Inclusive education is a modality of education that includes students with any type of disability or disorder, or with high abilities in mainstream schools.
The diversity proposed by the inclusive school is beneficial to everyone. On the one hand are students with disabilities, who benefit from a school prepared to help them with their learning, and on the other, the other students who learn to live with differences in a natural way, to develop a sense of mutual help, respect and patience.
O target Audience of the National Education Plan (PNE) with regard to inclusive education, are students with disabilities (intellectual, physical, auditory, visual and multiple), with autism spectrum disorder and with high abilities (gifted).
Inclusion helps fight prejudice by seeking recognition and valuing differences by emphasizing each person's skills, abilities and potential.
This concept has the function of developing pedagogical methods and resources that are accessible to all students, breaking thus the barriers that could come to prevent the participation of one or another student on account of their respective individuality.
One of the goals of school inclusion is to raise awareness and involve society, especially the school community.
See more about school inclusion.
Inclusive education in Brazil
Inclusive education was implemented by the MEC (Ministry of Education and Culture) in the Brazilian education system in 2003. Before that, the Brazilian education system was still segmented into two strands:
- special school: for students with any type of disability or disorder, or with high abilities.
- regular school: for students who did not have any kind of disability or disorder, nor high abilities.
The current National Education Plan (PNE) integrates students who would previously go to special school in regular school.
Specialized Educational Service
According to the MEC, inclusive education covers all levels of education (Child Education - Higher Education) and offers Specialized Educational Service (AEE) to guide teachers and students on the use of the methodology.
It is important to emphasize that the special school was not extinct. It is there that students have the AEE as a complement and support to regular education, whenever necessary, but not as a replacement for regular school.
Thus, special education is no longer a substitute modality and it became a complementary modality, but it did not cease to exist.
If, in addition to what is offered by the inclusive school by default, a student needs a different approach for their learning to be facilitated, SEN (special educational needs) resources may be required.
These resources consist of targeted monitoring, outside the normal hours that the student attends the inclusive school. See below some of the resources that students can have, according to their respective deficiencies:
- visual and hearing impairment: specific communication and signaling languages and codes (eg Braille, LIBRAS).
- intellectual disability: mediation to develop thinking strategies (eg alternative communication).
- physical disability: adequacy of school material and physical environment (eg, chairs, assistive technology).
- Autism Spectrum Disorder (autism): different approaches to behavior adequacy and guidance (eg alternative communication).
- high skills: increase in educational resources and/or acceleration of content.
O target Audience of inclusive education is composed of students with disabilities (intellectual, physical, auditory, visual and multiple), autistic spectrum disorder (autism) and high abilities.
know more about POUNDS, autism and school.
Main challenges
The idealization of inclusive education and its goals are extremely valid concepts, but the reality with which students, teachers and other people involved in the project face on a daily basis are very many different. See below some of the main challenges of inclusive education:
- The physical structure of establishments is not always adequate.
- Lack of introduction of features and assistive technology.
- Excessive number of students per class.
- Prejudice regarding disability.
- Lack of training for school teams.
- Lack of specialized or trained teachers.
Difference between specialized teacher and qualified teacher
The specialized teacher is one who has a degree in Special Education or in one of its areas, whereas the teacher Qualified is the teacher who had contents and/or subjects about Education included in his/her secondary or higher education course. Special.
Assistive Technology
Any and all resources used to facilitate and/or improve the learning conditions of a student with a disability may be called assistive technology. See below for some examples:
- audiobooks: audio-recorded books.
- Book reader: is a type of scanner that reads scanned books while sending the enlarged text to a monitor screen.
- braille lite: used for taking notes and writing texts and allows connection to a computer.
braille lite
- helmet with tip: rod to help people with upper limb impairments typing.
helmet with tip
- electronic magnifying glass: equipment used by the visually impaired to enlarge the lyrics of a content and display it on a monitor or television screen. It is also available in a portable version.
- DOSVOX program: communicates with the user through a speech synthesizer.
- MecDeisy Program: developed through a partnership between MEC and UFRJ, it enables the generation of digital spoken books.
See also the meaning of bullying at school.
