Generations of the Community Perspective in Today’s Inclusive Education

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the emergence and development of the so-called community perspective of inclusive education. Our work aims to provide a conceptual framework where this community perspective is conceptualized, and the traits that characterize it from the viewpoint of researchers and academics that specialize in the subject are identified. To this end, a qualitative documentary review of an interpretative nature has been conducted through a systematic review of the relevant international literature from the last 40 years. This process has enabled us to demonstrate the existence of different generations within this community perspective. In this sense, the first generation that has been identified is supported by the organizational perspective of inclusive education, while the second generation is strongly influenced by what is nowadays known as inclusive research, which incorporates the ethics of inclusion, the voices of those involved and participation as identity hallmarks. While there is an evolution in the perspectives themselves, it is also concluded that they converge towards a common trunk that is defined by the collaboration, support and role played by the community in the articulation of inclusive cultures, policies and practices.

1. Introduction

The community perspective of inclusive education assumes a close, complex and contextualized view of the school and its environment on the basis of commitment, collaboration and social transformation [1]. It is, therefore, defined as the perspective that implies the recognition of the capacity of schools to respond adequately to the diversity of students (students with different socioeconomic backgrounds, different learning abilities/disabilities and different ethnic or religious identities) [2]. In this context, a series of proposals to be considered as creative from a sociological and historical point of view of the teaching–learning process are developed. Characterizing and analyzing the different approaches to inclusive education are some of the issues addressed in this paper. Furthermore, the restructuring of support through collaboration and participation become crucial aspects for the formulation of educational and socially transformative practices that facilitate the transition from exclusion to inclusion [1,2,3].

Although it is based on the premises of a transformative approach [4], the community perspective moves further in order to adopt a more humanistic and social orientation [5] than the neoliberal proposals, which focus on efficient schools and on the improvement of efficiency [6]. Instead, it reclaims the importance of school–community relationships. In this manner, those who work for inclusion from a community perspective do it through social and educational proposals that intend to guarantee equality and social justice, as they also claim the commitment and role of education in the transformation of society. This objective, which is at the very core of inclusive education, is addressed differently by different perspectives and approaches. Thus, while other perspectives on inclusive education may be associated with the placement of students with disabilities into ordinary schools, the community perspective intends to transform the support model and the response to every student, since diversity is understood in a wider sense, according to the principles and foundations of inclusive education [7].

A documentary review of the scientific literature on the subject has allowed us to identify the origins of the community perspective towards the end of the 1980s, when works related to practices of this nature were documented, particularly those related to cooperative learning proposals, whose crucial elements will be described later on. A decade later, with the development of works related to collaborative cultures, other works emerged, largely oriented to social psychology [1], which would sketch the scenario of the community perspective of the 1990s, which was mainly focused on support practices and teacher collaboration.

In order to start outlining the community perspective that we are dealing with here; we may begin by referring to a set of works with shared identity traits [8,9,10,11]. All of them adopt Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory with regard to the construction of learning, as well as other sociological, psychological, pedagogical, philosophical and political theories [12] that are related to equity and equal opportunities in education. For this reason, all of these proposals incorporate the relevance of cultural psychology in the pedagogical and social sphere, where communication as well as language and the ways in which thought or mediation are constructed become major axes. This means that inclusive education, when viewed from a community perspective, is based on the recognition of the value and need for the existence of a bond between people and their environment [3]. From this position, an active and meaningful learning concept that is linked to development, and that results from a teaching practice that is socio-culturally mediated by adults or among peers, as well as a vision of school entities as being something flexible, open and collaborative, are assumed. A paper published by Parrilla [1] in 2022 clearly pointed out the specific elements that allow us to distinguish the main perspectives of inclusive education, namely, an ethical perspective, a social perspective, an organizational perspective and a research perspective. She also pointed out that a community perspective was emerging. No conceptualization has been developed for this community perspective since then, hence the relevance of this work, which aims to provide one.

The Vision of Community Perspective through Collaborative Support

The commitment to what is known as collaborative support is the common denominator among those who share the community perspective, where the conception of inclusive support is not therapeutic, remedial or focused on the “student’s problems”, i.e., it is not an assistance [10,13,14]. Hence, we consider it necessary to provide a description at this point. Thus, in the context of inclusive education, support would comprise all those activities that contribute to increasing a school’s capacity to respond adequately to the diversity of the backgrounds, abilities, performance and motivation of their students [15]. From this perspective, collaborative support is configured as an option of the technical support model, which is in itself a barrier to the development of inclusive education [16,17]. The limitations of the traditional support model are as follows [14]: (a) Restricted views on individual differences and, in general, in relation to a deep understanding of the meaning and practice of inclusive education. (b) Cultural, organizational and institutional conditions for support at schools, which are perpetuated by an expert, external and individualistic conception of support. (c) The very profile of the support professional and the tutoring teacher, ascribed to a type of work that is not based on collaboration and sharing.

Collaborative support consists of community support that is built from a counseling approach [18]. This approach is conceived as a non-therapeutic and non-directive form of intervention in which the members of the socio-educational community, in a collaborative manner, explore the possible solutions to the problems that have been detected. This is in agreement with a social model [19] in which the sense of belonging and being are attached to a wider social structure, and where the establishment of friendly, safe and mutually trusting relationships is crucial. As such, support is developed in the very scenario where it is required and by incorporating responses that address the school, the curriculum development and the subjects in an integrated manner. Thus, in the context of inclusive education, community support is a united action, which means that it is carried out through the deliberate relationships between different individuals who contribute by putting their academic/professional expertise or life experience knowledge at the service of the community [3].

This form of support is built from a collaborative problem-solving approach, which involves the individual’s awareness of the problematic situation and the effective use of natural supporting networks that provide assistance towards its resolution, even if the subject continues to play an active role regarding the decision-making process [14]. The potential actions within this model that could be considered as community support include a number of interventions that encompass the community (teachers, families, students), the social network (i.e., neighbors, club members and other groups such as friends and classmates) as well as dyadic and individual actions.

2. Materials and Methods

This paper presents an analysis of contents [20] that could be conceived as a qualitative documentary review of an interpretative nature, linked to the ongoing project, “What are we forgetting in inclusive education?”, a collaborative research project implemented in Western Andalusia (PID2019-108775RB-C43). In this paper, a secondary research study, related to the preliminary or reflexive phase of the project, has been carried out with the purpose of clarifying the conceptual framework in relation to the role of the community with respect to the development of inclusive education. This research is a fundamental step towards the construction, by the community, of an informed map of priorities to subsequently, design, develop and evaluate specific community action projects that enable the expansion of inclusive education according to the demands from schools and socio-educational initiatives. Although the main objective of research in this field is to address projects that intend to improve inclusive education on the basis of a community perspective, the objective of the present documentary research is to bring to light the theoretical framework of reference. Hence, during this phase of our research, our interpretation has been oriented towards shedding light on and enriching the theoretical and methodological reflections [21] on the development of inclusive education for the purpose of its improvement. Thus, our research intends to give an answer to the following questions: How can the community perspective of inclusive education be conceptualized? What are the different ways of articulating it in practice?

In relation to the research method used, it must be indicated that, while content analysis is not unanimously conceived as a research technique or method, it should be understood here as “a set of procedures aimed at producing an analytical meta-text in which the textual corpus is represented in a transformed way” [22] (p. 181), even if, in this case, the outcome has a hermeneutic (interpretative) rather than an analytical character. Two aspects that confer sense to the methodological and epistemological orientation of this content analysis [23] are (a) the relevance, variety and nature of the documents analyzed, and (b) the axis of the analysis, which, in this case, is centered on the evolution of the community perspective of inclusive education.

Three indexing databases were used as documentary sources: the WOS, SCOPUS and Google Scholar. The documentary searches covered the time frame that spans from the dawn of the conception of inclusive education as such (1990) until 2022. With regard to the nature and variety of the materials used for this documentary research, it should be noted that they were scientific articles, books and communications in thematic congresses and reports in the particular field of inclusive education, with all of them written in English or Spanish. The selection of the documents was based on specific keywords, and particularly on the combination of “inclusive education” + “community perspective” and/or “collaborative support”. The inclusion and exclusion criteria were the following: the relevance of the authors, the number of citations by other authors and the reputation of the publisher.

With regard to the analysis of their content, the following 5 steps have been observed: (1) Implementing specific narrowing-down descriptors. (2) Assigning a coding system to the documents. (3) Establishing specifications for the selection of the databases to be searched. (4) Systematic deep-down searches into the selected databases. (5) The categorization of the information collected over the process.

The initial search resulted in a total of 336 documents, which were subsequently reduced to 58 after applying the selection criteria explained above. Starting from there, a number of documents that focused on the object of our study (collaborative support) were selected, and the analysis of their content led to the identification of a common epistemological basis that would allow us to refer to a community perspective of inclusive education, defined through two interrelated key indicators: the highly valued significance of the community and the adherence to a collaborative conception of the support processes.

The configuration of the role of the community from a systemic vision in relation to schools [24] was then taken as the vector of analysis: within schools, between schools and beyond schools. This led to a reduction of the data that clearly exposed a chronological configuration that comprises two stages (

Table 1. Data categorization.

Dimension	Main Descriptors	Characterization
1st Generation Inclusive education for the community (origins in the 80s and 90s)	Promotion and development of naturally supporting networks.	Support in the classroom. Peer support. Cooperative work from the perspective of the students.
	Work or support groups between teachers or schools.	Collaborative support in the school. Interprofessional collaboration.
	Orchestration of teaching and learning through collaboration.	Mediation in context Teaching strategies: project and cooperative work. Family and school. Team teaching.
2nd generation Inclusive education in and from the community (origins from 2000 until today)	The school at the service of the socio-educational community.	School–community relationship: (a) Limited to the families of the educational center itself; (b) Includes the participation of teachers, families and students through support processes.
	The school, an integral part of the development of the community.	Reducing inequalities (development of social justice).
		School and community at the same level, building transformative processes together.

), which we have referred to as “generations” insofar as they represent an evolution over time, which, although a common base is shared, each generation exhibits clearly distinctive aspects.

The first generation, from 1990 until 2000, was based on the promotion and development of naturally supporting networks and a vision of inclusive education for the community, i.e., inclusive education as a means to foster the development of the community towards the implementation of key values, such as equality. The second generation, which spans from 2000 until to 2022, exhibits two lines that have developed in parallel—inclusive education in and from the community—and where the boundaries between school and community have been blurred.

3. Results

The different generations of the community perspective of inclusive education.

As previously noted, the community perspective of inclusive education dates back 40 years. Although the first references to this terminology in the field of inclusive education date back to the late 1990s [25], our documentary analysis reveals that there are earlier scientific works that already describe these kinds of practices in the international context [26,27,28]. Our review of the literature regarded collaborative and creative responses. This means that they are constructed with the collaboration of different educational agents and that they represent new forms of educational interventions. However, not all the practices that have been identified, which will be described below, are alike. They have distinctive features, even if they coexist during the same periods of time. We have called these periods “generations”. Two generations have been identified; while they share certain identity axes related to collaborative support, these generations are defined and characterized by their different focuses of interest and frameworks of action. Two meta-analyses on the development of inclusive education [1,24], both of which represent turning points with respect to their conceptualization and which are more than 10 years apart, will be taken as the respective starting point of each generation for a deeper investigation of their progression and evolution. In addition, three analytical vectors will be employed as follows [24]: within schools, between schools and beyond schools.

An in-depth analysis of these works clearly differentiates two tendencies. They are not only determined by the obvious time gap between one work and the other, but also by the characterization of the school–community relationship, and how it is experienced in each case. The early works [1] present the community perspective as an option where one can speak of collaborative support that involves different members of the community. If we make an analogy with works focused on inclusive research [29], we could affirm that what we are dealing with here is inclusive education for the community. Therefore, these studies are not focused from an inclusive research perspective, but rather they investigate inclusive education, which is something very different. Inclusive research not only has the study focus of inclusion, but it also has a participatory and emancipatory character. This implies that the community itself adopts the role of a researcher [30]. Subsequent works [24] revealed a clear evolution of their approach to the community, which is no longer interpreted as being solely focused on supports and schools, but rather on the role played by schools within the community, as well as the role played by the community for the school, clearly opting for reciprocity. We have identified this formulation as the generation of inclusive education within and from the community. The core of this evolution is related to the fact that it is a developing approach that remains open, and it is constructed based on the research development in this field. Whilst the first generation adopts clear influences from an organizational perspective, the second one is linked to the development of the research perspective, where the principles of inclusion are embraced, so that it can be denominated as inclusive research [30].

3.1. The First Generation: Inclusive Education for the Community

During the late 1980s and especially throughout the 1990s, a series of proposals were developed, which, from a socio-cultural perspective, focus on the integral development of the individual and the community by promoting processes of change and reflection. From these bases, it seeks ways that, through social interaction, cooperation, personal associations and affinities, eliminate the barriers that compromise inclusion. These approaches recognize schools as communities and seek their restructuring through the supporting processes that ultimately intend for the development of a culture of diversity—one that treasures and celebrates differences—and mutual support. All of this would form the basis of an inclusive education in the process of recognition and expansion.

Among these proposals [1], we could distinguish those that promoted natural supporting networks and those aimed at the creation of support groups among teachers. We also consider that we can ascribe other proposals to this line, specifically, those which were more focused on the teaching–learning processes themselves, but with the same common goal of the transformation of society and schools, which is sought after through the curriculum itself or through the restructuring of the actual teaching in the classroom— in other words, those that focus on orchestrating learning from a collaborative perspective [15]. Within this line, we should highlight proposals such as the so-called Roma Project, where López Melero and Cuomo—in the 1990s—made a commitment to cultural transformation through research–action processes within family and school contexts, supported by the project methodology and certain cooperative strategies as the basis of a proposal that was rooted in a socio-historical perspective [11]. Likewise, we identified, among this set of proposals, co-teaching as the equivalent of the student cooperative processes, but for the teaching staff, and as a formula to implement deep modifications in the orchestration of the curriculum [15] through the collaborative design, development and evaluation of teaching strategies [31]. Within this first generation of the community perspective of inclusive education, several approaches can be differentiated as follows [1]:

• Those that take the classroom as a reference point for the promotion of natural supporting networks;
• Those advocating for the creation of work or support groups between teachers or schools and groups of teachers;
• Those oriented to orchestrate learning from the perspective of collaboration.

In a paper from 1999 [32], it is revealed how this perspective of inclusive education, which we have denominated “for the community”, implies a commitment between reflection and action, mediated by research processes and collaborative actions. This commitment would be based on theories of organizational development [33], some of whose bases we have previously mentioned (contextualized teacher training, self-managed organizations, collaboration, interprofessional work proposals, etc.), as well as on support models from the perspective of collaboration and mutual help. Every line of this community approach emphasizes the value of community members both as individuals and collectively, while it is assumed that every person learns through interaction, in an educational and social dialogue. Assuming a community perspective in education is at the core of educational change. This should be understood as an opportunity for the stakeholders involved in each educational institution (advisors, support teachers, tutors, management team, students, families) to learn and work together towards solving the difficulties that arise in their educational and social context [14].

3.1.1. Promotion and Development of Natural Supporting Networks

Proposals that are based on the promotion and development of natural supporting networks aim at creating friendly communities, where their members feel accepted, understood, safe and appreciated [34]. They uphold the importance of mutual learning through interaction, while emphasizing the value of differences as a source of knowledge. Thus, they rely on peers (those who belong to the same community and with whom they share a language and a contextual meaning based on shared experiences) as a valuable and friendly support resource and, for that reason, they valorize students themselves, as they help and are helped. This is known as a natural supporting network, i.e., one developed from the components of a particular environment in a natural context. Some of the proposals in this line represent classroom strategies, while others have evolved towards global programs. Several of these are presented below.

The circle of friends [26] is a proposal for support between children during their integration process into a community, based on the objective of making them aware of the need for friendship of newcomers; it pursues the creation of a network that provides friendship, support and care to their peers. There is also peer tutoring [27] as a support strategy during the teaching–learning process, based on a cooperative paired unit that is structured as a peer-to-peer support process.

On the other hand, strategies involving the power of peers [35] have also been identified. These encompass peer systems or peer support committees, as well as the presence of student voice at school committees. Peer systems are configured as a range of different cooperative strategies, such as cooperative groups, peer tutoring as described above or mixed systems of shared teaching between students and teachers. Furthermore, peer support committees are structures where students themselves design, develop and supervise support and transition plans aimed at setting up support networks for other peers entering the school.

Other relevant proposals are those articulated through systematically organized cooperative learning [36,37]. These programs are articulated at three levels: group cohesion, teamwork as a resource for teaching and learning and teamwork as content to be taught, as well as, especially, ref. [38] its reading from the perspective of inclusive education.

3.1.2. Support Groups between Teachers or Schools

Proposals that are based on the creation of work or support groups between teachers or schools focus on the teachers themselves or on other educational agents. They seek to redistribute responsibilities by reconstructing egalitarian relationships between the members and by recognizing the value of their mutual support. Various international and domestic studies, some of which are presented below, are in line with this approach.

The most consolidated example corresponds to teacher groups. These were developed in the American and Canadian professional contexts. Oriented from a normative approach, these support groups comprised teachers and/or educational agents as an option to carry out the evaluation and diagnosis of a massive number of students who had been referred to service agencies outside the school. These professional collaboration groups provided the schools’ teachers with a space where they could address the challenging situations in which they were immersed, and where they could try to articulate a response through a problem-solving model. Three trending lines can be distinguished, which essentially differ based on the composition of the support team. In one line, the groups are formed by teachers, as equals or peers, such as inter-faculty assistance teams [28] or teachers in need of teachers [39]. There are also lines that advocate for a composition according to existing needs, such as instructional support teams [40] or teacher support teams [41]. The last of the lines encourages mixed teams, comprising teachers and non-teacher members, where works associated with support teams [42] and local school teams [8] are predominant.

In England, there are also teacher support groups [8], which are based on the American and Canadian models. This type of structure follows the formula of a process that can be adjusted to the characteristics of the context (primary and secondary schools). This begins with an awareness of the need for support and of the meaning of inclusive support and education, according to the existing need to articulate the performance of support groups, and concludes with the decision-making process for the conformation of the group. This process is followed by the development of processes for the divulgation of the support group, and then by the designing of interventions for cases in need of help, which are followed up [10,14].

3.1.3. Orchestration of Learning from a Collaborative Perspective

As we pointed out earlier, we can distinguish another, third type of proposal of a community nature, which, in this case, is oriented to the orchestration of learning from a collaborative perspective. These proposals assume peer support and mediation as essential elements, which imply other ways of approaching the teaching–learning processes.

The Roma Project is, at present, a proposal for education on values, in the sense of a commitment to a social and educational transformation towards a culture of diversity [43]. This project makes use of action research as a methodological tool to address the need for the transformation of family and school contexts based on the specific challenging situations that are detected. Through a cooperative methodology and educational projects—also at the family level—an action plan is designed to address those situations. One of the particularities of this project is the mediation exerted by a figure known as the critical friend. Particularly significant is the fact that this project has been recognized as an educational model based on trust, respect for differences through coexistence and the renewal of pedagogical practices.

Co-teaching, also known as teaching partners, joint teaching or team teaching, is another example of this type of work. Co-teaching involves going beyond the perspective of providing support for the resolution of problems, but it goes deeper into what happens in the classroom from a pedagogical point of view. Co-teaching is oriented more towards diversifying the possibilities of the teaching actions in the classroom from a methodological point of view. It assumes an intended and voluntary presence of a pair of teachers of the same or different professional status, who jointly undertake the design, development and evaluation of the teaching–learning process. These working pairs develop facilitating and scaffolding actions in the classroom, besides supportive, informative and prescriptive actions that allow for the reorientation of practices through the observation of results and the feedback of the image [44,45]. This approach also allows for the articulation of a range of strategies and activities that can be developed simultaneously within the same space: the enrichment of the curriculum contents, discussions with a variety of voices, etc.—in short, the deployment of the principles of diversification [31].

3.2. The Second Generation: Inclusive Education in and from the Community

The community perspective of this second generation comprises a set of proposals that have been developed since the first decade of the twenty-first century and have continued to the present day. This second generation incorporates, in a harmonious manner, the contributions of the proposals that are already present in the first generation; in other words, with an inclination towards socio-educational transformation, which, in this case, comes with a strong commitment to the community and a clear orientation towards the same. Some of these proposals are developments from those of the previous generation.

Projects with a community orientation [24] overcome the limitations that derive from views and actions that are exclusively focused on the school itself, and which sometimes involve the instrumental utilization of the community. These authors indicate that the proposals that they themselves included in the first generation are still ascribed to an institutional approach [46], which was referred to in the previous section as being linked to the organizational aspects of inclusive education, even if the last set of proposals also have a clear impact on the didactic processes.

This new generation allows for six possible interpretations of inclusive education from the community perspective [47]:

• Those that endorse social inclusion as an agenda for change, aimed at reducing or removing inequality;
• Those that renovate their conception of schools as communities of action and foster their transformative potential;
• Those that review the practical references of schools and communities in order to develop new frameworks and new practices;
• Those that restore participation as a core value, especially to promote the relationships between families and schools;
• Those that leverage opportunities for the restructuring of schools to develop more inclusive formulas for school–community connections;
• Those that rethink relationships to develop, negotiate and sustain alternative forms.

These can be grouped [24] into two main lines of inclusive education in this perspective, both in and from the community. The former envisions schools being at the service of the socio-educational community, and the latter considers schools as an essential and integral part of community development. Both lines share the idea of the need to open schools to their environments.

3.2.1. Schools at the Service of the Socio-Educational Community

Two very different perspectives coexist with regard to schools at the service of the socio-educational community. On the one hand, there are those which articulate a school–community relationship that is focused on families and, on the other, there are those which have social justice as their main focal point [48]. We have classified mutual support groups [2,3,49] within the first category, since we believe that, although they rely on community support, as attributed to the previous generation, they should be considered as a further development that incorporates the importance of the (extended) community in the wider sense that is herein proposed.

Some examples of the approach to which we are referring can be found among those school proposals that emphasize the role of the family in the school itself [48] as a way of expressing the meaning of what constitutes the community for schools. These studies illustrate the importance of family engagement with the school, even if only from the perspective of student performance improvement.

Mutual support groups (MSGs) between teachers, families or students [49,50] have been included again in this second-generation perspective, given that, although they originate from the community support that has been ascribed to the previous generation, they represent an evolution that incorporates the importance of the community in a broader sense. This is because new collaborative support structures have been identified [8], not only among teachers, but also among other groups that make up the school, such as families and students, who collaborate in the resolution of problems of a diverse nature. This implies a more intense and extensive involvement by the community.

Within the context of inclusive education, a prominent rank should be acknowledged for those schools that are oriented towards social justice, which rethink the role of schools in their communities and specifically with regard to social and educational transformation. The main school models that adhere to this line [24] are the extended schools, the learning communities and the projects based on a conception of inter-school networks. Also included in this trend are those schools that undertake the commitment to solidary collaboration with the community as their pedagogical strategy, among which service learning stands out, and, more specifically, solidarity service learning.

The term extended schools encompasses a set of diverse initiatives that have been identified mainly in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom [51]. These schools adopt the logic of openness to the community by symbolically breaking down the walls that separate them from their environment, offering themselves to the community as a resource and, in many cases, acting as community centers. Six types of extended schools have been identified: (a) those that provide extracurricular and leisure opportunities, (b) those providing general community facilities (e.g., drop-in or counseling centers), (c) those offering early-years services such as day care or pre-school facilities, (d) those developing family support or learning support for their children, (e) those providing health, youth or social services and (f) specialists offering high-level facilities in areas such as sports, arts, ICT or business.

The proposal of learning communities, as a socio-educational transformation project based on the participation and dialogical organization of schools and classrooms, is already known worldwide [50,52]. Learning community schools focus on fighting exclusion and maximizing learning, based on the recognition and appreciation of the members of the educational community (families, teachers, students and administrative and service staff). This leads them to redefine the entire organization of the center, from the processes that are aimed at raising an awareness of the value of diversity to a community approach to goals while implementing a process of school transformation. In this sense, they redefine the relationships between the members of a school community; the management of the center is articulated through commissions and the teaching–learning processes are based on cooperation and collaboration. Finally, schools that embrace solidarity as a pedagogy through learning and service are also positioned in this generational category [53,54]. Currently, centers of all stages and educational levels, from pre-school to university, are configured as an international network that promotes this pedagogical proposal, which merges socio-constructivist classroom strategies with solidarity service projects for the community. For many academics and teachers in general, service learning is not only a methodology, but a way of understanding education. Its greatest value lies in the fact that students become aware of community problems by themselves, and design, develop and evaluate projects that intend to respond to the needs of their environment, while seeking social alliances to do so. From this perspective, the students themselves become proactive agents for the social transformation of their community.

Other proposals with a greater presence in the socio-educational field are those based on inter-school networks [55,56,57,58]. These emerge as a joint route to address inequalities, where certain formulas for collaboration between schools are established. They bring together experiences and actions of various kinds, such as the exchange of teachers between schools to transfer practices, the creation of families of schools or the provision of support services and programs between schools, leveraging each other’s resources. According to some studies, they enhance the variety of knowledge, experiences, references and opportunities on which local improvement projects can be built [59].

3.2.2. Schools, an Essential and Integral Part of Community Development

The line ascribed to this type of proposal takes situations that are on the same plane as the school and the community, which are recognized as necessary and interdependent, as their starting point. They rest on theories of community development that stem from diverse sources [60], including ecological and social justice theories. This is a critical perspective that assumes, among others, the educational postulates by Habermas and Freire [24]. This type of work illustrates how schools and communities are shaped by social changes, as well as structural and political inequalities, which reciprocally influence people’s lives both inside and outside of school [61]. Both contexts must be responsive and adaptive in the search for progress towards more inclusive educational contexts and a more ethical and sustainable society, which establishes an engagement link between schools and the community, with the aim of reorienting them to achieve its purposes.

This implies that working from this approach implies a necessary link between schools and the community [62], assuming that, for an inclusive approach, both have to settle and promote the basic principles of trust, respect, recognition and participation, as well as develop their capacity to respond culturally, to articulate flexible time and to reconsider the distribution of power and resources.

All of this leads to a model that is characterized by the down–up approach and the development of local eco-community strategies, which place participation at their core [62], and which grant value to the voice of each participant regarding, on the one hand, decision making, and, on the other, the design, development and evaluation of processes [63] as the basis for the transformation of society and schools. As a result, a series of networked structures of an inter-institutional nature are emerging [64].

4. Conclusions: Contributions Made by the Community Perspective to Inclusive Education

The community perspective has been scarcely defined in the scientific literature on inclusive education. In fact, only 336 works have been identified in this regard. It has been observed that this perspective is not constructed separately from other perspectives, such as the ethical, rights, social or organizational ones, which is consistent with the findings by Parrilla [1]. The findings of the present study reveal that the community perspective is making important contributions to the development of inclusive education, as was also noted by Boyle and Allen [65]. Among these, the commitment to community action in order to move towards more participatory schools and social models stands out. In this way, the community perspective of inclusive education also encourages us to revise organizations and the relationships that are developed within them [56]. Collaboration, mutual aid as peer support and the reformulation of support itself as a process based on collaboration are the keys to this perspective [2,13,14]. From this perspective, reflecting and rethinking upon ourselves entails an enormous responsibility in terms of education and social empowerment, since we return the power to the contexts, in the confidence that these are capable of providing creative responses that arise from a collaborative construction. In this sense, everyone is to assume that they have the capacity to be a supportive agent, while recognizing the contributions made by everyone else.

This review has also revealed that we can distinguish different categories of proposals around this community perspective: those that address the improvement of the school and what occurs in them from the principles of collaboration (for the community); those that propose to incorporate the community into schools (in the community); and those that are developed in community scenarios where schools are included as another agent of transformation (from the community).

In turn, the proposals that have been referred to as inclusive education for the community are oriented towards three areas: the promotion of natural supporting networks (either through friends, family or cooperative work in the classroom); the development of work or support groups among teachers or schools; and those aimed at orchestrating learning from the perspective of collaboration, which develop proposals for educational mediation, project-based learning, or co-teaching.

On the other hand, those proposals that refer to schools at the service of the community also have different orientations. Thus, we can find those that advocate for the engagement of families in the school as a means to improve the performance of their children, those that consider each member of the center as a support agent (mutual support groups) and those that are oriented towards the development of social justice, among which we can identify extended schools, learning communities and schools that develop pedagogies of solidarity or inter-center proposals. A fourth development of this perspective, and the least widespread, connects with local community development projects, where the community perspective and the dialogical component of inclusive education move forward and side to side.

The conclusions that we have reached from this work reveal new possibilities for collaboration between educational agents, families and schools. However, this study suffers from some limitations, such as a scarcity in the scientific literature that identifies practices that could be defined as a second-generation community perspective. Although, on the other hand, as we have explained above, these possibilities tend to diversify. Our documentary review has allowed us to evidence that the practices on which the community perspective of the first generation are based have been systematized in the scientific literature on inclusive education, while those corresponding to the second generation have been less studied. This could be due to the fact that the practices that are associated with this generation occurred during a period in which the concept of inclusive education itself was “more open” and not unequivocally linked to an educational response intended for the so-called students with “special educational needs” [7]. It is also true that practices that correspond to the first generation have been systematized in research works on inclusion, while those of the second generation are more closely linked to inclusive research, where the scientific production is more limited as it is also a developing model.

The community perspective, with its specific way of understanding and developing support in schools, tells us about different generations in terms of the evolution of inclusive education. These generations reveal processes that are built over time, although they are always articulated based on the same essence. These processes are oriented towards educational formulas that are centered on the humanization of the intervening parties, as a guiding principle of relations with the other, as well as their mutual recognition and appreciation, in addition to paying special attention to the social redistribution of knowledge, and without forgetting at any time that all their processes are oriented and articulated towards the objective of the common good.