The present paper aims to show some of the latest developments of the Brazilian part of an action research that has been taking place in Brazil, England, South Africa and India since 1998. The study focuses on the development of sustainable policies and practices of inclusive education. By inclusive education we understand
The processes of increasing the participation of students in, and reducing their exclusion from, mainstream curricula, cultures and communities. (Booth & Ainscow, 1998, p.2)
This paper is organized in three parts. In the first part we shall be describing how the study started and what are the current Brazilian policies regarding inclusion at the national and municipal levels of education. In the second part we will be showing what we have noticed at the schools level regarding such policies and trace a parallel with the actual practices we were able to investigate. The third part will take account of how the issues raised have reflected on the research project itself, with a view to foreseeing future developments.
The National Context
In Brazil, there are two educational networks: the State (U.K. terminology) or Public (USA terminology), which includes schools run by the three governmental levels, and the private, including schools run by private, religious and non-governmental initiatives. These networks possess educational institutions of all levels and modalities in Brazil. In terms of levels of education, the educational system is divided into basic and higher education, and complemented by four modalities of education: education of adults and youth; professional education; special education and distance education. The
Levels of Education
In the Basic level, there are three sub-levels: (a) Infant Education, attending children from 0 to 6; (b) Fundamental Education, compulsory for all children between 7-14. (c) Middle Education, for children between 15-18.
At around the age of 18 the students who wish to go to University participate in a National University Entry Examination (the "Vestibular"). After the graduation, if they wish, they move on to the Post-graduation courses (Strictu Senso or Lato Senso), also after Entry Examination Assessments. The final stage of Higher Education is completed with post-Doctoral Studies, for which the rules for acceptance are basically the same.
The Modalities of Education
These are meant to ensure provision for the different educational needs at the different levels of education. They include:
(a) Adult and Youth Education, for those who did not get or concluded their regular education at the appropriate age.
(b) Professional Education, a professional training programme for those who completed the fundamental, middle or higher education, or yet for those (adult and youth) already working. It is meant to be developed together with the ordinary education or in modes reflecting strategies of continued education.
(c) Special Education, aimed at providing education for students with special educational needs, preferably in the ordinary system, with the specific aids which might be needed.
(d) Distance Education, based on the development and dissemination of distance learning programmes to all levels and modalities of education and continued education.
Latest Trends Regarding Education
In the Governmental Platform, called Avança Brasil ("Move Forward, Brazil" ; Cardoso, 1998), the idea of the "minimum State", which has accompanied most of the neo-liberal policies, is quite clear. As regards education, it leaves no doubt about the governmental intention to transform the public (state) educational institutions in Foundations run by the private sector.
Special Education in the National Context
In spite of the legal efforts to make special education a modality which is to be present at all education levels, there is a special education system running parallel to ordinary education, in segregated settings, although the ordinary settings may also offer special education provision. The private network is responsible for most of the Brazilian special schools. These organisations are run by private initiatives (mainly parents), and form an extensive network of provision for disabled children throughout the whole country.
Despite this parallel provision, the Brazilian policy-making process has, shifted into a less prescriptive one in recent years, due to its political development into a more democratic system of government. Therefore, at least at a discursive level, it can be said that the perspective regarding special education has also changed into a more democratic one, one that implies special education to be part of the general, regular, ordinary education.
But are these features also occuring in practice? If so, does it happen in the whole of Brazil? It could be expected so, if one is to take account of the fact that the national policies should be reflected in the state's and in the municipalities' policies. We shall now turn to the presentation of the features of the Municipal Context, which is more immediately linked to the schools of this study.
The Municipal Context
Educationally, the City of Rio de Janeiro is mainly responsible for the provision of the Infant and Fundamental cycles of Basic Education. The system has 1029 schools, and something around 700 thousand pupils, representing nothing less than the largest educational system in South America.
Since 1993, the whole educational system of the City of Rio de Janeiro is undergoing the implementation of the educational proposal named Multieducação. The Multieducation proposal bases its principles on the ideas of four authors: Paulo Freire, Celéstin Freinet, Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget.
The Multieducation proposal aims at
(...) turning the school into a pleasant, democratic and competent reality for children and youth. (...) In the multiplicity, we search the unity when we educate with quality children and youth that are so different from each other. Such unity must predict the access to the same knowledge e values, which are rights of all. It must also predict the extension of the pedagogic discussion (...) which aims at the integration of the multiple languages with which all of us are educated and tuned to the time we live in and try to transform. To discuss citizenship based on the role of this Public (State) School implies conceiving it in its political, social and economic reality, acknowledging the roles the Public Power and the Organised Society have been exercising. (...) While respecting the unique and singular subjects in collective situations, this school starts from the individual meanings the students give to the relations in their lives (...) to come to the collective meanings about duties and rights in a critical manner. (Introduction)
As from February 2000, the Municipal Secretariat for Education adopted an education programme called "Ciclos" (Cycles). The "Ciclos" were drawn from the Education Programme of another Brazilian Municipality, known as "Escola Plural" (Plural Education), which is based on two main principles:
1º) The right to education goes beyond the assurance of a vacancy for the children in school. The solution is not "just" to place the children in school, but also to offer them conditions for their development, facilitating their success at socialising and acquiring knowledge.
2º) The construction of an inclusive school. In order for that to happen, it is necessary that the school organises itself in order to guarantee that the children remain in school as a developing being, progressively more involved in their own educational process.
The "Escola Plural" proposes cycles of developmental stages with some relevant features. One of them is to do with the fact that the teaching-learning relationship must be seen in its complexity, in the sense that it reflects a posture that involves ethics and solidarity. Another feature is based on human cognition and on the understanding of how children learn. For some researchers in this field, human cognition is not simply the notion that the person is "ready" to learn. It involves their zones of emotional and proximal developments, where teaching and learning, seen as a complex relationship between the objects and the subjects of the world, walk towards the same direction.
The organisational axe of the structure of the cycles is the student, so that three cycles are established, each with its own age-range characteristics:
a) Infant Education Cycle - from 0 to 5 year olds;
b) Fundamental Education Cycle, split into:Childhood Cycle, or First Cycle of the Fundamental Education - for children from 6 to 8;
Pre-Adolescence Cycle, or Second Cycle of the Fundamental Education - for children from 9 to 11;
Adolescence Cycle, or Third Cycle of the Fundamental Education - for children between 12 and 14;c) Middle Cycle, or Youth Cycle - for young people between 15 and 17.
A series of meetings with the two researchers co-ordinating the Brazilian part of the study have been carried out in three state schools of the municipality of Rio de Janeiro since January 1999, after a time of negotiation with different Departments of the Local Education Authority in order to approve the project and select the participant schools. In those meetings, a specific subject chosen by their staff is being studied and used as basis for identifying and reviewing their inclusive and exclusive practices and policies.
The preliminary findings show that a number of aspects influence processes of exclusion, being that the prime aspects identified are not directly linked to the teaching-learning process, but with more behavioural aspects, such as indiscipline (in two of the schools) and motivation (in the remaining school).
1. The Work Developed with the Municipal Secretary of Education and Administrators of the 7th Regional Education Co-ordination.
The contacts were initiated in 1998, when the researchers visited the Assistant of the Municipal Secretary for Education in order to officially present the project. Once the formal procedures to register the project were concluded, there were a few meetings to present the project to other sectors of the Educational System, and the engaged in a series of meetings with the actual participant schools.
At these meetings we could note the anxiety expressed by the headteachers of the participant schools regarding the project due to the possible changes it could imply and due to the recognised need the schools said to have for any possible help towards problem-solving. We could also perceive their receptivity regarding the project as a whole, especially due to the fact that it was clear to all that the project did not refer only to disabled children.
Besides discussing the progress of the project and the developments of the three involved schools, such meetings aimed at stimulating the Team of the Central Administration towards the methodology adopted in the project in an attempt to make them commit to the process, with a view to making it "sustainable" by the time we finish our participation. We thought that this would be the necessary strategy to ensure the continuation of actions in the future.
2. The Research Developed in the Schools
2.1- General Aspects
The action-research in educational settings has become a more frequent practice in Brazil. In more recent years, educationalists are expressing a higher interest in knowing the organisation of the society of their own times. The sociological perspective has gained support in our schools, which in turn, together with the pedagogic progresses and the educational technologies, have been trying to know and analyse the "culture OF the school" and the "culture IN the school". In other words, the academic community has been examining the set of behaviour, attitudes, values and rules within the schools, which result from the schools' institutional trajectory as well as from the influences their communities have on them and from the ideology that pervades de decisions of the educational policy in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro.
Throughout this year working with the schools, we were able to clearly notice the external cultural influences: those resulting from the Multieducation - which guides the pedagogic practice in the municipality -, and those resulting from the contexts in which the schools are located. Internally, we could see that the schools have their own culture, product of their own history, of their values. The "culture OF the school" was very clear in their political-pedagogic projects.
Action-research implies researchers performing an active role in problem-solving and in the monitoring and evaluation of the actions which result from the problems. Such methodology requires that the relationships (ethical and technical) between researchers and the people who belong to the researched context be of a permanent and loyal kind, with mutual acceptance and respect to the natural existing idiosyncrasies.
Under such aspects, it seems to us that we have reached our aims, be it for the caring manifestations towards us on a personal level, be it because of the reports we heard about the barriers encountered, towards which we were invited to exercise a collective reflection, or yet because of the progresses we identified, particularly in relation to the atitudinal aspect.
We were able to see the internal tensions and those resulting from the articulations with the Regional Education Co-ordination or with the Municipal Secretary of Education. It seemed to us that the Central Administration is very distant from the "periphery" where the teachers, the students and their parents are. The latter ones tend to think that the technical staff of the Municipal Secretary of Education and of the Regional Education Co-ordination work less, are authoritarian and not democratic.
The proposal of the "Ciclos" polarised our last meetings in the schools to a point in which we had to postpone what we were doing initially: the reading and discussion - theoretical and practical - of pedagogic matters. Although this type of organisation has been successfully implemented in other Brazilian cities, the teachers with whom we have been interacting feel "betrayed" because they were not consulted previously to the implementation of the "Ciclos", feeling that they simply received the "complete kit" without discussion, which left them feeling unprepared. The meetings guided by this theme were very polemic, with severe criticisms towards the Municipal Secretary of Education.
Having considered the theoretical aspects of action-research , we classify ours as being the participant type, initiated after a survey of the barriers identified and from the interests of the community of educationalists of each school. In other words, besides the formal organisation of the schools, the day-to-day lives of a school a complex world of human relations is built. Such relations are not confined to the classroom limits, nor can they be resumed in the exchanges that take place in the school premises.
In order to better know and evaluate such exchanges, a systemic interpretation of reality is needed (Burden, 1981, in: Bassedas et alii ). The General Systems theory applied to the school allows one to detach three important aspects of the school: the Structure (its organisation, division of functions, limits and hierarchies); the Process (communications, rules, moment in which the evolution of the system is, its trajectory, etc); and the Context (working conditions, including the ideological ones, the beliefs, the interpretations of the world and the expectancies all the subjects involved have).
We will now present our report regarding each school in particular, pointing to the barriers identified and showing the results of our researches, followed by an overview of the main barriers we encountered at the three schools together.
2.2 - School Carlos Delgado de Carvalho
Of the three schools this is the smallest one. The school caters for approximately 460 children and functions in two shifts of 4:30 hours each, for children of the Infant Education cycle and of the first half of the Fundamental Education cycle (thus children from approximately 4 to 11). The school also has two special classes for mentally retarded children (with seven children in each class), one Learning Acceleration class and one 181 class (for children older than 8 but still in the 1st grade).
In its Political project , entitled "I, a conscious citizen, heading towards the success", the school identifies the acknowledgement of the individual as a citizen, working towards critical, positive and democratic development by means of education with quality, aiming at enabling the individual to transform himself and his life context. An education based on the constant exercise of autonomy in a continuous process that becomes possible through teachers' professional qualification.
In its pedagogic project, entitled "Walking Together", the school expressly manifests its concern with the lack of habits and pacific attitudes working together, each persons' behaviour being one of mutual respect and co-operation, integrating all the individuals as components of an equalitarian society.
The group decided that the theoretical base of our reflections would be the theme indiscipline in the school, given their large demand around such theme. We chose an inductive text for our theoretical reflections and to debate the barriers faced: the work of Teresa Cristina R. Rego, A indisciplina e o processo educativo: uma análise na perspectiva vygostskiana, (the indiscipline and the educational process: an analysis based on the vygotskyan perspective), one of the texts of a book about indiscipline in the school .
The paper served well as inductive of discussions. There were certain occasions in which we had only read one line or a paragraph, and the teachers would present concrete situations of their day-to-day lives at school, allowing us to collectively examine the mentioned barriers.
The blame on the family was one of the aspects that most appeared in the debates about violence and indiscipline in the school. It was possible to us to conduct the reflection in the sense that finding the "guilty ones" may be a comfortable way, but very little productive. It seems that we succeeded, at least with some teachers, in making them understand the interactive nature of the undesirable behavioural expressions of some students, in which the pedagogic practice has a large influence.
Lack of belief in the future of the students was another aspect we noticed as manifestation of possible accommodations of some teachers, in a deterministic perspective of the Brazilian reality, marked by the unacceptable social inequalities in which we live. We attempted to show that the reconstructivist philosophy needs to be reviewed in a way that if we succeed in developing critical and reflective minds in our students, we could be building a more optimistic scenery.
2.3 - School Margaret Mee
This is the most different of the three schools of the study, in what concerns its organisation. It has a whole day shift, which starts at 7:00 am and finishes at 17:00 hrs, for 590 children of the first cycle of the Fundamental Education, making up the school's 21 groups from kindergartens to fourth grade and acceleration class. The morning classes are usually dedicated to the subjects of the core curriculum, such as Portuguese, Mathematics, Geography, History and Sciences. The staff is normally there for the day, except PE teachers, who attend two or three different schools in a same day.
The school's pedagogical project is entitled "A Arte the Viver em Paz" (The Art of Living in Peace). This title was chosen in order to reflect the world's conditions of war, illnesses and miserability which the school believes is also reflected in its community. In the project, the human being is clearly considered in a holistic approach and the integral (whole day) education is the greatest challenge, which enables the education of people in this holistic way.
The objective of the project is to create opportunities for self-knowledge, development of interpersonal relations and respect for the environment for school students and professionals, establishing a link between school and community in order to join a joint venture for Peace, thus developing a work which aims at improving life conditions of the students and their families and, as a result, to build up the social knowledge
The staff states that in this school emphasis is given to behavioural changes in the students, respecting their learning level and understanding that the construction of knowledge happens continually, and that every student has a rhythm of their own.
Like with the neighbour school, the teachers' choice was about the theme indiscipline in the school, understood as a priority to be "tackled" and as one of the most serious barriers that teachers face on their day-to-day life in the school.
The paper chosen to guide the reflections and debates about the barriers was the same mentioned before. It seemed to us an interesting idea to work with the same paper in both schools and compare the effects in each school.
At Margaret Mee school the analysis was certainly faster, be it because it has a higher number of teachers who completed or are doing post-graduation courses - and as such have more experience with group discussions, be it because this school has more academic characteristics, or still be it because the head-teacher is also a psychologist, with a good deal of experience managing groups. This was the only school in which we were able to finish the paper and begin another one, this time offered and suggested by one of the teachers: A criança e o contexto sócio-familiar e escolar (The Child and the Socio-familiar Context), a chapter by Nilo Fichtner in a book organised by Prado, 1997 .
At the end of the first text it was commonly agreed that the time destined to our participation (around 2hours per month) would be used to group reading and to debate case studies. The teachers were stimulated to bring their "cases" to the group, based on information about the life of the children, about their attitudes and relationships in the school - emphasising the classroom life - and with some academic production of the children. There were about 14 cases reported, all of them with family rejection, aggressive behaviour and learning difficulties.
Like in the other school, the blame on the families was one of the striking aspects in the debates about violence and indiscipline in the school. In the school Margaret Mee we had the impression that there is a higher number of students living in absolute poverty. Some of them (14 students) live in the school - through a special Programme in collaboration with the Municipal Secretary of Social Development - and others are "forgotten" there by their parents.
2.4 - School Vitor Meireles
This school was especially chosen to take part in this project by one of the Co-ordinators of the Helena Antipoff Institute, the Department of the Municipal Secretariat responsible for organising special education provision in the city. It has quite a few students integrated and two special classes, though it is, in the eyes of the Institute, one of the schools which are most reluctant to integration. In fact, this reluctance was also shown towards the project and its beginning: of the three schools this is the one that took the longest time to provide us with the feedback needed in order to proceed with the work proposed.
Vitor Meireles school caters for approximately 700 pupils, in two shifts during the day: from 7:15am to 11:45am, and from 12:45pm to 17:15pm. It also has a School-Community Committee, made up of parents' and teachers' representatives, and the school head-teacher. In its pedagogic project, entitled "A perspectiva interacionista agindo e interagindo na relação do homem com o meio ambiente" (The interactionist perspective acting and interacting in the relationship between man and the environment), the fundamental theme is "The Environment".
What the school proposes is a "re-encounter with the environmental and human nature, aiming at the total participation of the individual in a constant, conscious and critical interaction of man with himself, with others and with his environment so as to make it possible for him to evaluate and value himself, his environment and the people of his society."
Although the students' indiscipline was also a strong theme raised as a barrier, the teachers' option on the school Vitor Meireles was to work on the theme motivation to learn. The choice seemed suggestive to us, especially when we think of the initial reluctance from the group, which was eventually substituted by the motivation to learn together... the text chosen was Motivation, extracted from a book of Educational Psychology that has basic notions about the theme, as it was requested by the group.
Among the discussions we had together, we can highlight the following aspects:
The change already mentioned about the "Ciclos" mobilised all in that school in a way that our latest meetings had to be organised around this theme. We watched together the video Programmes organised by the Municipal Secretary, with the presence of educationalists from other localities. The initial reaction by the school staff was to deny the Programme and to criticise the lack of participation of teachers in the decision-making process.
2.5 - An Overview
In the three schools, the main barriers to learning, which we identified and grouped according to the structural, processual and contextual criteria are:
2.5.1 - Structural
2.5.2 - Processual
2.5.3 - Contextual
One of the greatest barriers we have been facing is lack of time. The schools can only meet on a monthly basis, when they have their official Staff Development Day set by the Municipal Secretary of Education. On these days, they have a whole day - or a morning, depending on the school being a whole day or a two-shifts - off from teaching, and the children do not attend school.
After a time developing the project, it seems to us that the people committed to the administration of the education in the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro are very interested in developing this project because of their belief that it can contribute to promoting some effective changes. However, communication seems to be a great problem at all levels of the organisation of the system, and this may jeopardize any major intention to promote changes.
During this time, it was possible to notice how the change of members at the administrative level, according to governmental politics, interferes in the decision-making process to the extent in which it modifies a whole pedagogic proposal in essence. The election of governments who belong to the opposition discontinuing what the previous government was doing in many levels of social provision is a clear example. In this sense, the issues regarding the movement for inclusion progressed and had set backs in many moments of the educational history.
Also, the relationship between inclusion and special education is still predominant. The gap between the discourse and the practice - so common not just in Rio de Janeiro - seems evident. Sometimes there seems to be a general "tiredness" of administrators, and this slows considerably the up-taking of actions to overcome the complex barriers. Fortunately, these are temporary situations that do not lead to giving up on the ideals. As for the questions we raised regarding the schools, it appears that similar issues still apply to the schools. To what extent do they believe in inclusion? How far goes their commitment to practising it? What can their own previous history teach us about participation and exclusion? What is more or less feasible to be undertaken in order for the improvement of inclusion and discouragement of exclusion to happen?
In an attempt to redress these questions, we can say that some situations are not very new, but point to a certain surprise when we think of what can still happen. There is lack of balance among teachers regarding their theoretical knowledge (about children's development and learning, for instance) and regarding the students, when they show how much they do not know about the individual possibilities of their pupils. There still is not the habit of reflecting about each individual and their "real" learning needs, but just a patterned perspective of the whole group they teach. Such lack of information can be extended to the school community, at large unknowledgeable of their own rights and, as such, in disbelief about social inclusion.
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