Call for papers

ARGUMENTS

In 1994 the declaration of Salamanca committed the signatory countries, such as France, to the development of an « integrative orientation » in primary schools to educate « people with special educational needs ». In English, this same statement spoke of « inclusive orientation » and « inclusive orientation ». It therefore seems that at first, integration and inclusion were considered synonymous. The law of 11 February 2005 on equal rights and opportunities, participation and citizenship of people suffering from disabilities, also refers to the term of « integration ». However, a paradigmatic break has gradually developed between the two terms leading to considering inclusion as a more radical position where the school, or even society, « must organize itself to meet the particular need of all students, whereas integration implies the implementation of support and rehabilitation devices to adapt the child or teenager to ordinary school ». (Thomazet, 2010).

This approach requires us to rethink the educational system in a transformational way (Plaisance, 2010, Ramel, 2010) to renew practices in a process where technologies appear to be potential supports for both inclusive education and training.

Indeed, by shifting the perspective of transformation of the individuals towards the environment in which he evolves, this shift towards inclusion has extended the spaces and temporalities where the educational action occurs well beyond the school space and beyond its time.

About twenty years later and at the same time as the development of the digital technology, where did we arrive? … Do new technologies make it possible to think differently about the issue of inclusive education? …

Among the research on inclusion in the context of education and training exploring this perspective, those questioning digital accessibility are multiplying by focusing on both the contribution of mobile technologies and the contribution of virtual reality in learning situations. Thus, the interest of the interactivity and tactile features of tablets for learning to read and to write (Terrat, 2013, Terrat & Sajot, 2017) but also for the development or reasoning strategies in geometry (Petitfour, 2017) has been studied among schoolchildren with disabilities. Other works focus on didactic and pedagogical approaches to digital resources and their analysis in terms of accessibility and inclusive operationality (Benoit & Feuilladieu, 2017). Other recent research aimed at educational practitioners intended to clarify some perspectives for the use of technology aids for education practitioners. As Rousseau et al., even though the use of a greater variety of technological tools in the classroom can help to consider a variety of needs by students, the practice approach raises challenges (Rousseau & Angelucci, 2014).

Also, research on inclusion and on virtual environments is being developed both in the field of health and in the field of therapeutic education to complement treatments for patients with cognitive, sensory or motor disorders. As Feng (2008) points out, therapeutic games aimed at cognitive abilities can lead not only attention and memory, but also orientation in space. 3D immersive applications have also been developed, for example, to contribute to the improvement of cognitive functions for people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease (Mader, 2015). These various fields of application related to the issue of inclusion and digital technologies, whether centered on education in schools, universities or on health education, develop in an interdisciplinary approach. But in the field of education, what transformations are observed in inclusive practices with digital technologies? What developments in training can be envisaged from an inclusive society perspective? In fact, beyond the affirmation if rights,  the pragmatic register of action in the educational space (Nedelec-Trohel, 2015, Husson & Pérez, 2016) and its ecology, in training, the transformations might not be as syncretic as expected (Michailakis & Reich, 2009).

In the same interdisciplinary perspective, this conference aims to be a forum for dialogue between searches from various disciplines on a subject of study located in the field of education. This scientific event will be open to cross-views on results from research and practitioner feedback.

Therefore, we plan to treat the subject according to the four following angles, namely: virtual immersion and its contribution to cognitive and sensory development in inclusive education contexts, changes in teaching practices and the evolution of representations in the context of inclusive education as well as the scholar e-inclusion in an anthropological perspective of the uses of digital techniques and lifelong learning. These orientations contribute to structure scientific communication interventions that would like to be integrated into one of the four thematic axes:

• Virtual environments, learning and cognitive development in the context of inclusive education;
• Inclusive, digital education and teaching practice;
• Inclusion and digital techniques in the evolution of the representations of the actors of education;
• E-Inclusion and learning throughout life.

 A description of these four axes is given below.