Abstract

The demand to build an increasingly inclusive school is one of the most important challenges today worldwide. The case of Chile is unique, since for decades the educational system has been regulated as a market, which has generated as one of its negative effects a permanent tension between the market and school inclusion, since the principles that both promote in everyday practice are in conflict. The objective of this study was to know the beliefs held by school principalsfrom different regions of Chile regarding inclusion policies. In methodological terms, a qualitative study was developed, which, in a first phase, consisted of applying 50 semi-structured interviews to these actors, while in the in-depth phase, a multiple case study was carried out with 4participants through observations. non-participants and in-depth interviews. Among the most outstanding results are the beliefs of the principalswho associate inclusion policies with a significant increase in their bureaucratic work, on the other hand, they declared that in daily management tasks they prioritize the demonstration of educational quality over the school inclusion and finally, from their beliefs, they propose that inclusion policies are costly in financial and symbolic terms, since diverse students are expensive to educate and represent a danger to the prestige of their schools in the respective local school markets.