When the old is stronger than the new: Introduction of constructivist methodology in a special education school

Abstract: In this paper we describe an action-research project that our research team proposed to a group of teachers working in a special education school. The main idea was to introduce new methods to teach reading and writing in their school, mainly constructivist-based ones on teaching the function of writing text. In this paper we focus on the process that as researchers, teachers and practitioners followed in order to achieve this goal, and the resistances we found in students upon introducing a new way of functioning in the classroom. From this analysis, we will conclude how these kinds of innovation projects must take into account that the change of the practices of an institution requires a reflection about what a change of this kind supposes for all the participants and their ecological relationships. Conversation Analysis (CA) can be a useful tool to create this type of reflection. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]