MULTIGRADE TEACHING AND RURAL CLASSROOMS: PERSPECTIVE AND DATA FOR ANALYSIS

Teaching and learning processes in a large number of rural schools are usually characterized by multigrade classes. Thus, the reality of schooling in these spaces typically involves a diversity of ages, grades, and levels of curricular skills. The didactic strategies and programming applied by teachers are related to student development and disseminate aspects that are specific to the context of these schools. A study has been conducted in different European and South American countries to analyze and describe the basic methodological aspects of multigrade groups, and to determine whether these are transferrable to other nonspecific contexts. This paper presents the findings from one phase of the study where the main purpose was to document the initial nature of teaching practices developed by a sample of teachers in multigrade classrooms, and to subsequently select those schools that were considered amenable to developing teaching practices based on active- participatory methods for analysis. Findings show the perspectives of teachers in these classes on aspects such as interdisciplinarity, didactic strategies, time and space, curricular materials, technologies, and evaluation. The issues analyzed foster visualization of some of the elements involved in teaching and learning processes in rural schools.