review of documents, to analyze how the process is conceived in different documents of a methodological and normative nature, as well as the psycho-pedagogical files; The survey of specialists from the CDOs and educational institutions, management structures and teachers, with the aim of assessing the knowledge and preparation of the agents involved to develop the process, as well as the criteria about the acting model, the search for information was deepened based on the criteria of the CDO specialists as rectors of the activity through the group interview. The analysis and processing of the information that was obtained through the application of the instruments that support the empirical methods was carried out through the percentage calculation and the presentation of tables and graphs, fundamentally, as well as the triangulation of the results to arrive at conclusions. Figure 1 shows the dimensions and indicators used.
Results
Based on the established guidelines and considering the dimensions and indicators, the instrumental system for the assessment of the current model of the guidance and monitoring process in educational practice was designed.
In the direction of the guidance and monitoring process, in the mastery of regulations indicator, 100% of those surveyed state that they know and use the methodology for the process. The use of the regulations for Methodological Work, as a governing document for the advice of educational agents, is only indicated by 31.92% of those surveyed.
In the document review, the results confirm the information revealed by the survey results. Only 14.45% of the documents reviewed reflect the successful use of any of the forms of methodological work as a way of counseling. The result of the application of the group interview to the CDO specialists, in relation to current regulations, reveals that 63.67% present deficiencies in their domain. 100% of the specialists demonstrate extensive knowledge of the requirements of the current model for the guidance and monitoring process, but have a poor command of the rest of the regulatory documents.
Table 1 shows the results of the surveys carried out regarding the planning of the orientation and follow-up process.
Table 1 - Percentage of positive responses in the actions to plan the process.
| To plan the activities of the orientation and follow-up process | specialists | structures | teachers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Defines the objectives according to the diagnosis, designs the actions as a guide for the operation of the team, together with the educational agents, the monitoring and evaluation of the results. | 37.14% | 20.67% | 5.33% |
| Plans on the basis of the diagnosis of the context, designs the actions as a guide for the operation of the team, monitoring and evaluation of the results of the process. | 17.14% | 27.33% | 28.67% |
| Plans and designs the actions as a guide for the operation of the team and the control of the results of the process. | 55.71% | 48.00% | 66.00% |
Through the documentary review, the planning of the process shows in 52.85% of the documents, which focuses on the operation of the team. In the results of the group interview, 89.50% of the specialists refer that the results of the work are not used as predictors for planning and 100% of them agree that the tasks they assume as main are not determined in the team; These respond to the management level to which they are subordinated.
For the execution of the orientation and follow-up process, through the surveys it is obtained that 33.17% of the respondents affirm that they comply with the planned actions and 76.53% of them with some of the planned actions. In the group interview carried out, 61.3% of the specialists report that they execute the process in response to the diagnosis of the students according to the stages, as a priority in their performance; No importance is attached to the involvement of other educational agents, revealing the same result in the review of documents.
Regarding the evaluation of the results, the results of the applied surveys are presented in Table 2. In the documentary review, it can be seen that 68.0% of the evaluation of the process is conceived from the evaluation of the evolution of the students and, in the same way, in the results of the group interview; It is striking that 96.15% of the specialists report that the evaluation actions are focused on the students.
Table 2 - Positive responses in the evaluation of the results of the process.
| 1.4. The evaluation of the results of the follow-up orientation process is carried out by assessing: | Specialists | Structures | Teachers |
|---|---|---|---|
| a) The transformations of the educational process for students with SEN. | 5.71% | 25.33% | 14.67% |
| b) The transformation of teachers and students. | 22.86% | 30.00% | 24.67% |
| c) The evolution of the students. | 82.86% | 40.67% | 60.67% |
When evaluating the advice of the educational agents, the result is that 100.00% of the respondents refer to using the orientation and follow-up visits as a way for the methodological work. In the group interview, the specialists declare as the forms of methodological work that they use to direct the process, in the first place, the orientation and follow-up visit in 100.00%; 94.29% refer to the methodological help visit; 87.14% manifest the use of the methodological office and 52.86% use the control to classes or activities of the educational process.
The indicator established to assess the direction of the methodological work that is carried out in the CDO teams, through the results of the surveys, shows that 82.86% of the respondents use some of the forms of methodological work, for the preparation of specialists according to diagnosis and in response to the demands of the students. In the group interview, the specialists affirm, in 65.71% of the interventions, that only on occasions these preparations are directed at actions to advise educational agents; They focus fundamentally on the preparation and transformation of teachers.
The indicator, direction of methodological work with educational agents, through the results of the surveys evidences the use of some forms of methodological teaching work in 66.18% of the responses, a result that is corroborated by documentary review. In the group interview, 100% of the specialists state that they organize counseling for educational agents according to the requirements of the stages of the process. They design the preparation based on the results of the evaluative cuts of the different levels, with great attention in the assurance of the preschool diagnosis and the readiness stage, as well as in the analyzes of the preventive work groups.
In the dimension: domain of psych pedagogical diagnosis, the application of the instruments revealed: regarding the indicator referred to the domain of the methodology for the guidance and follow-up process, in the results of the survey carried out the results represented in figure 2 are obtained. In the review of documents, only 36.71% of the records reviewed have evidence of care from the earliest ages. The evidence focuses on the 20-week evaluations and there is very little that shows the involvement of other educational agents. However, in the group interview, 100% of the interviewees attach importance to the timely identification and attention to students with SEN from an early age, considering that in this way the development of the child begins to be favored in a preventive way.
Regarding the indicator referred to the design of supports, the surveys show that only 24.36% of the specialists use all the resources of the system in the design of educational attention strategies, 7.64% of management structures and 24.36% of teachers. The document review allowed us to verify that only 20.33% of the educational attention strategies harmonize the resources available in the context as a response to the comprehensive diagnosis of the agents involved and the students. 62.33% use some of the resources and 17.33% few available resources.
In the group interview carried out, 100% of the specialists refer to designing and redesigning educational attention strategies independently, based on the diagnosis of the students, they use viable actions for the teacher as the main driver of the child's attention. In the question directed to the participation of the educational agents for the elaboration of the psycho-pedagogical files, 100% of the respondents recognize the responsibility of the CDO specialists.
Regarding the review of documents, 74% of the files show difficulties in the documentary evidence of the participation of educational agents. 100% of the specialists, through the interview carried out, explain the procedure of recording and filing the evidence from the actions that they develop directly with the students. 21.79% of them refer to demand from the other educational agents that participate in the process the evidence of the follow-up carried out. Likewise, they state, in 51.13%, that there are no mechanisms, pathways or spaces in the conception of work that allow this exchange.
100% of the respondents reported knowing the requirements and the methodology for specialized diagnosis and this is reinforced by the results of the group interview. However, in the results of the review of the psycho-pedagogical files, it is verified that the evidence of the deepening process is at a low level, the orientation and follow-up reports in 76.67%. In the same way, it is verified that the recommendations elaborated, in 34.67% of the files, have limitations, with greater difficulty the elaboration of the curricular adjustments.
Discussion
For a long time now, the scientific, cultural and technical revolution has endorsed the importance of the school in the new processes of formation of society. Progress has been made in recognizing that attention to diversity should be considered as an essential element in the process of education for all. Thus, instead of placing the emphasis on making reasonable adjustments to accommodate students with SEN in a static ordinary educational system, the idea of restructuring educational institutions in response to the needs and potential of all the students who attend them has been developed.
By the way, the term SEN, which is currently used to refer to the group of subjects, which were previously called in pejorative terms (abnormal, subnormal, retarded, blind, deaf, deficient, imbeciles, idiots...), is the result of an ideological, social and educational evolution. Currently, it is defined based on the support and resources offered to the diversity of students, in order to reduce barriers to learning and participation, contribute to achieving the greatest possible development according to its characteristics and favor equity and equal opportunities for all.
The definition of SEN acquires official international connotation from the Warnock report (1978), in which for the first time the use and implications of the terms that are awarded to different students are offered. Said report rejected the traditional model of special education, as well as the idea that there were two classes of children: some handicapped and others not handicapped.
The term SEN has been treated by multiple authors in the last decades. Valuable contributions to the subject have been made in the Cuban educational environment. Researchers agree that SEN may be related to causes internal to the subject; They also associate them with unfavorable external factors for development such as: poor socioeconomic, cultural and/or educational conditions, family dynamics, among others. They also commonly state that SENs are related to pedagogical aids or educational services that certain students may need to achieve maximum personal and social growth. In this sense, a classification criterion refers to the time that the person will need, due to their condition, the support or resources of the environment, which is why they are classified as: transitory and permanent (Altamirano et al., 2021).
SEN are considered transitory when they originate at some point in school life and through timely help, it is possible to dispense with support resources. Permanent SENs determine the social situation of development, throughout the person's life and are associated with disability. This category (...) "is a concept that evolves and results from the interaction between people with disabilities and the barriers due to attitude and environment that prevent their full and effective participation in society, on equal terms with others" (Lara, 2012).
Therefore, it can be affirmed that the SEN promote the demands of an educational process adapted to the variabilities of human development and the realization of adaptations of the educational system that contribute to the greatest possible integral development of each student.
Based on the above premises, it should be considered that all people throughout their school life require pedagogical, personal, didactic, technical or specialized aids, which allow the achievement of educational achievements established by the society in which they live. For the author, the SENs promote the demands of an educational process adapted to the variabilities of human development and the realization of adaptations of the educational system; considers them one of the biggest challenges in the current conditions of the system. This change is based on a new way of conceptualizing educational difficulties, based on the belief that the methodological and organizational changes that are carried out to respond to the particularities experienced by some students will surely favor others.
In this context, terms such as equal opportunities and equity acquire great relevance, but it is important to point out that they are often used interchangeably, although conceptually they are framed in different paradigms. If from the equality paradigm all people should receive the same treatment, from the equity framework people are different from each other and deserve treatment that eliminates or reduces the starting inequality and compensates for the manifestations that show through in the atypical development of personality, also considering that it is not always due to deficiencies or deficits.
Therefore, equity is sensitive to the diversity of human beings and requires treating each one "differently" in order to restore equity. In the educational system, each institution and modality of care must tend to equity, that is, distribute the means and support resources among all students in an equitable manner, not in an egalitarian manner (Ágreda et al., 2020).
Based on these approaches, it is important to consider that diversity is present in the human being from the moment that each person has their own evolutionary characteristics, different rhythms and learning styles, which in interaction with the context are manifested in interests, expectations, life projects, motivations, needs and potential individually. In addition to these manifestations, we can find others, such as intellectual, physical, sensory SEN, high capacities or those that manifest in sociocultural contexts with risk factors or vulnerabilities and negatively qualify the possibilities of development.
However, on many occasions the term diversity is understood from a limited point of view. It is appreciated only in those students who deviate from the norm, that is, it is associated with extraordinary and exceptional situations, almost always associated with difficulties or insufficiencies. This narrow point of view hinders a comprehensive educational response from the design of an educational process for all (Fernández et al., 2019).
Diversity, according to Álvarez (2016), is considered an intrinsic reality of human reality, it implies, at the pedagogical level, compensating for differences, which in many cases have become inequalities, whether derived from gender, life histories, learning rhythms, unequal development processes, unfavorable family environments, origin, gender, race, etc., and promoting in all what is unique in each one.
Diversity materializes from the wide range of qualities of the human race, as a wide spectrum of variations, manifestations, differences, expressions. According to Echeita (2019), diversity cannot be appreciated as a peculiarity alien to the human being itself, but rather each being is inherently diverse, each person has peculiarities and characteristics that make them different from others. It is not a question then of looking for strategies to attend to diversity, diversity is typical, common in the human race; therefore, it is about seeking strategies that favor the integral development of each and every one of the students who participate in the educational process, possibilities offered by the process of orientation and follow-up.
Orientation and follow-up is defined as:
…a process of detection, characterization, evaluation and intervention that is carried out based on preventive and participatory decision-making and materializes in educational care and training strategies aimed at transforming students, teachers, families and the community in order to achieve greater and better learning for each student and higher quality of the educational process (Mesa et al., 2006a, 41).
This definition of the process arose in the decade of the 90s of the last century, based on the evolution of the comprehensive psych pedagogical diagnosis in pedagogical practice. However, thanks to the advances of contemporary society, especially in the last 25 years, new perspectives of Special Education have been developed. The evolution of this has been characterized by gradually abandoning the medical or rehabilitative approach, to assume a predominantly educational approach, as a resource and support center. This approach not only makes it possible to improve the conditions of the educational process for students with SEN, but also transforms it for the diversity of students that are part of the system and, in the same way, affects the educational agents involved in it. In the search for constant improvement, which has characterized Special Education in the Cuban educational environment, the development of the orientation and monitoring process has elapsed; in direct relation to the evolution and development of the process of psych pedagogical diagnosis.
However, the development of the guidance and monitoring process in current educational practice is organized based on the model proposed by Silva & Ortega (2016). In this model, it is proposed for the implementation of the process, how to organize the specialists, the work stages, the inclusion criteria to select the routes to be used in the attention of the students identified with SEN, as well as the requirements for the registration of the necessary information in the elaboration of the database. In addition, the particularities for the psych pedagogical evaluation that is carried out with the Early Childhood students are proposed, as part of the process, being represented as shown in the following figure.
Note: adapted from Stages for the care of children with SEN (p. 32), by IL Silva, 2016
Fig. 3 - Representation of the stages of the guidance and monitoring process
However, it is opportune to point out that the quality of the guidance and follow-up process is conditioned by the timely identification of students with SEN based on the relationships and feedback established with educational agents. In the same way, management structures, teachers and specialists at all levels are responsible for detecting warning signs and identifying students with variabilities or peculiarities in development that condition SEN, for which school diagnosis and psycho-pedagogical characterization are used as the starting point.
The current model for the orientation and follow-up process at this stage, despite marking the results of the course closure as the starting point of a cycle, ignores the pedagogical delivery process; Management instrument that from the initial diagnosis, the continuous and objective evaluation of the students specifies the level of development reached by the students, their potentialities and needs, the characteristics of the family and community context with which they interact as a result of educational influences. At this stage, the application by the specialists of techniques and research paths is considered individually to update the database.
On the other hand, timely identification in Early Childhood acquires a special character. A consolidated way to do this is the links with the Ministry of Public Health, through the Maternal-Infant Care Program, neurodevelopmental consultations, ophthalmology, psychiatry, genetics, among others, which facilitates the identification of biological or organic alerts that could cause SEN.
However, the psych pedagogical diagnosis has evolved and surpasses the traditional tendencies of the evaluation of the cognitive sphere of man and its relationship with biological clinical aspects. At all educational levels, it is the responsibility of directors, teachers and specialists to detect warning signs and detect students with signs of possible developmental variabilities that could present SEN, using diagnosis from early childhood and at school as the fundamental way to do so.
The CDO specialists are responsible for guiding, through the actions of the methodological work, the procedures to achieve it; however, despite the model, reinforcing these guidelines does not establish how to achieve this outcome from conscious organization and planning of the CDO teams' work. Consequently, a contradiction arises between the importance of timely identification and the actions established to achieve it. The tendency to hold CDO specialists responsible for identifying students with SEN is maintained in the modes of action of educational agents, since it has not been possible through current requirements to develop actions with the necessary scope in this regard.
The second stage, directed to the design of the educational attention strategies, makes the CDO specialists responsible for the elaboration of each of the strategies of the students identified with SEN. This task that requires time, preparation and multidisciplinary work, considering the students to attend and the diversity of educational needs with which they interact, to respond comprehensively to the particularities of each one; however, it is not explicit how to materialize the actions that guarantee their quality from the dynamics of the process.
Therefore, each specialist creates the strategies for the students that he attends individually, the possibilities that the teams have from their multidisciplinary conception are wasted to specify causes and determine needs and potentialities in the development of the students subject to attention through a comprehensive assessment. Therefore, the tendency to design supports hastily is regular, actions that are not very measurable in results are structured, abstract for teachers, with marked weaknesses in the development of curricular adjustments and the optimal use of the resources of the educational system. Consequently, these do not always contribute to complement the cognitive efforts of the students, they limit the possibilities of establishing relationships for the emotional and motivational control of learning, the distribution of external and personal supports is impoverished through the shared responsibility of the educational levels, the family and other agents.
The implementation and evaluation of the results of the educational attention strategies is the next step. These actions are developed based on what is established in the Methodological Work Regulations. Specialists must be present at visits, cloisters, cycle groups and management councils, among other spaces. The key to the success of the process is considered to be the degree of priority that the educational levels grant to the orientation and monitoring of minors who require it.
In the first place, it is undeniable that these spaces foster work alliances and favor demonstration actions with educational agents at different levels, but it is also specified that, in order to achieve the evolution of the students, specialized treatments must be carried out, psycho-pedagogical techniques must be applied and, based on these results, guide families, teachers, other specialists and redesign supports. On the other hand, the particularities of the attention to Early Childhood students are added, which when it comes to initial evaluation or evaluation every 20 weeks, requires compliance with the regulations for diagnostic depth and the indisputable participation of all the specialists of the team.
In the same way, the evaluative cut must be carried out for which the following categories are used: Evolve (E), Do not Evolve (NE) and Exceeded (S). The student should only be considered surpassed when he reaches the evaluation of B in learning and behavior (Mesa et al., 2006b). The NE category is attributed to students who do not respond as expected to the actions and strategies designed. The evaluative cuts are made to correspond with the evaluative periods of primary education, without considering the rest of the educations.
Instead, this is done to all students who receive care. Determining value is given to the criteria of the specialists, but a procedure that allows the construction of possible explanations of the conditions and characteristics of the evaluated person is not conceived, an aspect that includes analysis and reflection through the integration of all the information and the conception that is possessed about the development of the student, his possibilities and the role of the educational process, reducing the conclusions to criteria focused on a category . In addition, there are no methodological guidelines to record the evaluation of the process from the qualitative point of view, despite being the moment of the process that defines decision-making; that is, based on the results of this evaluative cut, the students who need to pass to the specialized evaluation stage are defined.
However, before carrying out the specialized evaluation of the current requirements, it is established that the specialist responsible for the minor's care carry out a report on the historicity of the orientation and follow-up process. This summary contains all the information provided by the evidence accumulated during the process, allows to determine potentialities, needs and to elaborate a diagnostic impression as a starting point for the selection of the tests to be used.
Therefore, this fact leads us to consider, based on the postulates of the historical-cultural approach, considering the principles assumed by the orientation and follow-up process and the theoretical-methodological bases that are assumed about the evaluation, why not use the result of the analysis of the evaluative cut as a starting point for the formulation of hypotheses that support decision-making for specialized evaluation.
The specialized evaluation or diagnostic deepening, focuses on the application of specific tests and standardized techniques from each of the sciences that converge in the team's work, it is a provenly effective result, there is an instrumental system that moves from the simple to the complex. However, one must reflect on the fact that the students, when they participate in this stage of the process, have received attention for an acceptable period of time and only if they do not evolve, proceed. During this period, conditioned by the established guidelines, techniques and tests are applied to determine the real and potential state of their development. In the deepening process, specialized and standardized techniques are used, different from those of follow-up, but which equally evaluate development conditions.
The methodology used allows the investigation of specialists from each of the profiles of the science that it develops and, subsequently, the elaboration of evaluative and explanatory judgments with which, in the process of diagnostic discussion, conclusions are reached and the recommendations to follow are elaborated to raise the quality of care; then, why not use the techniques at the necessary moment as an important resource for decision-making and the effective redesign of the necessary resources or supports according to the particularities of each individuality.
However, it is necessary in this analysis to return as a point of reference to the fact that the complex world panorama has a direct impact on social reality and, therefore, on the current educational environment in our country. The Cuban educational system is involved in radical changes that promote a direction of the educational process, in correspondence with these circumstances, in addition to the scientific position that the author assumes regarding the term SEN. These elements refer us to the pathways used in the process for the care of students identified with SEN. These accentuate the interest of those involved in students with learning difficulties and some behavioral disorders; however, the manifestations of SEN transcend these limits.
There are students at all educational levels with variabilities in development that are manifested in socialization, emotions, communication, as well as those who present a potentially talented development; also those who from the family and community environment present social or family vulnerabilities that can condition a peculiar behavior, which demands specialized attention and are not considered in the current model as subjects of attention, giving rise to an inertia that qualifies the modes of action of the CDO specialists and influences the timely identification of students with SEN.
The methodological guidelines of the care pathways promote the control of the students from what is established to make the database, but they reduce the possibility of offering the necessary help to students and educational agents. They frame categories that limit the identification of developmental variabilities and create, on their conditioning base, limitations to improve the psych pedagogical diagnosis and the quality of the educational process in response to diversity.
It can then be argued that the model used for the guidance and monitoring process currently constitutes a sample of the theoretical and methodological evolution of the guidance and monitoring process in educational practice, which has shown results for the care of students with learning difficulties.
However, in the current conditions in which quality education is demanded for all, labels have lost their hegemony and the III Improvement of the National Education System is developed, in which it is assumed that success depends, to a large extent, on collaborative work between educational agents, based on collective construction, collaboration through methodological and scientific work to raise the quality of attention to diversity. The need for a rapid update of the orientation and follow-up process of the CDOs, an expedited path for psycho-pedagogical diagnosis and a support resource to raise the quality of educational attention to diversity is evident.
Referencias bibliográficas
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Received: December 10, 2022; Accepted: June 22, 2023
