Adequacies curriculum in the process of inclusion education: a comparative study between Brazil and Spain

• Grant number: 11/14574-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Effective date (Start): January 30, 2012
• Effective date (End): July 29, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education - Specific topics in Education
• Principal Investigator: Vera Lucia Messias Fialho Capellini
• Grantee: Vera Lucia Messias Fialho Capellini
• Host Investigator: Yolanda Muñoz Martinez
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências (FC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Bauru. Bauru , SP, Brazil
• Research place: Universidad de Alcalá (UAH), Spain

Abstract

The building of an inclusive school that ensures access, permanence and, specially, learning for all students is imperative. No more arguing over whether we are for or against the disable student studying in standard class, because the law already provides the school inclusion as an inalienable right. In search of some answers to several questions on how to accomplish this process, we conducted during the years 2010 and 2011 a research funded by FAPESP (Research Support Foundation of São Paulo), in the Program for Improvement of Public Education, involving collaborative teaching and curriculum adaptations in an elementary school (Cycle I) with 16 disable students. The overall objective was implement a collaborative consulting program. The effectiveness of the intervention was measured by evaluating the academic performance of students before and after that, the satisfaction of school staff and parents and the school IDEB (Basic Education Development Index). In addition, it was also intended to describe educational practices by analyzing whether and how curricular adaptations occurred, and finally how the relationship was established between the special education teacher and regular class teacher. The data were collected by doing interviews and questionnaires with parents, teachers, field diary with reports from the school staff, filming of the developed practices and academic performance evaluations. The results obtained before the intervention showed that disable students attend special classes - ESA and teachers of the regular classes considered the special education teacher responsible for their schooling, not knowing that the teacher's regular class is responsible for all content to teach during this school year, which is prescribed in legislation and guidelines. Along the project, the regular class teacher was made aware of the need for resorting to curricular adjustments in the classroom to ensure that all of the students learn. These ranged from simple adjustments to more significant adaptations. Then, this survey showed that the teachers, at least those in the reality studied, used to do few curricular adjustments and, when they did, it was unplanned. In the end, it was observed changes in teacher practices that resulted in improvements in student performance particularly those with disabilities. Considering that in Brazil we have a Special Education Policy in the Perspective of Inclusive Education which anticipates education for disable students in regular school, the results obtained, and assuming that NCPs - National Curriculum Parameters - originate in Spain, we propose to achieve this stage in a Spanish school for a semester in order to repeat part of the survey realized in Brazil, with the aim to describe and analyze the existing curricular adaptations, and to verify the occurrence of collaboration between special and regular education. The methodological approach will be qualitative of the type descriptive-comparative. The data will be collected in interviews, observations and document analysis, as conducted in the Brazilian project, to allow comparison of the data. It is considered here the production of knowledge about procedures that generate data to support the monitoring of educational policies, which adopt the perspective of inclusion, on teacher training (common and special education) and inclusive teaching strategies that can be adapted to the Brazilian context. (AU)