Rethinking Teaching for Inclusive Education in a Postmigrant Society

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_16How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Teacher Professional Development; Inclusive Education; Post-migrant Society; Relational Universalism; Systemic Inequities; Teacher Adaptability

Abstract

This study analyses educators’ perceptions of their adaptive capacity in postmigrant classrooms across three domains: culture, multilingualism, and equality. Using a mixed-methods analysis of focus group data from 36 in-service teachers in Madrid (Spain), findings highlight the general perception among teachers of moderate levels of adaptive capacity with significant domain-specific variation. Equality and social inclusion are the most emphasised domains, while bilingualism is the least addressed. The teacher-level correlation between the number of adaptive practices themes, registered in the transcriptions of the focus groups, and the number of system critique themes was non-significant, suggesting that these two factors function as partially independent dimensions of professional development. Teachers’ narratives revealed an extended perception of systemic inequities — including resource disparities between public and semi-public schools, limited institutional support, and disengagement among vocational students. Despite these challenges, teachers frequently relied on improvisation and relational engagement to mitigate standardised curricular limitations. Findings challenge neutralist models of universal education that may perpetuate exclusion for migrant students with limited economic capital. Relational universalism is proposed as a framework to foster inclusive education, contingent upon systemic reforms including enhanced funding, professional development, and socially responsive policy interventions.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - José Luis Gómez Ramos
AU  - Sergio Silva Vicente
AU  - María Teresa Becerra Traver
AU  - Manuel Lucero Fustes
AU  - Manuel Montanero Fernández
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/23
TI  - Rethinking Teaching for Inclusive Education in a Postmigrant Society
BT  - Proceedings of the Conference of Growing up the Future: Education for Sustainability (GROUFES 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 188
EP  - 200
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_16
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-760-6_16
ID  - Ramos2026
ER  -