2002). It aims to prevent the social vulnerabilities inherent in school failure and drop out by promoting an academic excellence that supports the weakest in acquiring a common base of knowledge and skills while encouraging the strongest to surpass themselves (OECD 1999; Thélot 2004). In contrast to the opposition that distinguishes the capable students from the incapable, this perspective prefers to distinguish the typical learner from the atypical one, whose incompleteness requires the mobilization of resources to support their potential in order to provide them with the resources needed to overcome, if necessary, the difficulties they face in fitting into their environment (Ebersold 2019). This is leading UNESCO’s International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) to redefine the understanding of educational difficulties. Instead of the ineducability suggested by an essentialist vision of these difficulties, it suggests a developmental perspective relating them to a particular educational need, that may be more or less complex, which can be met through an accessibilization of the school environment targeting the singularity of individual dynamics in distinct approaches with an overarching aim (UNESCO 1997). This shift in perspective thus calls for priority attention to be given to learning processes and their contextualization in order to examine the conditions that enable vulnerable learners, such as those with an intellectual disability, to acquire skills in reading and arithmetic as well as social and emotional competencies (INSERM 2016).
The creation of school environments accessible to the greatest number and adapted to each individual is intended to enable all pupils to exercise their talents and develop their potential. Above and beyond the adaptation of practices to presupposed needs, it aims to develop the potential of learners by building the optimal learning environment required to enable them to engage actively in processes and adapt to changing contexts. It finds its protective character in the empowering effect of modes of pedagogical organization, that is, in the identity-related resources acquired by individuals to define themselves and become actors capable of authoring their futures (Rose and Meyer 2002). This empowering effect lies, for example, in the ability acquired by learners to seek, process and manage information flows, adapt to changing environments, be driven by a spirit of collaboration and mutual aid, and be autonomous in learning and open to the world (Bechetti-Guizot 2017; France Stratégie 2017). This empowering effect also lies in the academic success and social and professional enrollment of the students targeted by measures to combat school failure. Moreover, it consists of pedagogical organization methods concerned with the students’ proximal development area to enable them to develop their skills in an optimal manner. The development of diagnostic assessments for all pupils, which can be observed in many countries, is aimed at identifying the educational needs of learners at risk of failure at school, and the means and methods needed to meet them. In France, they are designed by the authorities as a tool for regulating learning and as an instrument of pedagogical adjustment, designed both to help pupils to learn and to guide teachers in their efforts to identify pupils in difficulty and/or at risk of failure at school. However, the accessibilization of school environments is framed by the articulation of three complementary approaches to accessibility detailed in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1. Approaches to accessibility across educational policies (adapted from Ebersold et al. 2019). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/ebersold/accessibility.zip
1.3.1. Preventing vulnerabilities through a universal approach to accessibility
The accessibilization of the environment is rooted in a universal approach to accessibility, which proposes the use of the most vulnerable as a reference point to prevent any need for further adaptation and ensure the success of the greatest number of people (Alaksen et al. 1997). This universal approach to accessibility builds upon the mobilization, a priori, of a diversified set of teaching and learning means and procedures that take into account the cognitive and social heterogeneity of pupils (Guptill 2015). It focuses primarily on students’ learning strategies, their needs and expectations, and promotes the appropriation of information and skills to make the targeted content better understood by the greatest number of students (Feyfant 2016). It consists of differentiating practices, carried out on a daily basis by the teacher in his or her classroom, with the aim of creating a context conducive to individual learning through heterogeneous teaching strategies conducive to the implementation of differentiated processes for the appropriation of knowledge and a personalization of educational pathways (Meirieu 2000; Przemycki 2008). They consist of a differentiated mobilization of content, a diversification of working modalities (individual, team, collective work) and support or production processes according to the rhythms and cognitive levels of pupils without, however, modifying the level of difficulty of the tasks to be carried out or the evaluation criteria for the targeted skills. They may be based on a reverse pedagogy, replacing the standardized and directly transferable pedagogical model with a model that seeks to “reconsider the overall organization of the teaching sequence, to question its temporality and spatiality, and to establish more stimulating learning conditions for learners – closer to their world and likely to lead them towards greater autonomy in their relationship to knowledge” (Bechetti-Bizot 2017, p. 19). They can also be based on an assessment of pupils’ cognitive and methodological achievements, enabling teachers to construct a teaching plan that will reduce the gaps between the overall level observed in each class and the expected level, and to manage the heterogeneity of school profiles. In addition they can be based on the creation of easily accessible documents, online or offline tutorials, and so on, that enable the work required of pupils to be contextualized, preparing them for the more complex tasks to be carried out later.
1.3.2. An integrated approach to accessibility targeting the fight against educational failure
The accessibilization of the school environment is organized in a complementary way around an integrated approach to accessibility that takes into account the inequalities in situations, caused by the difficulties teachers face in taking the diversity of educational profiles into account (OECD 2019). It consists of an intensification of support arrangements by the school in order to prevent any disruption of equality caused by failure or dropping out. In most European Union countries, these are support measures targeting pupils at risk of failure at school, with the aim of repeating what has been done in the course, but at a different pace and using different teaching methods (Eurydice 2014; Lescouarch 2014; Ebersold 2016). Such measures are intended to enable the targeted pupils to master their academic expectations and are, for the most part, the responsibility of school principals or teaching teams (Reverdy 2017). They may take the form of personalized support measures outside the classroom. In France, the PPRE, or “projet personnalisé de réussite éducative” (personalized educational success plan), aimed at pupils who have insufficient mastery of certain skills and knowledge, offers educational support including diversified and differentiated pedagogical practices, of adjustable duration, according to the progress made by the pupil. The PAP, or “projet d’accompagnement personnalisé” (personalized support plan), proposed by the teachers’ council, the class council or the family, targets pupils with lasting educational difficulties originating in one or more learning difficulties and requiring pedagogical adaptations so that they can continue their school career with reference to the objectives of the cycle. Lastly, the PAI, or “projet d’accompagnement individualisé” (individualized support plan), envisaged by the headteacher or school doctor, targets pupils requiring accommodations (follow-up on medical treatment or a protocol in case of emergency) owing to a disabling health disorder (chronic pathologies, food intolerances, allergies).
In most European Union countries, these support measures also take the form of adapted teaching in special classes. In France, pupils with serious and persistent educational difficulties that have not been remedied by preventive, aid and support measures can benefit from adapted general and vocational education aimed at individualizing
