Educating Places: Practices, Voices And Pathways Of Inclusive Education
Author(s):
Isabel Costa (presenting / submitting) Fátima Antunes Rosanna Barros Virgínio Sá Manuel A. Silva
Conference:
ECER 2016
Network:
05. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

05 SES 02, Paper Session

Paper Session

Time:
2016-08-23
15:15-16:45
Room:
OB-E0.01
Chair:

Contribution

This paper results from a financed research project, “EDUPLACES - Educating places: practices, voices and pathways of inclusive education” (FCT), focusing on socio-educational inclusion related practices, actors and policies that have been successful in Portugal, having in mind the wider European context. Social inclusion of children and young people is a central concern of the European educational policy. The reduction of early school leaving (ESL) to less than 10% by 2020 is seen as a way to prevent unemployment, poverty and social exclusion (EC, 2010). The multidimensional processes that lead to school underachievement, dropout and ESL are complex and involve institutional as well as social contexts, family and individual factors; school disengagement is often used as an «umbrella concept» that, in a way, shelters most of the complexity of those processes (Ferguson et al. 2005; Dale 2010; Costa et al. 2013).

Portugal has been identified as one of the European member-states with higher rates of school underachievement and ESL; nonetheless, in the last decade, the country has notoriously reduced those figures. In fact, since the 80’s/90’s, several policies, programs and practices have been developed to tackle the problem (Araújo et al., 2013). So far, research on those programs (e.g., TEIP1 - Educational Territorial of Priority Intervention Program, 1996-2000) has highlighted the diverse contextual appropriation and reconstruction of the policy, teachers’ perspectives regarding students and the multiple logics of action underlying its conception and implementation (Canário, Alves, & Rolo, 2010). As to TEIP2 (from 2006 onwards), an external assessment has shown dropout and retention rates in the schools involved decreased (between 2006 and 2011), despite later data shedding some uncertainty over this second effect (Figueiredo et al. 2013).

Also, an external assessment of the  “Programa Escolhas" ("Choices Program”, committed to promoting social inclusion of children and youngsters, mostly from multicultural communities, displaying high rates of school retention and ESL) has registered a reduction of retention rates and a school success of about 80% (Saint-Maurice et al., 2013).

A European project involving five countries has described ten cases of educational practices which have contributed to building successful schooling youth pathways, despite faced with particularly adverse social contexts. Some factors for those successful pathways that seem transversal to those cases have been identified, e.g., cooperative involvement, empowerment, mediation, democratic quality (UB/CREA & UM/UEA, 2006; Edwards & Downes, 2013). Partnerships and networks in education have also been targeted in their relations with school improvement (Chapman & Hadfield 2010; Silva et al., 2014, Chapman et al., 2014). Yet, the merits of some measures designed to reduce school underachievement and ESL and the quality of learning they provide students have been questioned (Dias, 2013; Antunes & Barros, 2014; Sá & Antunes, 2012). And there is still little knowledge besides significant controversy on some dimensions of those successful inclusive education practices: the local dimension, the socio-educational innovative dimension and the dimension of learning communities and of communities of practice (Wenger, 2001; Loureiro, 2010).

Bearing in mind this problematic, the core research questions that guide this research are: (i) which processes and factors, subjects, action rationales and (institutional, local, community) partnerships contribute to building local inclusive education practices, in the views of actors involved? (ii) which (social, institutional, biographical) processes and factors stop the negative spiral of school underachievement, school dropout and ESL and favour the youngsters’ remobilization to learn and build successful academic pathways? 

Method

The concern to understand from within and the priority given to the “context of discovery”, with emphasis on the processes and value placed on contextual factors, together with the desire to grasp the plurality of rationales and meanings ― which is at the heart of education in knowledge-based and risk societies and in the contexts under study ― justify the option for a qualitative approach (Seale et al., 2004), yet using also quantitative research techniques. The study design consists of a multiple-case study (Yin, 1989) of eleven observation units in four Portuguese counties, in the context of the two national Programs targeting to overcome school underachievement and ESL (mentioned above). In the first phase/year, in each observation unit, inclusive and successful practices are being characterized (case practices) through the triangulation/intersection of information: relevant documents and statistical data analysis; semi-structured interviews with institutional leaders. The second phase/year is intended to grasp the diversity and specificity of each constellation of processes and dynamics and the commonalities of those local combinations. Therefore, the analysis of each case-practice will be amplified by the views of actors involved in each educational inclusive practice through questionnaires, semi-structured individual and collective interviews (practice coordinator, youngsters, families, teachers and other professionals) and direct observations. In the third phase/year, it is expected that evidence is gathered on how collective interactive learning processes can support bottom and grassroots innovative answers to educational needs in difficult contexts. The design will explore the dimensions and relationships of the construction of enlarged collective and collaborative educational processes in four case-studies suggested by the categories of learning community and community of practices with recourse to focus-group and individual interviews to key-participants, as well as direct observation of situations and activities. A panel, consisting of youngsters who, after an irregular school pathway, reversed the negative spiral of school failure and/or dropout and are now successfully concluding (or have concluded) their academic pathway, thanks to the inclusive educational practices analyzed, will be built to provide an answer to the second research question. In-depth interviews with those youngsters hopefully will provide data allowing for the understanding of the social, institutional and biographical dimensions, factors and processes involved in building their successful academic pathways.

Expected Outcomes

It is expected that, at the end of the first year/phase, a portfolio of inclusive educational practices is created; at the end of the second phase, a panel of monographs and an analytical typology of inclusive educational practices are gathered, and finally, at the end of the third phase, biographical accounts are compiled to explore and capture the construction of youngsters’ perspectives, feelings, attitudes, decisions towards education and ESL. Taken for granted that this analytical work will be undertaken in close collaboration with the different actors involved, from their perspectives and representations, it is the team’s intention that the devolution process of the research results will contribute to everyone’s (institutional leaders’, professionals’ and young people’s) awareness (in the sense Paulo Freire speaks of the concept) of the factors involved in the processes in question. In short, the main expected outcomes will result in the construction of a portfolio, monographs and a typology of practices and profiles of atypical learning paths, as well as descriptive and analytical records to identify regularities, but also singularities, which contribute to understanding the factors involved in successful processes of socio-educational inclusion, and to the scientific debate on the issue and the strengthening of institutional reflexivity.

References

Antunes, F., Barros, R. (2014). Reconstruir o espaço de ação educacional ou localizar problemas escolares? Carvalho, Loureiro, & Ferreira, Proceedings XII SPCE Congress. VilaReal: UTAD. Araújo, H. C., Rocha, C., Magalhães, A., Macedo, E. (2013). Policy analysis on early school leaving – Portugal. RESL.EU. Belgium: Antwerp. Canário, R., Alves, N., Rolo, C. (2001). Escola e exclusão social. Para uma análise crítica da política TEIP. Lisboa: Educa. Chapman, C., Hadfield, M. (2010). Realising the potential of school-based networks. Educational Research, Vol. 52(3), 309–323. Chapman, C., et al. (2014). The School Improvement Partnership Programme. http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/Images/141106%20SIPPfinalreport_tcm4-844483.pdf, 04-01-2016. Costa, I., Loureiro, A., Silva, S., Araújo, H.C. (2013). Perspectives of Portuguese municipal education officers on school disengagement. Educação Sociedade e Culturas, 40, 165-185. Dale, R. (2010). Early school leaving: lessons from research and policy makers practice. NESSE. http://www.nesse.fr/nesse/activities/reports, 01-01-2015. Dias, M. (2013). Education and Equality in Portugal: The role of priority Education policies. Cypriot Journal of Educational Sciences, 8(1), 132-143. Edwards, A., Downes, P. (2013). Alliances for inclusion. Cross-sector policy synergies and inter-professional collaboration in and around schools. EC/NESET. http://www.nesetweb.eu/resource-library, 15-01-2015 European Commission (2010). Reducing early school leaving. Accompanying document to the proposal for a Council recommendation on policies to reduce early school leaving. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_SDDS/EN/edat_esms.htm, 9-03-2013 Ferguson, B.; Tilleczek, K.; Boydell, K., Rummens, J. (2005). Early school leavers: understanding the lived reality of student disengagement from secondary school. Toronto: CHSRG/HSC/OMET. Figueiredo, A. et al. (2013). Avaliação estratégica do QREN, Final Report. http://www.qren.pt/np4/np4/?newsId=3886&fileName=file999.pdf, 08-01-2015 Loureiro, A. (2010). Um Centro de Educação e Formação de Adultos que aprende. Educação em Revista. Vol. 26(2), 43-64. Sá, V., Antunes, F. (2012). Uma outra educação? Um lugar de exclusão sobre os Cursos de Educação e Formação na voz de alunos e professores. Thomé & Almeida, Educação: História e Política, 57-99. Campinas: Mercado de Letras. Saint-Maurice, A., et al. (2013). Avaliação externa do Programa Escolhas 2010-2012. Lisbon: ISCTE/DINÂMIACET. Seale, C., et al. (2004). Qualitative research practice. London: Sage. Silva, M., et al. (2014). Associações de pais e política educativa municipal: redes em construção. Revista Lusófona de Educação, vol. 27(27), 15-25. UB/CREA & UM/UEA (2006). Responses to challenges of youth training in the knowledge society. Barcelona University. Wenger, E. (2001). Comunidades de práctica. Aprendizage, significado e identidad. Barcelona: Paidós. Yin, R. (1988). Case study research. Newbury Park: Sage.

Author Information

Isabel Costa (presenting / submitting)
Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro
Education and Psychology
Chaves
Fátima Antunes
University of Minho, CIEd-Centre of Research in Education
Rosanna Barros
University of Algarve, CIEO-Research Centre for Spatial and Organizational Dynamics
Virgínio Sá
University of Minho, CIEd-Centre of Research in Education
Manuel A. Silva
University of Minho, CIEd-Centre of Research in Education

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