In economically-deprived school systems, especially those in rural areas, dilapidated and poorly-cared-for buildings can restrict accessibility. Some of these facilities are not safe or healthy for any students.
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Environmental barriers can include doors, passageways, stairs and ramps, and recreational areas. These can create a barrier for some students to simply enter the school building or classroom. A rigid curriculum that does not allow for experimentation or the use of different teaching methods can be an enormous barrier to inclusion. Teachers who are not trained or who are unwilling or unenthusiastic about working with differently-abled students are a drawback to successful inclusion.
Training often falls short of real effectiveness, and instructors already straining under large workloads may resent the added duties of coming up with different approaches for the same lessons. Many students are expected to learn while being taught in a language that is new and in some cases unfamiliar to them. This is obviously a significant barrier to successful learning. Too often, these students face discrimination and low expectations.
Areas that are traditionally poor and those with higher-than-average unemployment rates tend to have schools that reflect that environment, such as run-down facilities, students who are unable to afford basic necessities and other barriers to the learning process. Violence, poor health services, and other social factors make create barriers even for traditional learners, and these challenges make inclusion all but impossible.
Adequate funding is a necessity for inclusion and yet it is rare. Schools often lack adequate facilities, qualified and properly-trained teachers and other staff members, educational materials and general support. Sadly, lack of resources is pervasive throughout many educational systems. Organization of the Education System: Centralized education systems are rarely conducive to positive change and initiative. The top levels of the organization may have little or no idea about the realities teachers face on a daily basis.
This can exclude whole groups of learners from the mainstream educational system, thereby preventing them from enjoying the same opportunities for education and employment afforded to traditional students. Overcoming the many barriers to inclusive education will require additional funding, but even more importantly, it requires the change of old and outdated attitudes.
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For Laplane and Batista , the lack of resources that allow visually impaired students to work jointly with peers with normal vision can result in social isolation of the former. Today there are several support materials available to the visually impaired. There are materials for people with low vision and those with total loss. Some examples of resources for people with low vision are: Some resources available to people with total vision loss are: Although many of these resources do not entail costs, others are restricted to people with better financial conditions, such as those resulting from technological advances.
Although the lack of financial resources may prevent the use of technological advances for visual impairment, there are innumerable resources for learning and participation that can be implemented at no cost. Schools that have computer classes for mainstream students can download this program at no cost. Some examples of materials available free of charge for Elementary and High School teachers are: These materials are sent by mail upon simple request.
There are, therefore, numerous free resources available to teachers that enable students with VI to have access to the same content as the other students in the class. Figueiredo , reporting the case of a visually impaired student with almost full autonomy, cites an assignment done by this student together with two other classmates.
In this work, the students built a herbarium with captions in verbal language and braille. This classroom teacher uses cooperative work as a resource for learning and participation and everyone benefits. In the same research, Figueiredo cites the case of another teacher who asked this visually impaired student to write texts on subjects that depended on vision. In those classes, the student was unmotivated and, two years after that period, was still expressing his frustration with the subject in question, Portuguese. Although there is consensus among inclusion theorists about the need of pedagogical reorganization to enable the inclusive model of education, there are different positions regarding the nature of this reorganization.
For Mantoan , for example, the activities proposed by general classroom teachers to introduce new content must be diversified, but presented to the class as a whole. During these activities, each student will learn the content according to his or her level of understanding and intellectual adaptation. For the author, the only possibility for individualized diversification is specialized educational care, as long as it is complementary to and not a substitute for mainstream education. We agree with those authors that curricular accommodations may be necessary for the participation and learning of some students, but if they are not designed to meet specific needs, they may end up legitimizing the exclusion of some students in the general classroom.
At this point, it is important to look at the issue of terminology in the field of inclusion. Firstly, it should be noted that, in , Law 12, amended Law 9, Law of Directives and Bases of Education - LDB of , and replaced the term students with special needs with students with disabilities, global developmental delay, and high abilities or giftedness. In analyzing the use of such terminology, Lopes points out that it features in Brazilian legal documents linked to special education, implying that any educational need is synonymous with abnormality.
Misleading interpretations led to the stigmatization of those who, in some way, needed this kind of teaching. According to Lopes The term students with special educational needs, by including a multiplicity of students and proposing to be neutral and abstract, contributed to mask the economic, political, social and cultural factors that act in characterizing abnormality which is not something abstract, but a category historically constructed by society , disguising the real and precarious educational possibilities offered to the lower classes of our country, who continue to receive an arbitrary education, in homeopathic doses, but very convenient to the ruling classes p.
Thus, although the proposal of education for all supports the irrefutable need of education for all ethnic, linguistic and refugee minorities, among others, we will use the term students with disabilities, global developmental delay, and high abilities or giftedness to refer to the target public of inclusive proposals. Possibly because of the importance of the PCNs and the preservation of the term adaptations in their text, the terms adaptations and accommodations are now used interchangeably by many scholars and educators. Although in many situations, as in the actual PCNs, the adaptations are linked to integrating practices, the relationship is not always direct.
We understand that sometimes unsuspecting theorists use the term adaptations when referring to practices of the inclusion model. While we see the possibility of merely semantic differences in the use of the terms, we also see the need for differentiated terminology to explicit what kind of practice the theorist refers to. Thus, we have chosen to use the term curricular accommodations, since we address inclusive practices, although relevant studies published after and used as reference in this paper use the term curricular adaptations.
According to SEESP Brazil, , there are significant large scale and non-significant small scale curricular accommodations, depending on the scope of the accommodation in the curriculum. While non-significant accommodations are small adjustments introduced by the teacher to increase overall participation and learning in the classroom, significant accommodations imply important modifications in planning and teaching, and require careful evaluation for their implementation.
The more they differ from what the other children receive, the more significant are the accommodations. Not all curricular accommodations involve only teachers and students. There are accommodations at pedagogical level school curriculum , accommodations related to the class syllabus, and individualized accommodations Brazil, Individualized curricular accommodations take on two forms: That is, all action taken by the school to eliminate architectural, material or communication barriers. Barriers to learning and participation reveal more than just physical obstacles, since the physical dimension reveals social values and the priority of some to the detriment of others.
It is worth stressing that accessibility does not only concern architectural changes in schools. The existence of barriers that can be readily eliminated reveals an anti-inclusion value which suggests a predisposition to prejudice of those who maintain them unnecessarily. Although the teacher has legal support to implement curricular accommodations, the further he or she departs from the standard curriculum, the less the student receiving the accommodations will be included. On the other hand, as already pointed out by Glat and Blanco , the existence of curricular accommodations can contribute to the academic success of students with disabilities, global developmental delay, and high abilities or giftedness, by enabling learning and participation.
However, there are no pre-set rules as to the type and amount of accommodations required: According to Booth and Ainscow , the development of inclusion is enhanced as schools create inclusive cultures, produce inclusive policies and develop inclusive practices.
In addition, teachers should be trained to implement curricular accommodations, which, as known, is not part of teacher training curricula. Traditional assessment practices, aimed at mere grading, attribute a disciplinary function to results, predict the future of students according to their grades, and prioritize quantitative rather than qualitative aspects, affecting all students in the school, since they create a competitive environment, mask, enhance, or even create needs and difficulties that exclude, label, and stigmatize students.
While the curriculum can be a barrier to learning and participation, curricular accommodations are great allies for teachers and learning and participation, not only of special education students in an inclusion setting, but of all learners in the school. There is, however, a barrier to learning and participation that can influence the whole process, causing great social harm to special education students in an inclusion setting: This phenomenon, which has social and psychodynamic roots, can influence the inclusive experience and prevent the social interaction and learning of students with disabilities, global developmental delay, and high abilities or giftedness from being fair and fruitful.
An interview script for students with visual impairment was developed specifically for this study. Given the breadth of the instruments used, they are not fully addressed in this article, but can be found together with the answers in Oliva It is composed of six questions, three of preference and three of rejection, made to a specific classmate. The justifications for the questions were used as material for a qualitative analysis of the interaction between the special education student and her classmates.
The subjects of the research were the student with visual impairment, three mainstream school teachers Portuguese, Science and Physical Education , a school counselor, and 23 students from an 8 th grade class, among them the aforementioned VI student. That was the total number of students in this class. The form and questionnaire were answered by the school counselor in an interview. The classroom observation script was followed during 10 hours of observation Portuguese, Science and Physical Education, 3h 20min of observation each , and four days of observation during recess, of 20 minutes each.
The observations were analyzed qualitatively, according to the topics of the observation scripts.
The analysis of the interviews used content analysis technique tools: Categories were developed from the interview scripts and new categories were created according to collected data. Interview excerpts of each one of the categories were identified. Each category was later subdivided into subcategories.
Barriers and resources to learning and participation of inclusive students
Tables were also created to interpret this material, analyzed qualitatively according to the theoretical framework of the research. Each instrument was individually analyzed and interpreted. Subsequently, the results were compared for a general analysis, seeking to separate the manifest content of the material to allow the assessment of its latent content.
The data content analysis identified a few situations that suggest good inclusion and various situations that suggest exclusion within the school. The investigated school had no apparent inclusive culture or policy, which hinders the mobilization of resources for learning and participation and the minimization of barriers to them.
The school only accepts students who are capable of adapting to the pre-established model, which shows that focus is on the limitation, rather than the potential of students. There were no changes in the school following the entry of the VI student; it was up to her to adapt.
The teachers were not instructed on how to work and there are no regular staff meetings for teachers to share, exchange experiences, grow personally and professionally, and work in teams. There is a psychologist at school twice a week, but he was not called to help with the inclusion of the student with VI. It was up to the teachers to accommodate their classes however they could, and to the student to integrate in the class. This happens in Mathematics, Geometry and Drawing. Other subjects have their syllabus adjusted, rather than accommodated, according to the difference pointed out above.
The adaptations occur in subjects that are more theoretical and less practical, such as Science, and derive from the inaccessibility to the syllabus, and not from a planning that addresses the needs of the student investigated in the research. Each one deals individually with the difficulties encountered in their school routine.
During classes, the activities are basically individual and geared towards sighted students. The gathered data contains no reports of activities aimed at inclusion and valuing the diversity existing among the various members of the school community, except for a few activities in Physical Education performed years before the research. The sighted students walked blindfolded to school to realize the challenges faced by the VI student and there were games to include her. Although the results of these activities were satisfactory, as reported by the teacher who proposed them, she no longer develops them.
Currently, the VI student remains seated while the other students have Physical Education class or does activities with a rattle ball that seem more like recreation and infantilize the student. At the beginning of classes there are around 20 minutes of stretching, which is sometimes the only activity performed by Gabriela, while her colleagues have about three consecutive hours of sports. This teacher reads almost everything she writes on the board and asks students to read aloud the texts and questions to be studied in the classroom.
Although such actions represent learning resources, this subject also has situations in which the lack of curricular accommodations for accessibility hinders content comprehension. As noted in the data collection, students read the texts aloud. However, some of them do so with poor pronunciation, in a low tone of voice, too fast, and without interrupting the reading when there is some external noise, such as a truck or motorcycle passing by in the street. Compared to other subjects, Portuguese does not require great curricular accommodations, since almost all of its content can be orally transmitted.
Even so, by not having access to the texts and materials in braille, and taking her tests orally, the student is being deprived of part of the knowledge, which ends up being transmitted to her in a synthesized form. In her interview, the VI student herself said that in the special school she attends after hours, there is a teacher who works individually with her. This teacher transcribes materials and makes recordings so Gabriela can study at home. If the mainstream and specialist teacher exchanged information, as advocated by Glat and Blanco , the classroom content could be passed on to the specialist in advance for transcription into braille.
That way, Gabriela could follow the texts and exercise sheets, like her colleagues. The VI student could even take part in classroom readings. The assessments could similarly be transcribed into braille so that Gabriela could do them on her own. Although lack of time is a daily challenge for many teachers, there are curricular accommodations for accessibility that do not require any planning, as already discussed, such as dictating content during class.
Although this is a strategy she uses, the fact of not being able to take notes in class can interfere with her comprehension of the content. If this student could write down what the teacher says, she could resort to that material whenever she wanted.
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There are also teachers who do not read what they write on the board, and those who ask her to do activities that require vision, like writing a description of an object or landscape she has never seen. All these situations become barriers to learning. The lack of access to the entire content results in the marginalization of the special education student in the classroom, i. Besides marginalization, inaccessibility also results in exposure.
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Physical inaccessibility may also contribute to Gabriela always going to the bathroom accompanied by one of her friends. In both situations, the VI student might desire privacy, but is exposed.
Possible Solutions to Inclusive Education Barriers
During classes, as there are no cooperative activities and almost all of them are geared towards sighted students not to mention the subjects she does not take, but whose classes she nevertheless attends , the VI student remains most of the time in silence, alone, and with her head down. It is possible that, provided with suitable materials, Gabriela would not be isolated in the classroom.
As pointed out by Laplane and Batista , VI students need stimuli to participate actively in class. If they are not included in the activities, the lack of accessibility will result in non-participation and isolation. She sits quietly in the corner, waiting. If we do not take the initiative, she does nothing. Gabriela reports that no one wanted to pair up with her to take the computer test; she did not take the test, but received a grade anyway. It is normal for general students to be concerned about their own performance, but when no accessibility is offered to the VI student, she ends up being rejected.
While she understands that her peers did not want to take the test with her, Gabriela does not question the fact that she attends the computer class and does not receive adequate materials from the school DOSVOX and Braille keyboard because they were ordered by the previous teacher and the current teacher does not use them. Similarly, the student does not question the fact that she takes various subjects and does not receive the same content as her sighted classmates. In her daily routine, Gabriela is subject to invisibility.
According to her own account, few teachers accommodate their lessons so she can have access to the content. Facts like dictating too fast, writing on the board and not reading, requesting the description of an object or landscape the VI student does not know, assuming she has learnt content she was not taught, and ignoring the existence of suitable materials already purchased by the school are examples of negligent attitudes by teachers that reveal the existence of prejudice against the VI student.