Participation of Young People with Disabilities and Neurodivergences in Technical and Professional Training Centers: The Case of Four Chilean Institutions

Abstract

Vocational technical education seeks the training of the labor force, to ensure trained labor.      Access to it has become widespread; however, people with disabilities have little participation, being alien to the benefits such training brings. The purpose of this study was to describe the barriers and facilitators to the participation of young people with disabilities at this level of education. For which we worked with four Technical Training Centers (CFTs) using a mixed sequential approach that allowed, on the one hand, to know the proportion of students with disabilities in these centers and, on the other, to describe the barriers facilitators and challenges at the institutional, academic, social and infrastructure levels bring. Highlighting the willingness of institutions to provide the necessary support and the academic adjustments to meet the attitudinal barriers associated with a view from the deficit and the challenges in terms of infrastructure. It is concluded that it is essential to generate national and institutional policies that allow the characterization of this population and to generate awareness and training campaigns for educational communities. Finally, as future lines of research, it is suggested to collect information at the national level associated with other variables and to study employability.