Pedagogical Essays: How to construct a school for everybody?

REPORT Pedagogical Essays: How to construct a school for everybody?

Lino de Macedo ArtMed ISBN 85-363-10366-2 Porto Alegre: 2005.

Responsible for the report: Margarita Victoria Gómez This book is presented as an essay on a learning strategy and method with the objective of theoretically exposing elements that allow enhancing and orienting a detailed study on an inclusive education. This work is part of a broader project, the result of lectures held throughout Brazil, and it is expected to reproduce, in a systematic way, the knowledge and experience of elementary school teachers that support those lectures. The author places the theme epistemologically within the context of the current school system, of the selective-traditional pedagogy, with the teacher of the elementary education that works in such a school, but tries and offers a distinct pedagogy based on the Piaget method.

Lino de Macedo, the author, is a Brazilian educator and psychology professor and researches human development within the area of teaching psychology, being strongly influenced by Piaget. In this book he makes an in-depth analysis of the inclusive education principles, of its diversity, the considerations made and the teaching qualification needed for its accomplishment. To the attentive teacher, he offers the elements for the planning of a program project for an inclusive school.

From a social-cultural and pedagogical point of view, Macedo presents two dimensions of school procedures: the selective and the inclusive procedures, being the first one understood as proceeding by similarities and excluding the differences, while the second proceeds according to the differences in order to include them into the learning process. Thus, the author attempts to place the reader in front of his work as an author "authorized" by his experience. In his educational vision, he tries to encourage the teachers to take over the authorship of their experiences. The consciousness of their actions would allow the renewal of their commitments as well as their responsibility as teachers.

The author emphasizes some fundamental axis that have to be analyzed and even be constructed during the elaboration of a program: 1. criticism of the elementary school; 2. the possibility of constructing an inclusive school; 3. the challenges for the teaching

practice; 4. how teachers should learn and which are the qualifications needed for the contribution to this education; 5. which new elements have to be pointed out for school planning; 6. the prospective of the constructivism method in order to overcome learning problems; 7. forms of evaluation in the school; the daily performances in the classroom; 9. discipline within the educational process; and 10., the different aspects of the elaboration of a programming project. The given bibliography is not less important for continuing to learn about this theme.

The criticism of the current elementary school based on a culture of similarities and at the level of "should" is still present in the way of thinking and in the lecture of teachers, even if the discussion of society aims at a school based on the culture of differences. In order to contribute to this debate, it is necessary to know what the educators' learning process is or has been, as it also is fundamental to understand that the teachers currently are interested in this knowledge and want to know how the actual traditional school operates and, more than that, they want to know how the continuous progression is accomplished. Currently teachers want to learn and not only teach, as they do not handle those moments separately. Investigating this question, the author considers the room where they learn as very important, the class room, a place that the teacher should also experience as a pupil, opening up to the unknown and being aware that he does not know everything and that he needs a permanent personal and professional education. In this proposal, the context in which the teacher learns is being considered, whether that be in class rooms, or within an institutional and continuous education project, or the relationship with colleagues, with the parents, the school community, the participation in lectures, courses, seminars and/or conferences.

The learning activities taken over by the teachers are interdependable. Thus the observation and the thinking on their actions, the analysis of the way of regulating the social and cultural interchanges with colleagues and pupils, the choices and the way of acting, the context in which they learn, their prior knowledge and the researches done by themselves and by others, all of this contributes to their education.

The teacher acquires the qualification and the ability necessary to do his job in the school through his education. Three different qualification types have to be considered: a) the one related to himself; it can be used within any context or situation. This type of qualification favors the culture of similarities with those who possess those similarities, excluding those who do not have them, representing both the acquired qualification and the lost one. b) The one related to an object, from a constructivist point of view, where the

objects represent resources that contribute to the construction of knowledge in a given personal and sociocultural context of usage for a given accomplishment. This resource, or potential, is manifested in function of the usage that the pupil or the teacher may have with respect to what he assimilated from the maximum it offers (a current example can be given by the computer), and finally, c) the subject's qualification in related terms and expressed in various day-to-day situations in life and school. This qualification allows him to articulate both the known and the unknown elements that only occur in interactive contexts as a result of collective productions.

In practical situations it might be easy to take qualification for ability and the author draws the attention to this difference: the qualification is the ability for a general disposition, while the ability is a qualification for a specific disposition (p. 71). Within the relational prospective, both the ability and the qualification are necessary.

An important contribution of Lino de Macedo's book is the systematization of what he understands as relational qualification. According to him, it is the one that, as a general quality, coordinates, structures, and articulates the multiplicity of simultaneity, the convergency with the uniqueness expressed in the competition, which again implies that the teacher knows how to deal, within a certain period of time, with different factors on different levels. This allows him to be stimulated and to stimulate others to learn within the context of differentiated pedagogy that includes rich and poor children, with or without learning problems, and of several colors, races and physical conditions. The strategies utilized for work in differentiated schools include, among others: learning situations, critical situations, games in workshops or with tutelage. The autonomy, the involvement and the cooperation between teachers and the school community, with their differences and existent singularities, are of fundamental importance.

To make the decision to introduce innovations on the part of the teacher, among others, is an important part of the process and represents the axis of the differentiated pedagogy because, in addition to mobilizing resources, it also activates the personal and institutional knowledge and acknowledgement schemes. And these schemes would therefore reinforce the personal self-esteem and the institutional identity. To make a decision under uncertainty, competition, confrontation, conflict, opposition, implies taking risks and deal with fears, be it in their activities in the class room or on an institutional level.

From this point of view, to be qualified means to be creative, inventive, to have a sense of criticism, to be mobile and to make use of schemes that allow organizing the

thought, the actions and conducts that make physical, social and logical-mathematical experiences possible. It also means to know the "how" and "why" of teacher's actions that orients the activities in a rational manner.

In the day-to-day school environment it is believed that the teacher should manage well the school time and space, the rhythm, the narratives, the unexpected, the obstacles, as well as choosing well the objectives and the duties, apportioning contents, building up relationships through daily contact (also considering those who contribute to a negative aspect of a situation) and evaluating, thus making use of the relational qualification. From the constructivist prospective, for this purpose, the author shows concern with regard to the articulation of differences in a proposed differential program that requires an efficient and meaningful communication in the class room.

To do things in a class room involves anticipation, regulation and observation, which are the necessary procedures for the planning of the school semester and year.

During a determined time, the teachers, coordinators, directors, education secretaries and all the persons that were called for this purpose, gather in order to begin to construct a proposal for the inclusive school, based on the reflection about the school culture, the usual experiences and the sociopolitical situation of the elementary education. Thus, acknowledging the existent excluding mechanisms, the author suggests a constant school planning that would consider the contents, disciplines and the pupils with their cognition characteristics and their physical and social characteristics.

The author considers the planning as a reflexive practice, where the anticipation is used for making regulations in the present that will orient a future work with the pupils and that will allow the wanted transformations.

The one, or those, who are responsible for the regulation will take care of the dayto-day school activities, of the coming and going, the redoing, the suggestion of alternatives, the correction of errors, the acceptance of criticism. Having an interdependent vision, he or they will promote the dialogue, the rewriting, the criticism and the reformulation of a pedagogical project. Within this process, the author still considers it important to watch the evolution of the pedagogical project by making an assessment.

Observation, regulation and evaluation are the elements of the planning system he proposes.

In this proposal the author also considers the learning difficulties of the child as an epistemic subject constructing knowledge from the schemes coordination of actions, notions and/or logical (classifying, ordering, making inferences, etc.) and mathematical

operations (quantifying, adding, subtracting, etc.), by understanding them as being provided through learning within a certain culture or society where the genetic heritage of organic and mental health is considered.

According to Piaget, the "epistemic subject" has problems to solve, procedures to build, and understanding to formulate. In successive development stages the child evolves, and this does not happen with children that have learning problems, resulting in frustrated expectations and desires to learn.

The psycho-pedagogy reflects the interdisciplinary needs of the learning process, where the dialectic subject and object are adamant, complementary and inseparable.

From the constructivist prospective, the author presents two visions of the learning problems: as a difficulty, the challenge to learn (in a relation of interdependence); and as a complaint or frustration (in a relation of independence/interdependence). The first refers to an internal dimension of the subject's development, and the second refers to an external question, known or desirable for the others. As the psycho-pedagogue recognizes these framings, he can think about the learning difficulties of the child and choose more adequate pedagogical or therapeutic intervention procedures. The author utilizes the journey and the labyrinth metaphors for the analysis of the child's learning process.

At the assessment, the author presents six forms with the purpose of provoking a reflection on the question in the teacher. He considers being important to know about the wishes and values given by the participants of the learning process. The evaluation based on inferences through indicators allows a change of attitude. The functions of the evaluation are: selecting, diagnosing, anticipating, orienting, certifying and regulating the child's developmental process of knowledge and learning. These functions are accomplished in a complementary and inseparable way, allowing controlling the tensions during the learning process.

According to the author, the day-to-day within the class room requires dealing with concrete practices as well as with others that are not very visible and that produce indiscipline, dispersion, disorganization, planning problems, as well as waste of time, space and money. Therefore the records, observations, reflections, consultations with colleagues, complaints, etc, are welcome as elements that can provide favoring actions to the teaching work as well as to the learning process within the interdependence factor between time, space, objects and school relations. Thus the space, the place where the objects are kept, where the gatherings occur, where an object has to be returned to, where to dispose/select and where the object was forgotten, alls this is important and helps

thinking and organizing the learning process. The scheduling time for appointments, calculating the duration, anticipating actions within the context of a project, giving priority to tasks and remember actions that are interrelated with others, also is important. The day-today in school, the objects used by the teacher and the pupil in the class room are fundamental for the development of qualification for their usage. Within this context, in addition to the relationship teacher/pupil and the interaction between the children and with their tasks, the relationship subject/object also is important. For this reason, the relationship implies involvement, to take responsibility, to cooperate, care and live together, and this could generate autonomy in the child's development during the learning process.

In this proposal of an inclusive school, the author considers the discipline in the educational process relevant. After analyzing, reflecting and enumerating definitions on a proposal of school discipline, he allows himself to suggest a (discipline) related to time, space, objects and relationships in an interrelating way within the knowledge process. The function of this discipline would be the mediation during the knowledge process; it would be serving the involved feelings and values, allowing the subjective encounter of what one is and what one wants to be. Thus, to form discipline in a child involves the norm, the attitude and the value in the accomplishment of activities within the day-to-day in school.

In this book, the author offers a contribution through reflections, challenging the teacher to continue with inquiries and researches on the possibility of an inclusive school in Brazil.