Archivo

Emerging narratives for the construction of inclusive schools

Narrative and Interactive Report

Index

  1. Summary
  2. Introduction: desires, knowledge, and rights
  3. How the movement was born: concern for suffering
  4. Weaving life stories on which to build ourselves: people at the center
  5. The discourses of ordinary people in the great forums of political construction
  6. Building together with new languages
  7. Creating a new model of School Guidance, in line with
  8. Human Rights
  9. A participatory diagnosis of the school to guide policies
  10. Broaden social imagination to conceive a school without exclusions
  11. It is possible: a school working towards its dreams
  12. The path of dissent to transform the school
  13. Tutorials for communities to research
  14. Creating it: participation for the construction of educational change
  15. Students for inclusion: students leading the change
  16. A movement in the streets for a right that benefits everyone
  17. Documenting a movement that spans the globe
  18. An international network of schools for inclusion and equity
  19. ‘Quererla es crearla’ in the media
  20. A social movement supported by committed science.

Summary

The research project “Emerging Narratives for the Construction of Inclusive Schools” (and its predecessor, which began in 2018) has led to the citizens’ movement “Quererla es Crearla” (Wanting It Is Creating It), converging international scientific evidence with research and citizen activism. This has involved the participatory construction of campaigns, school experiences and a network of schools for inclusion, guides and tutorials, national workshops and international presentations, actions for political impact, school work materials, citizen mobilizations, biographies and life stories, top-tier international scientific publications, the emergence of working groups and collectives such as “Students for Inclusion,” etc. The movement generated has been narrated in the documentary “Inclusive Education. Wanting It Is Creating It,” and has received several International Awards. These pages aim to offer an overview of what has been accomplished to date, serving as a starting point for all those who join the movement, both in Spain and Latin America.

1. From the research project to the ‘Quererla es Crearla’ movement

‘Quererla es Crearla’ is a social movement of the people that has been scientifically supported and facilitated through the R&D&I (Research, Development, and Innovation) Projects “Emerging narratives on the inclusive school from the social model of disability. Resistance, resilience, and social change” (RTI2018-099218-A-I00) and “Emerging narratives for the construction of inclusive schools” (PID2022-140193OB-I00), led by the professors from the University of Malaga Ignacio Calderón Almendros and Mª Teresa Rascón Gómez, and funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and the University of Malaga.

This research project is based on three premises: 1) The activism of persons with disabilities and their support networks promotes educational inclusion and social change; 2) The knowledge derived from the Social Model of Disability allows us to question and improve schools; 3) Mutual support and resistance networks foster resilience processes. Based on these ideas, stories of activism from families, students, and professionals who are fighting to make schools a place where all children find recognition through presence, learning, participation, and success in the pre-compulsory and compulsory stages have been recovered. The aim is to document and analyze the experiences of families, students, and professionals who are fighting to ensure that Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified by Spain, is fulfilled. This is particularly relevant following the report published in June 2018 by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which states that the right to education for children with disabilities is being seriously and systematically violated in Spain.2 However, the research proposal has gone far beyond these legal terms.

The study has documented the new narratives about disability and inclusive education that originate in this collective in order to recognize their value and disseminate them; it has delved into the educational conceptions, experiences, and professional practices involved in school inclusion processes; it has helped to understand the collaboration mechanisms used by these collectives; and finally, it has created resources that make visible and feed new conceptions of functional diversity and that articulate proposals to promote inclusive education.

To achieve these objectives, the study has used an “ad hoc” methodology, which combines several processes ofParticipatory Action Research(IAP), capable of telling unpleasant truths, 3 with the biographical and narrative methodology. Action-focused participatory methodologies facilitate the construction and development of common projects to transform reality, critically examining power and privilege,4 generating collaborative relationships as a framework for more effective practices. On the other hand, the biographical and narrative methodology allows for an understanding of personal experiences under conditions of oppression and exclusion. 5

For its development, different methodological formulas have been used: the creation of abundant micro-life stories and autobiographical accounts, the construction of in-depth life stories of activists, students, and professionals committed to inclusion, and a documentary analysis of current legislation on equity and inclusion in schools. Furthermore, various Participatory Action Research processes have been developed to promote transformations. The final report has been produced in two formats: text and audiovisual.

The research has aimed at understanding, but also at expressing the voices of individuals and groups whose constructions are often not legitimized. Therefore, the research itself is a tool for social change. Additionally, the narratives and analyses have served as catalysts for proposals aimed at citizen action, making struggles for this social change more effective. Finally, the design and facilitation of participatory research processes have been fundamental to the movement’s strength.

However, the social movement generated has gone beyond research. People have been organizing around shared desires, knowledge rigorously built by science alongside the everyday knowledge of everyone, and instituted but not yet achieved rights. The social movement began at a moment of collective connection through the pain caused by negative experiences in schools. But also through the joy of positive ones, and the hope generated by sharing the project of social and educational change: what is impossible individually gains meaning and possibility in the collective. From there, life stories and struggles begin to be woven, upon which other people can build: thus, the journey begins to be less lonely, and emerges from the depths of the private sphere. Personal stories—which connect with the work and experience of so many people in the past—are shared, occupying space in public debate until they reach the highest political decision-making forums: a regional parliament, the congress of deputies, the headquarters of the United Nations… The alliance between academia and civil society allows for the construction of empowerment processes in which the words of a vulnerable mother, for example, are put into dialogue with those who make decisions about that vulnerability. Or science and art, knowledge and emotion, come together to build forms of activism that occupy parks and institutions: we can be moved as we learn to see life, people, and school from different perspectives, questioning our own critical gazes.

Three moments of participatory diagnosis and collective construction have taken place over these five years, and have given order to all the work generated: a workshop in Malaga in 2018, which gave rise to the question of school segregation; online conversations about the (inclusive) school in 2020, during the COVID pandemic lockdown, which reached Parliament to guide political decisions; and a new workshop to create the school we desire, in Madrid in 2022, where the next steps were articulated based on what had been collectively built previously. Among these constructions, some emerging groups and their respective productions stand out:

  • A group of professionals who are creating a new way of understanding school Guidance, now focused on human rights.
  • A school that decides to journey from its reality to its dreams for an inclusive community, and shares its process with other schools that want to do the same. It is possible here and now, and experience proves it.
  • A group of mothers who make it clear that when there is inequality, it is necessary to dissent, and they create a tool to facilitate the path of dissent in schools that want to generate change in reality. • A group of university students who dedicate efforts to creating tutorials that help school communities advance in their goals of equity and inclusion.
  • And a group of secondary school students who do not wait for us adults to take the step, because they know that inclusive education also depends on them, and they create a proposal aimed at students, while embarking on initial and ongoing teacher training processes, and political dialogue. All of this has earned them an International Award for Youth Educational Research.

To top it all off, the movement generated has been documented through a film, which stirs and unites ideas, emotions, knowledge, and wills in Spain and beyond our borders, putting inclusive education on people’s lips, and making it possible to talk about what in many places remains tacitly forbidden. And people emerge from the pit of loneliness, sadness, and shame. And they come out to dissent and defend the beauty of diversity, and to collectively show that there are miseries in schools that cannot be maintained. And it is made public in the media, in film screenings, in photographic exhibitions, and also in prestigious scientific publications of the highest international level.

Thus, a journey full of hope remains: the one that goes from where we are, which still does not respect the human right to education for many children, to that inclusive school that promises a society in which everyone matters. The one that is created in the process of dreaming it and rolling up our sleeves to make it a reality.Wanting it, then, is creating it.

2. Introduction: desires, knowledge, and rights

In February 2018, at the University of Malaga, a meeting took place that triggered a whole process of encounters—between people, collectives, and institutions—awareness-raising, collective construction, rigorous research, and public debate development that has been placing inclusive education in the discourses and practices of many citizens. People who, with the aim of promoting change in schools and society, have set out to collaborate to generate networks for building the reality they desire, and which is summarized in the following manifesto:

The people and collectiveswho promote this initiative firmly believe in the need to transform and improve the Spanish education system from an inclusive perspective, with the conviction that, in this way, we contribute to the development of a society with greater equity, more just, and therefore, more democratic.

We share the basic moral principle of considering that all human beings are equal in dignity and rights, regardless of differential characteristics in matters of gender, ability, beliefs, social stratum, or any other, and that these characteristics constitute the richness of human diversity through which we shape plural societies. 

We affirm that this conviction in favor of inclusive education is based on an extensive body of international norms, conventions, and treaties that, in terms of human rights, constitute an International Bill of Human Rights, which gives legitimacy and legal backing to the aspirations that mobilize us to achieve deeper and more sustained progress in inclusive education.

We recall that the Spanish Constitution, according to its article 96.1, requires that international treaties ratified by Spain in the field of human rights become part of its legal system and that, therefore, and due to their superior rank, lower-ranking norms (laws, regulations, or other provisions) must conform to what is established in said treaties.

We also know that the United Nations System has established as one of the main Objectives for Sustainable Development, within the framework of Agenda 2030 (SDG 4), the unavoidable commitment for all states to advance, without delay, towards the development of quality education systems guided by equity and inclusion. We are aware

We are awarethat this educational and social ambition necessarily implies a profound and systemic transformation of current educational systems, through a process that must be sustainable over time, and that will require determination, will, and effective resources, but which cannot be delayed, because school life and the future of many girls and boys who are already experiencing exclusion today are at stake, and it does not accept delays. 

We relyon a very broad body of knowledge and research in this field, carried out with the highest level and rigor, which have shown that the development of inclusive school cultures, policies, and practices is not only just and necessary but also possible and feasible, and we oppose all of this being overshadowed by false beliefs, myths, misunderstandings, hoaxes, and lies. 

We demand coherent short, medium, and long-term planning, accompanied by sustained and sufficient investment to generate adequate capacities in the system and in teachers at all educational levels. This planning and investment will make it possible to create and build school cultures, policies, and practices that embody the values of equality, respect for diversity, and the development of freedom, so that all students, without euphemisms, can share a common space for learning and social participation, where they feel part of and belong to the group of children in their neighborhoods, towns, or surroundings, who are accepted and recognized for who they are. 

We actas free and responsible citizens, without ties to economic interests or any other kind, except for the best interests of children and the fulfillment of the rights that all boys and girls have recognized. 

We have the conviction that we are right, that legality is on our side, and that ethics concerned with the care, full life, and well-being of everyone is on our side, and here we declare: 

We want Inclusive Educationand we are going to support any person and group willing to create it, because that is how we advance in our humanity, and because this will be the best legacy for our sons and daughters, for future generations, and to help achieve a dignified life in society for everyone, one that is sustainable and worth living. 

From its inception, this manifesto has been the reason for being of ‘Quererla es crearla’ (Wanting it is creating it), and last October 2022 it managed to bring together more than a hundred local, regional, national, and international institutions, networks, and organizations of very diverse kinds, including: the Regional Network for Inclusive Education, Enabling Education Network, All Means All, Queensland Collective for Inclusive Education, National Association of Special Education Teachers, Pró-Inclusão, UNESCO Chair in Education for Social Justice, Plena Inclusión, Down España, Spanish Federation of Rare Diseases, FEDER, Association for Early Adversity and Attachment, PETALES España, UNESCO Chair in Gender Policies and Equality between Women and Men, SOLCOM, Aspau, EQUIDEI, Teachers for Future, Castilian-La Mancha Association of Neuropsychiatry and Mental Health, Autonomous Confederation of AMPAS and FAPAS of Madrid, CONFAPA, Federation of AMPAS of Cádiz, Federation of AMPAS of Mallorca, Federation of AMPAS of Jaén, FAMPA Los Olivos, Federation of AMPAS of the Region of Murcia, FAPA-RM, among others. 

This social support has a clear foundation in the project’s solidity, which is based on a careful and in-depth selection of international scientific and academic literature that supports the development of policies, cultures, and practices that challenge current approaches, which continue to perpetuate segregation and exclusion in our educational systems. All this literature clearly demonstrates that scientific findings over the last 5 decades are consistent and international. 

Furthermore, inclusive education has been a recognized right in our legal system for years. This other pillar of the project, materialized in a concise selection of fundamental texts that offer this legislative framework, conveys an unequivocal message to citizens that must be asserted as a lever to transform reality in schools: From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the LOMLOE, including the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

Therefore, the project is sustained by desire: we want inclusive education to be a reality. Because we know it is best for all children, thanks to research developed worldwide. And we defend it because it has the moral legitimacy of Human Rights, and because as such we are obliged to develop it. That is why it is on the International Political Agenda, materialized in policies promoted by the UN, UNESCO, UNICEF, etc., constituting Sustainable Development Goal Nº4: Ensure inclusive, equitable and quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

3. How the movement was born: concern for suffering

In recent years, invaluable work has been developed from different sectors of society to favor, promote, and build the revolution that was called “inclusive,” and which has gradually seen how it has been manipulated and twisted until it is used as a plea for an institution that remains highly classifying and segregating. These movements seek to recover the true value of building a school where all students are present, learn, participate, progress, and are recognized in their being and their knowledge. With almost heroic initiatives, some families and professionals have been trying to remove what prevents all children from being educated together. Some through the construction of new concrete alternatives in their schools; others trying to enforce respect for current legislation.

The unease generated in these groups, intensely manifested through social networks over the last decade, reached a turning point in January 2018 with a post in which counselor Mª José Corell (Castellón) invited people to share emotions, experiences, analyses, and practices that could help break the deadlock they were in. Many families then expressed emotions such as distrust and fear towards professionals, passivity and submission, doubts about the proposed practices, powerlessness and insecurity when facing difficulties in participating in school, pain over the injustices they suffer, and uncertainty about the future… On the professionals’ side, difficulties emerged such as the lack of an orientation project for inclusion, beyond the cataloging task that is mostly assumed by institutional prescription. The difficulty in resisting pressure from all sectors, the dangerous certainty of the supposedly objective use of clinical diagnoses as psycho-educational assessments, the distance from the perspectives of so many families, the fear of their real participation, the contradiction between legal texts and the focus of theories and practices on the individual, training deficiencies, the fear of different viewpoints that create controversy where there is now certainty, the lack of time and space for collective reflection… All these and many other issues served as fertile ground and justification for the first working meeting of the ‘Quererla es Crearla’ movement.

That working meeting was called Workshop Orienta, and it was held at the University of Malaga on February 24, 2018, with the aim of establishing egalitarian communication between two groups (school professionals and families with enrolled children), and the objective of carrying out a preliminary evaluation of the experience of guidance in schools in the Spanish state, which must be inclusive. To this end, an intensive day of assemblies, presentations, and workshops was convened for people involved in inclusive education, which would conclude with strategic lines for continuing to work towards the necessary transformation of schools. This work was convened by incorporating it into theR&D&I (Research, Development, and Innovation) Project “Emerging Narratives on the Inclusive School from the Social Model of Disability. Resistance, Resilience, and Social Change” (RTI2018-099218-A-I00), led by University of Malaga professors Ignacio Calderón Almendros and Mª Teresa Rascón Gómez, and funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and the University of Malaga. Many actions developed over the following years by different people and groups have germinated from it..

The Workshop was not a course or a conference. It was not conceived as an event where some attend as listeners and others present. The Workshop Orienta was a collaborative work meeting, in which we intensely dialogued to analyze the school reality and guidance in particular, and to generate strategic lines to continue advancing.

It was an in-person meeting, but there was also a fundamental role played by those who could not participate physically. The meeting was divided into plenary sessions (assemblies) and group workshops where the lines generated in the assemblies would be developed. The plenary sessions were broadcast live via streaming, so everyone who wished could follow what happened in them, except in the workshops.The meeting became a trending topic on Twitter thanks to all this participation.

But there was something else. In the weeks leading up to the meeting, following an open call, videos of about 3 minutes were generated and published, in which the participants outlined their schooling experiences, and shared a pain and a joy associated with it, describing the role played by Guidance. We wanted the pain and joy, which have names and surnames, to have a space in the meeting, because we need to know what students, families, and professionals experience in schools. These videos continue to be a widely used resource in the Faculties of Education in Spain and Latin America.

In this way, those not attending generated the context for the in-person meeting itself, and participated via Twitter in the work sessions. The sessions were extraordinary. A dossier of the workshop, all the videos from that meeting, links to blog posts and news about it, etc., can be found at:https://bit.ly/3JOIQCB.

The material is thus archived and made publicly available for personal reflection, collective analysis, initial and ongoing teacher training, etc. Many mothers and professionals have begun to see the possibility of building networks and working together. Participatory analyses thus generate collective imagination, reaffirming the value of constructions that each person was making in questioning the status quo, which signifies growth in discursive capacity, in the development of resilience, and in proposals that provoke social change.

Thank you for letting me see that I’m not crazy for believing it’s possible. Maite Gavilán.

4. Weaving life stories to build ourselves upon: people at the center

Starting from collective analyses like the one presented in the previous section should not detract from the permanent and detailed attention to people’s concrete lives: students, mothers and fathers, and education professionals. It is in generalization that many of the injustices that schools currently perpetuate have occurred, so any strategy aimed at solving them must continually look at the personal, relational, and structural levels.

In this sense, life stories continually bring the community back to the fundamentals, to reflection on the educational meaning and the limitations of the environment. Even today, many children and young people experience their schooling (and their lives) under severe constraints that prevent them from developing freely in an educational space that guarantees equity. Therefore, it is necessary for people to unite with each other and with other groups to build new possibilities for the future. Ways out of a situation of evident social and educational harassment, which allow for the construction of new life projects. But community life; we cannot once again make the mistake of focusing on the individual.

What we aim to show is precisely the back-and-forth path between the personal and the structural (culture, policies, legislation, etc.), which shapes relationships. And this new project must be based on alternative and counter-hegemonic ways of narrating and understanding life (personal and collective, school and social), which will allow the humanity that bureaucratic and socializing processes mutilate to re-emerge. These resistances, structured collectively, which withstand the blows of stigma and the ideology of domination, end up distilling resilient experiences: people who manage to overcome the adverse conditions of their experience without mortgaging their questioned humanity, thanks to a profound search for the meaning of life. Communal resistance movements allow individuals to overcome the bruises of psychological wounds, rising from the world of the dead by reclaiming stolen humanity. And if we are narratives, we can create and recreate the stories of our personal and collective lives, redesigning our wounded identities. Therefore, the recovery of life narratives allows us to break free from the boundaries of normality, because they question the unquestioned, creating new vital and social maps driven by the desire for change. This is necessary work to provide unconditional support for the fight against inequality (whatever the reason), to demonstrate the legitimacy and value of common voices, in the human (not therapeutic) accompaniment of teachers to their students, and in making public the stories that challenge and move boundaries. Because they challenge them as they can subvert power, and they are resilient because they necessarily harbor reconciliation within them.

In-depth life stories offer a privileged opportunity to understand people’s social experience because they reveal their ways of understanding what they live, the experiences they have, their conditions, the groups they belong to, their frustrations and desires, etc. They show an important part of the environment in which one lives, in this case, fundamentally, the school. The series of texts created vindicate that part of reality that can only be known through the in-depth perspective of the subjects, who construct their knowledge systems immersed in a specific context.

On the other hand, a good number of micro-stories and short narratives, in which with few words, everyday situations that are often made invisible are conveyed to the reader.

The work continues, and it is expected that in a short time there will be a greater number of stories and narratives available, also in audiovisual format. On the one hand, in a conversational format, through a series of interviews, developed by Belén Jurado, in which a large number of people share their experiences in schools. On the other hand, a series of profiles of some people who, individually, share their lives or those of their families. Biographies that audiovisually narrate paths, emotions, reflections, and experiences that can serve others to identify with, rebuild themselves, and collectively build new liberating strategies.

5. The discourses of ordinary people in the great forums of political construction

Political advocacy involves ensuring that citizens’ discourses can reach the great forums of decision-making. This means that the plain and unpretentious words of a mother, a student, a counselor, or a teacher can be heard in contexts that often disregard their voices, even more so when it comes to disadvantaged populations.

‘Quererla es crearla’ has taken into account this need to connect discourses and promote macropolitical transformations at local, regional, national, and international levels. It is about the logic of ‘Think globally, act locally,’ with constant consideration that these are social changes that must reach everyone, and that it is precisely the global agenda movement that will enable some changes at lower levels. At the same time, changes at other levels can lead to more global transformations.

With this philosophy, interventions and appearances have been carried out, for example, in the Parliament of the Balearic Islands, in the Congress of Deputies of Spain, in the Organization of American States, or in the United Nations, with the voices of Maria Luisa, a mother whose son —Ángel, now an adult— continues to fight to make schools inclusive, so that no child has to suffer the exclusion experienced by Ángel during his school years; or that of Luluxa, a mother and teacher who, with simple words, highlights the cardinal importance of inclusive education for building inclusive societies; or that of Basilisa, a mother now deceased, who defended the value of the person above diagnostic categories, showing that reality is socially constructed, and that our actions —the most personal, and also the most structural— shape the reality we live.

6. Building together with new languages

From the beginning of the work generated in ‘Quererla es crearla’ (To want it is to create it), there has been a continuous interest in finding new channels for knowledge construction and communication. Thus, art becomes a key to the work developed. Transforming political, social, and academic culture requires artistic work, in which we learn to look at the same reality in a different way: more critically, but also by reviewing what we understand by beauty.for resistance, for normal, for being different.

This is what was developed in the project “Recognizing Diversity,” which initially materialized in a book, and later in a photographic exhibition that has traveled to different parts of the world, from Mérida to Washington D.C. Both cultural products stem from the collaborative construction between a researcher and an activist photographer; an academic and a mother. This collaboration is an example of how the movement begins to transcend borders that divide and weaken us.

The images can place us in a beautiful yet uncomfortable space to confront reflections in the form of texts. Through these and other languages, questioning can arise about what is presented to us today as absolute and unquestionable, but which devastates the world of nonsense that dominates and subjugates us.

The exhibition ‘Recognizing Diversity’ is touring different places in Spain, and was exhibited at the Headquarters of the Organization of American States in Washington (USA).

Alongside it, other exhibitions such as “Sin límites”, with photographs by Luis Garván and texts by Ignacio Calderón, were held in Juarez Park in Xalapa (Mexico) in 2018 and at the Pedagogical University of Veracruz (Mexico) in 2019.

7. Create a new School Guidance model, in accordance with Human Rights

From the development of the workshop, but more intensely from June 2020 onwards, a large group of guidance counselors began to meet online to address one of the main problems identified some time earlier in the WorkshopOrienta and later in the ‘Conversations about inclusive schools’: the selective function and exclusionary effects of the usual practices of school guidance teams. The intention with these meetings, which began in 2018, was to generate a new model of Psychopedagogical Assessment oriented towards inclusion, which could be useful for any professional seeking to transform their practices in response to the new demands that society places on schools.

The working group was formed with about 50 people from different regions of the State. With periodic meetings, debates were generated from the experiences of the entire team, reflecting with the help of readings, and putting into play all the professional knowledge that was present at the meetings. From all of this, a guide has been distilled, which we intend to implement in different centers. A work that transcends psychopedagogical evaluation and lands a new way of conceiving the activity of orientation departments. The guide will be published soon, and will have a very practical character, so that it can be flexibly applied to the reconstruction of the cultures, policies, and practices of each particular center. This first step of experimentation will be taken into account for the contrast and improvement of the tool.

This document is the result of extensive work by the Alterevaluación Collective. It uses professional language that links international scientific evidence with a series of proposals constructed in the language of practice. As Professor Mel Ainscow, one of the world’s most prestigious researchers in the field of inclusive education, explains in the foreword, the inclusive turn requires “moving away from explanations of educational failure that focus on the individual characteristics of children and their families, towards an analysis of the barriers to participation and learning experienced by students within education systems. Here, the notion of ‘barriers’ draws our attention to the ways in which a lack of resources or experience, curricula, inappropriate teaching methods, and negative attitudes can limit students’ educational progress.”

This guide aims to serve as a tool, but also as support, an argumentation, collective backing, and a “foundation” in the adventure of venturing into the unknown. You are no longer alone in your desire to transform your guidance practice. We go together.

In turn, the group aims to create territorial training networks where the creators of the guide themselves put their reflections and learning at the service of other members interested in transforming their practices.

Therefore, School Guidance, from which the movement’s first demand arises, has continued to work since then to build a new school model that supports teachers in reworking their practices.

8. A participatory diagnosis of the school to guide policies

During the Tuesdays of May and June 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, a series of “Conversations about (inclusive) school” were held, which were shared on social media or in the Playlist Conversations about (inclusive) school. These conversations aimed to be a space for public reflection on the reality we are experiencing in our schools and for projecting the school we desire. The sessions were recorded and disseminated through social media, and are also used for pedagogical research purposes. More than 200 people from different nationalities registered for the conversations, which is why the meetings were operationally divided by groups: first only families participated, then students, professionals, management teams, researchers, and political representatives on the Education Commission of the Congress of Deputies. Despite holding meetings by groups, the idea was for all registered participants to attend the other debates, and the public was invited to follow and comment on them on social media. The exercise of listening was fundamental to the entire process.

As a result of all this, the recorded sessions from those days remain for reflection and analysis, and are already being used for teacher training processes, with tens of thousands of views. On the other hand, from these meetings a document was born that aimed to be useful for the parliamentary debate on the Educational Law Project in Spain in 2020, and which continues to be useful for planning educational policies in regional contexts. The text, available for free download, is titled “Analysis and Proposals for a New Educational Law. Citizen Conversations about Inclusive Schools” (Octaedro, 2020).

On the other hand, all those conversations, which were recorded and widely shared, remain available to the community, which can relive the encounters, revisit analyses, and build new proposals based on the dialogue developed. Some of the encounters were particularly valuable for their strength and impact. In this regard, students shone in a special way, and with it generated the beginning of one of the movement’s most valuable actions: the birth of “Students for Inclusion,” a working group made up solely of secondary school students, which initiates reflections, designs proposals, and generates actions of great transformative impact.

9. Broaden social imagination to conceive a school without exclusions

What cannot be imagined cannot happen. It is therefore necessary to expand its limits in order to be able to think that another school is possible, that the one we have now is not the only one.

With this idea in mind, and with the animation created by Manu Viqueira, Quererla es crearla is directing a campaign based on a video of less than 2 minutes that aims to place the fight for inclusive education on the same level as other preceding social changes.

Inclusive education is one of the great challenges facing humanity today, and in particular the Spanish education system. Ensuring that it addresses the needs and rights of all children together represents a fundamental contribution to the development of a more equitable, just, and democratic society.

This is not a tangential or anecdotal issue, but a fundamental step in the succession of historical events that we have been developing in the conquest of human rights. The defense of the right to education for all people without exception, without separating them from childhood, enhances the social and educational value of the school.

We want that school. And wanting it means getting to work to create it.

The campaign has been very well received and is used in many contexts, especially educational ones, to generate public debate and reflection on its content. Examples include the reaction of the renowned pedagogue Francesco Tonucci, or the program dedicated to analyzing the Campaign on Canal Málaga TV.

On the other hand, the collective has created other materials that help school communities initiate processes of collective reflection on issues that are often overlooked but have a significant impact on children’s emotional well-being in schools. A notable example is loneliness in the playgrounds. For this purpose, an animated short film was created, produced by one of the young people with the collaboration of adult members of the project’s steering group. The result can be seen here:

It’s not just about the playgrounds; it’s not limited to those with reduced mobility either. The video is a starting point for deep reflection: there are students who, throughout the school day, interact almost exclusively with teachers, distanced from their peer group, even sharing the same space. The video led to a call for initiatives and good practices, which were shared and aim to address these situations that place some students in a vulnerable and isolated position. We present a brief selection of them here for their potential to make us think, but significant efforts were made by different schools across Spain.

The proposal refers to a very simple question: What do you and your school, the faculty, the families, do or plan to do to CREATE spaces for coexistence in which all children, without exception, are part of a whole? The work of each community to prevent this pain can be an excellent start to inclusive processes that extend to other school issues.

The objective remains to create proposals for reflection and debate that foster the transformation of our schools into democratic and truly inclusive spaces where the needs of all students are taken into account and addressed from a perspective aligned with respect for human rights. To achieve this, it is essential to have people like you to demonstrate once again that Quererla es crearla (To want it is to create it).

10. It is possible: a school working towards its dreams

CEIP La Parra in Almáchar (Málaga) is a Learning Community (CdA) that since 2019 has been enriching itself through a Participatory Action Research (IAP) process focused on improving coexistence within the school and its surroundings. The IAP develops systematic and rigorous work that involves the entire community, particularly all students and teachers, who, as researchers of their own reality, conduct participatory analyses, collectively choose areas of action, design and implement a comprehensive action plan, and evaluate the process.

This project is part of the research “Emerging narratives on the inclusive school from the social model of disability. Resistance, resilience and social change,” from the University of Malaga. As a unique feature in relation to other experiences of CoD, it adds value by taking on the challenge of a profound change in the way of looking at and understanding “attention to diversity” from an inclusive approach, which incorporates the voices of students and families, to identify barriers to learning and participation, thereby generating opportunities for all students without exception: “to build a school that responds to all singularities, where children go happily,” who have “equivalent opportunities to learn and develop” to build their own life projects and who also become autonomous and responsible individuals who want to change and transform their reality.”

PAR projects focused on educational change, with an inclusive methodology, such as the one developed in this center, have great potential for the training of professionals in their work context and for the development of schools. For this reason, as a result of this work, a guide has been published by INTEF (Ministry of Education and Vocational Training) so that other schools and educational communities can develop their own growth processes for inclusion.

The project developed has been shared with other schools and aims to serve as an example for those that wish to initiate their own improvement processes towards inclusion and equity. It is worth highlighting the documentary produced within the framework of the Research titled “Like the Light of a Dream,” and the participation in reports by Canal Malaga and Canal Sur TV.

11. The Path of Dissent to Transform the School

We live in a world that praises consensus. As a consequence, we reject disagreement and detest dissent. However, dissent has been prohibited by all dictatorships, regardless of their political alignment. In totalitarian regimes, dissidence has been punished, persecuted, and eliminated.

Dissent is, in reality, the engine of social change and the conquest of rights. It questions the established order, the “it has always been done this way,” and, above all, the oppression that is normalized over certain groups discriminated against for reasons of sex, ethnicity, functionality, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other characteristic.

For this reason, a group of mothers has created a Guide titled “How to Dissent,” which aims to pave the way for families who have to respond to a school that still does not adequately serve all citizens. This is also one of the necessary steps to provoke change in the institution: to make the voices that are not usually heard within it count.

Ultimately, the objective of this guide is to guide anyone who needs to dissent in how to do so. But we are aware that dissent cannot succeed if those in power do not open themselves to listening to those who disagree, in order to build a better school together. A school that does not accept injustice and that defends the rights of all. Therefore, this guide on “How to Dissent” should be complemented by another that could well be titled “How to Receive Challenges to My Work,” “How to Listen,” or “How to Question Myself if I Cause Suffering.”

The tool seeks to offer some emotional and rational support to the group of people who, on a daily basis, consult and ask for advice from the growing team of mothers, fathers, and professionals from “Quererla es Crearla”. Therefore, the guide is not just a guide. It is also a way to accompany people so that they do not feel so alone in their (obligatory!) task of opposing the school injustices that still occur today in schools.

12. Tutorials for communities to research

Implementing projects to develop inclusion in one’s own school often requires finding paths that other schools and collectives have already taken. For this reason, Quererla es Crearla has created a series of video tutorials to guide Participatory Action Research processes, which can be managed by different groups within any school: teaching staff, parent associations (AMPAS), management teams, student groups…

For its development, postgraduate students from the University of Malaga—enrolled in the Master’s Degree in Social Change and Educational Professions—and senior researchers have been involved. In collaboration, they are generating scripts, selecting materials, searching for bibliography, and producing video tutorials to guide the processes to be undertaken. Specifically, the guides from “La Aventura de Aprender” by the National Institute for Educational Technologies and Teacher Training (INTEF) of the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training have been taken into account. In this project, Quererla es Crearla has actively participated by developing guides.

This collaboration between universities and schools, through service-learning, represents a step forward in the processes of development, innovation, and knowledge transfer in both directions: university students learn the procedures that scientific literature has shown to be effective in promoting equity and inclusion, while also transitioning from being recipients of information to becoming knowledge creators. Furthermore, the guides illustrated with video tutorials stem from a collaboration between academic researchers and social collectives.

The video tutorials published so far or currently in production cover the following themes:

  • How to make your school inclusive
  • How to conduct Participatory Action Research
  • How to gather information from the community
  • How to select a problem
  • How to conduct interviews
  • How to conduct life stories
  • How to return information to the community
  • How to do political advocacy
  • Group dynamics for conducting workshops
  • How to do a mini-ethnography
  • How to foster student participation
  • How to build horizontal leadership in school
  • How to make an audiovisual micro-story
  • How to make a project
  • How to make a flowchart
  • How to do a mapping
  • UDL as a tool for addressing diversity

13. Creating it: participation for the construction of educational change

If the process began in 2018 with an initial participatory evaluation (described in section 2), and in 2020 participatory online work was done to continue with that evaluation to guide policies (addressed in section 7), in 2022 it was time to hold another participatory meeting, this time oriented towards action.

The WorkshopCrearla was a meeting between families, students, and professionals held on October 22, 2022, in Madrid, where we shared a diagnosis of the school reality in relation to inclusion, collectively built over 4 years. From that starting point, the aim was to generate an egalitarian dialogue to build strategic lines for continuing to work in a participatory, organized, and systematic way during the following year. It was not a conventional conference or course. It was a meeting where each participant committed to the transformation of the education system. The meeting was broadcast live on PeerTube thanks to the support of xrcb.cat

The Workshop was based on the research “Emerging Narratives on Inclusive School…” (RTI2018-099218-A-I00) which we developed at the University of Malaga with funding from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, just like the previous participatory meetings held in previous years. It was based on Booth’s (1998)9 perspective when he presents the “excluded voice thesis”: this research methodology allows us to reach the perspectives and experiences of oppressed groups who could not make their voices heard with other methodological proposals. In other words, the research seeks to question and even break the power relations that dominate research practices.

Aware of the value of what had been built, this meeting started from the idea that students, teachers, families, and academics can learn from each other, collaborate in developing new proposals, and together develop new possibilities for action. Therefore, it aimed to:

  • Promote the construction of networks for collaboration and activism for inclusion.
  • Disseminate a participatory evaluation of the state of school inclusion, based on experience.
  • To provide a space for expressing desires, concerns, doubts, and proposals.
  • To re-establish the necessary trust between professionals, students, and families, through people committed to the democratization of schools.
  • To design strategic lines to promote the real and effective development of the inclusive school.
  • Organize a large Participatory Action Research to promote inclusion in the state school system

The meeting was very fruitful. The work developed by each of the working groups and collectives over the past few years was shared, the process was debated, how to create a common strategy for developments in the different territories of the state was discussed, and from all the proposals developed, a ten-point commitment was agreed upon, among which we highlight two: 

  • Each Autonomous Community or territory will form a steering group, made up of professionals, students, families, politicians, associations, and the university.
  • Deploy extensive work to disseminate the documentary in all possible institutions, trying to involve city councils and entities, to engage the community and generate public debate on the need for inclusive education.
  • Create a network of counselors from all over the State, generating online meetings.
  • Weave networks by sharing stories.

14. Students for Inclusion: Students Leading Change

This Secondary School Student Research Team is part of the broader research project, titled ‘Emerging Narratives on Inclusive Schooling…’, mentioned previously.

Since 2020, a group of 16 secondary school students from different regions of Spain have held virtual meetings with some researchers from the aforementioned project to analyze their school experiences and build a guide for other students who are starting processes to make their own high schools more inclusive. They have formed a valuable intersectional support network (gender, ability, social class, nationality, ethnicity, academic performance, sexual orientation and gender identity, health, etc.) that has brought about an activist movement for diversity: ‘Students for Inclusion’.

Since 1990, the Education for All (EFA) movement has given an international boost to inclusion and equity in schools. It has been emphasized in 2016 by the Education 2030 Framework for Action. In this context, this youth research is based on UNESCO’s guidelines on inclusion and equity and Fielding’s work on student voice, all from Hill Collins’ intersectional perspective.

The students have developed a Youth Participatory Action Research project to promote educational justice through inclusion, encouraging other young people to lead changes in their own schools. In turn, some of these students have constructed their life stories to illustrate the processes of school exclusion and inclusion as a resource for other students. These life stories are presented in section 3 of this report, along with members from other sectors of the school community.

The information used in their research has been generated through dialogue and joint work on their own school and life experiences. This has been developed through more than 20 online collective work sessions (recorded, analyzed, and categorized by themselves), meetings and gatherings, interviews, and participation in public events.

The group has achieved great results. It has emerged as an activism group that offers mutual support, generates shared reflections, and promotes transformations. Its actions include:

  • Publication of 6 student life stories.
  • Publication of the Guide ‘How to make your school inclusive’.
  • High-level political advocacy, with meetings with the Minister of Education of Spain.
  • Participation in conferences, workshops, and teacher training programs.
  • Leadership for change and cultural transformation:
  • Participation in television, radio, and press.
  • Activism on social media.
  • They are main actors in the documentary film ‘Inclusive Education. Quererla es crearla’, with premieres in 10 countries.
  • Participation in the Rally for inclusive education.

A very practical guide

The result of intense and prolonged work by the ‘Students for Inclusion’ group, along with a team of researchers from the University of Malaga, is the Guide ‘How to Make Your School Inclusive’. The diverse composition of the group was the key to ensuring that the ideas born from it, filtered through sustained debate over time, always kept the focus on the inclusion of all students, without any restrictions on that ‘all’. Their work is a huge example that when we talk about inclusive education, wanting it is creating it.

The guide draws on three major lines of research widely developed by Educational Sciences and other Social Sciences. These currents of research and action to promote social justice in situations affecting young people have been considered and mixed in these pages with the idea that young people themselves should lead the change in our schools and institutes.

Thus, this guide becomes a useful tool, offering a proven yet flexible way of effective work to advance inclusion and equity.

Resistance and resilience

The Youth Teams and their research are opening processes of resistance and resilience in the participants, who recognize themselves as people capable of imagining and building other futures. The scientific rigor of the proposals, their collaborative construction with families and professionals, and the social impact of their work show the value of their knowledge, their critical thinking and transformative capacity, as well as the need to recognize the agency of all students without exception.

‘Youth Teams in Education Research’ Award

‘Students for Inclusion’ has been awarded by the American Educational Research Association (American Association for Inclusive Education) to participate in its next congress, which will be held in Chicago in April 2023. The group was one of the 10 teams of secondary school student researchers selected from around the world to participate in this important international congress.

On behalf of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), we are pleased to inform you that your team of secondary school student researchers has been selected to participate in the AERA’s Youth Research in Education Program at the 2023 Annual Meeting in Chicago. This special initiative is designed to showcase the work of secondary students using research tools to answer critical questions about education and to cultivate students’ knowledge of and interest in the field of educational research. The program attracted dozens of proposals from youth teams across the United States and around the world. The selection committee was impressed with the quality of your proposal and the substance of the work your student researchers are doing. Congratulations!

World Down Syndrome Award

‘Students for Inclusion’ has been awarded by Down Syndrome International, the international organization that brings together the associations of entities from different countries on all 5 continents. The World Down Syndrome Awards are given to projects, achievements, or practices that improve the lives of people with Down syndrome. There were over 200 nominations from around the world, and only 5 awards, one of which – in the category of Inclusive Education (Self)Advocacy Groups – went to ‘Students for Inclusion’, the group of students promoting the movement Quererla es crearla. This powerful team of young people, with their quiet and unassuming demeanor, continues to teach lessons around the world. They presented their project and actions on March 22, 2024, at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

15. A movement in the street for a right that benefits everyone

On Sunday, October 23, 2022, Quererla es Crearla called for a Gathering in Plaza del Callao, Madrid (Spain) at 12:00 PM to advocate for an inclusive education system that serves as a precursor to an inclusive society. A gathering for the fulfillment of a right that benefits everyone.

The manifesto of the Gathering received over 100 endorsements from local, regional, national, and international entities and collectives, and a large group of people gathered in the street to demonstrate that we want Inclusive Educationand we are going to support any person and group willing to create it, because this is how we advance in our humanity, and because this will be the best legacy for our sons and daughters, for future generations, and to help achieve a dignified life in society for everyone, one that is sustainable and worth living.

16. Documenting a movement that spans the globe

All the work developed has, in turn, been the subject of a rigorous documentation process. For this, the direction was provided by filmmaker Cecilia Barriga who, guided by participatory processes in which each member of the driving group of Quererla es crearla took the floor, has been recounting the process followed, while also showing the seed of a social movement.

Synopsis

“Quererla es crearla” is a documentary about a right, a need, a desire, a political commitment, and a possibility: ensuring that all people can learn to live together in schools. Building inclusive societies requires dismantling our prejudices about diversity and differences, for which we need to re-examine schools where some students do not fit, are mistreated and segregated, while the rest learn to see discrimination as something correct and desirable. The film reflects on this reality through various intersecting stories in defense of the right to inclusive education.

It begins with the case of Rubén Calleja, who was expelled from his primary school and forced to attend a special education center, something his family refused to accept. After years of legal struggle, Rubén obtains the support of the United Nations, with a pioneering ruling against the Spanish education system. Inclusive education is a fundamental right, which enables the possibility of participating in the world. Rubén’s story is the common thread of other struggles, deeper and more complex than the legal ones, shared by a group of students and their families: those that refer to socially shared ideologies, culture, policies, and school practices, which strongly discriminate based on ability, social origin, gender, ethnicity, health, sexual orientation, nationality, etc. But which also harm those who do not fit into those categories, because no one can conform to the normality that schools serve.

With the backdrop of a struggle that must be shared by the entire population, this group of people shows the need to escape their unbearable oppressive situations, while also introducing us to the everyday, simple, and exciting dreams of any person, their actions to make them a reality, the small things that make up daily life… But above all, the film is a testament to a collective movement: inclusion is not something distant and unattainable, but a real experience that many people live today, which deepens diversity and, therefore, our human nature.

All information about the film can be found in the technical sheet, and a preview with the trailer.

The film has been collaboratively subtitled into 14 languages so far (Spanish, English, Romanian, Japanese, French, Portuguese, Esperanto, Korean, Galician, Catalan, Basque, Arabic, Italian, and Russian), interpreted in Spanish Sign Language and Mexican Sign Language, and audio-described. This demonstrates the film’s international value, facilitating the development of debates and reflection on the value and necessity of inclusive education, placing it in the revolutionary space it occupies and aims to transform the school system.

On October 21, 2022, the documentary “Inclusive Education. Quererla es crearla” premiered at the Reina Sofía National Museum in Madrid. Since that day, the film has been available to any group that wishes to organize group screenings in their territory. We want the documentary to be an incentive to generate debates, conversations, analyses, and critiques about the education we have and the education that is possible. Therefore, we are dedicating these first months of viewing the documentary to collective gatherings. The film is suitable for all audiences, but it aims to break down barriers particularly among the adult population: teachers, families, other education-related professionals, social organizations, etc. Secondary and university students can also enjoy it, but this phase of collective screenings is designed to be watched in community. Making schools inclusive requires us to talk, to get to know each other better, and to begin questioning what has so far been considered “normal.” That is what needs to be dismantled.

Anyone interested in organizing a screening of the film, confirm a place, date, and time in your locality (reserving time for the subsequent discussion) and fill out a brief form. Once it is verified that everything is in order, the film will be sent along with a folder containing all the necessary material for the event’s promotion: poster, synopsis, technical sheet, photocall, press kit, film images to share with the media, guide for facilitating the discussion, etc. Some of the documents are prepared to be edited and contextualized for each event.

The documentary is being extremely well-received, so far in Spanish-speaking countries. We hope it can soon be enjoyed in the other languages it has been translated into. At the moment, more than 150 collective screenings have taken place in 10 countries: Spain, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela, Colombia, and Guatemala. Information about the screenings is public and can be consulted at .https://creemoseducacioninclusiva.com/el-documental-se-mueve/Each screening signifies a meeting, a conversation, a debate: bringing inclusive education into the public sphere, and doing so with a language full of emotion. Furthermore, it has just begun to be presented at National and International Film Festivals. Its journey on these circuits is yet to be discovered.

17. An international network of schools for inclusion and equity

For decades, inclusive education has been on the international political agenda. Inclusive education is understood as a fundamental human right that cannot be taken away from any child or young person, as it means the loss of social, emotional, attitudinal, academic, and identity opportunities,10 as well as an insurmountable obstacle to advancing the construction of societies that are kind to all people. Despite this, inequalities based on disability, social class, nationality, or ethnicity, among others, continue to be produced and reproduced in our education systems, something that has been repeatedly evidenced in reports by international organizations such as UNESCO.11 Schools can be repositories and legitimizers of these social injustices, but they can also challenge them. Therefore, the collective project of making schools inclusive holds a prominent place among the desirable and necessary objectives in every corner of the world.

This is the reason that mobilizes the International Network of schools for inclusion and equity: to advance in the challenge of developing more inclusive school institutions, offering learning opportunities and a social network that supports all students without exception. This implies the construction of more welcoming and creative school communities that value differences and grow systematically from them. In this way, educational environments reduce segregation, and improve the quality of the learning they generate and the social relationships they foster, which means growing in democracy and social justice.

Cooperation between the different school communities in the network will allow for the piloting and improvement of a series of tools created under the umbrella of this project, the comparison of experiences, and the construction of practical proposals for improving cultures, policies, and practices that could serve as an example for other schools in Spain and Latin America. The network includes schools with great diversity among them, which makes it especially valuable: rural and urban, from Early Childhood, Primary, and Secondary levels, with a wide diversity of students and different challenges. These can be grouped around participation as a key element for equity and inclusion, and are manifested in the eradication of segregation, the reduction of school failure, repetition, and dropout, the improvement of community participation and coexistence, as well as the optimization of learning quality.

Quererla es Crearlaconvened this Network of School Centers from Spain and Latin America who wish to advance their practices to adequately serve all students without exception. The network began working in June 2024 with more than 170 schools from 10 countries, holding online meetings facilitated by the team of the R&D+i Project “Emerging Narratives for the Construction of Inclusive Schools” (PID2022-140193OB-I00, from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of Spain) at the University of Malaga. The work is based on the findings and constructions developed over the last 5 years in the preceding R&D+i project: “Emerging Narratives on Inclusive Schools from the Social Model of Disability” (RTI2018-099218-A-I00, from the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain).

Emerging narratives for the construction of inclusive schools. Inclusive education. Quererla es Crearla – Narrative and Interactive Report. Each of the Schools that is part of the network will develop a Participatory Action Research, using the resources generated in Quererla es Crearla in recent years, particularly the guide “How to do Participatory Action Research”. The process will have the coordination of researchers from the University of Malaga, the contributions of activists from the movement and the accompaniment of the other schools in the community, and will be driven and monitored through theParticipatory Platform “We Decide Inclusive Education”, hosted on the University of Malaga’s server and managed participatively.

18. ‘Quererla es crearla’ in the media

‘Quererla es Crearla’ is having a very wide impact in the media across a broad spectrum. The following links serve as examples:

19. A social movement with the support of committed science

As we expressed at the beginning of this report, Quererla es Crearla is a people’s social movement that has been scientifically supported and facilitated through the R&D&I (Research, Development, and Innovation) Project “Emerging Narratives on the Inclusive School from the Social Model of Disability. Resistance, Resilience, and Social Change” (RTI2018-099218-A-I00), led by professors Ignacio Calderón Almendros and Mª Teresa Rascón Gómez from the University of Málaga, and funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and the University of Málaga.

This research project is based on three premises: 1) The activism of persons with disabilities and their support networks promotes educational inclusion and social change; 2) The knowledge derived from the Social Model of Disability allows us to question and improve schools; 3) Mutual support and resistance networks foster resilience processes. Based on these ideas, stories of activism from families, students, and professionals who are fighting to make schools a place where all children find recognition through presence, learning, participation, and success in the pre-compulsory and compulsory stages have been recovered. The aim is to document and analyze the experiences of families, students, and professionals who are fighting to ensure that Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified by Spain (UN, 2006), is fulfilled. This is particularly relevant following the report made public in June 2018 by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which states that the right to education of children with disabilities is being seriously and systematically violated in Spain (UN, 2017). However, the research proposal has gone far beyond these legal terms.

The study has documented the new narratives about disability and inclusive education that originate from this collective in order to recognize their value and disseminate them; it has delved into the educational conceptions, experiences, and professional practices involved in school inclusion processes; it has helped to understand the collaboration mechanisms used by these collectives; and finally, it has created resources that make visible and feed new conceptions of functional diversity and that articulate proposals to promote inclusive education.

To achieve these objectives, the research team has been ethnographically immersing itself in the coordinates of these individuals who are constructing narratives beyond the conventional boundaries of what we have understood as school, and who are trying to force the transformation of the institution through new cultural elaborations and vital and social cartographies. The biographical-narrative methodology has been used, understanding that it perfectly suits the study’s aims.

Within this methodology, different methodological formulas have been used: the development of abundant micro-life stories and autobiographical accounts, the construction of in-depth life stories of activists, students, and professionals committed to inclusion, and a documentary analysis of current legislation on equity and inclusion in schools. Furthermore, various Participatory Action Research processes have been developed to promote transformations. The final report has been constructed in two formats: text and audiovisual.

The research has aimed at understanding, but also at expressing the voices of individuals and groups who are often not legitimized in their constructions. Therefore, research itself is a tool for social change. Furthermore, the narratives and analyses have served as catalysts for proposals aimed at citizen action, making the struggles for this social change more effective. Finally, the design and facilitation of participatory research processes have been fundamental to the strength of the movement.

Competitive public projects

Each of the research areas that have emerged over the last 5 years has involved scientific work that has received public funding, namely:

  • Emerging narratives about inclusive schools from the Social Model of Disability. Resistance, resilience, and social change (RTI2018-099218-A-I00)
  • Emerging narratives about inclusive schools from the Social Model of Disability. Resistance, resilience, and social change (Málaga University Own Research Plan)
  • Students for inclusion (AEPP01/23, Málaga University Own Research Plan)
  • FPU17/00385 contract from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Jesús Javier Moreno Parra, September 2018-March 2023, 54 months duration.
  • FPU19/05477 contract from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Luz del Valle Mojtar Mendieta, November 2020-November 2024, 48 months duration.

Doctoral theses and Master’s Final Projects

Furthermore, two Doctoral Theses have been developed, still to be defended:

  • MORENO PARRA, J.J. (2023). Inclusive education, school counseling, and response to diversity. Narratives in teacher training. Directors: José Ignacio Rivas Flores and Ignacio Calderón Almendros. University of Malaga. Outstanding Cum Laude.
  • MOJTAR MENDIETA, L. (In progress). Emerging narratives of the inclusive school. Intersectionality in vulnerable groups based on two cases. Director: Ignacio Calderón Almendros. University of Malaga.

And the following Final Master’s Projects:

  • MOJTAR MENDIETA, L. (2020). The construction of a life between borders. Analysis for inclusive education from an intersectional perspective. Final Project of the Master’s Degree in Social Change and Educational Professions at the University of Malaga. Directed by: Ignacio Calderón Almendros. Grade: Outstanding (10).
  • LÓPEZ RODRÍGUEZ, S. (2022). Education, resistance and intersectionality: life story of a Venezuelan woman with Down Syndrome. Final Project of the Master’s Degree in Inclusive Education, Democracy and Cooperative Learning at the Central University of Catalonia. Directed by: Ignacio Calderón Almendros. Grade: Honors (9.9).
  • ESCARTÍN PUEYO, E. (2022). Life story of Inar: the fight to be seen in a school that excludes. An intersectional analysis to move towards inclusive education. Final Master’s Project in Social Change and Educational Professions at the University of Málaga. Directed by: Ignacio Calderón Almendros. Grade: Outstanding (9)
  • AGUILERA ROJO, A. (2022). Biography of Belén: learning to be through activism for her daughter’s right to education. Final Master’s Project in Social Change and Educational Professions at the University of Málaga. Directed by: Ignacio Calderón Almendros. Grade: Noteworthy (8).
  • GARCÍA GAMARRO, M.D. (2022). Community involvement for inclusive education: evaluative case study of the Axarquía Inclusiva Conference. Final Master’s Project in Social Change and Educational Professions at the University of Málaga. Directed by: María Teresa Rascón Gómez. Grade: Noteworthy (8)

Awards and recognitions

  • Extraordinary Award for the Master’s Degree in Social Change and Educational Professions from the University of Málaga 2019/2020, to the researcher Luz de Valle Mojtar Mendieta, whose Master’s Final Project was titled “The construction of a life between borders. Analysis for inclusive education from an intersectional perspective”.
  • Extraordinary Award for the Master’s Degree in Inclusive Education, Democracy and Cooperative Learning from the Central University of Catalonia 2021/22, to the researcher Sonia López Rodríguez, whose Master’s Final Project was titled “Education, Resistance and Intersectionality. Life Story of a Venezuelan Woman with Down Syndrome”.
  • II Pere Pujolàs i Maset Award (2022), from the Faculty of Education, Translation, Sports and Psychology (FETEP) UVIC, the Khelidon Network of Centers and the Catalan Association of Psychopedagogy, to researcher Sonia López Rodríguez, whose Master’s Final Project was titled “Education, Resistance and Intersectionality. Life story of a Venezuelan woman with Down syndrome”. https://bit.ly/3K8ol3X
  • ‘Youth Teams in Education Research’ Award (2023)), the American Educational Research Association (Association for Inclusive Education) to the Secondary School Student Research Team “Students for Inclusion”.

Scientific publications

The work developed has been accompanied by an abundant number of top-tier international scientific publications, the result of the research work of the University of Malaga team. Similarly, the main contributions have been presented at some of the most important Educational Research Congresses in the world. From this set of scientific productions, we will highlight the following:

Books

ALONSO, M.; RASCÓN, M.T.; CALDERÓN, I. & EDUCATIONAL COMMUNITY OF CEIP ‘LA PARRA’ (2023). How to do Participatory Action Research. Ministry of Education and Vocational Training.https://bit.ly/3JOdzP8

CALDERÓN, I.; MOJTAR, L.; CABELLO, F. & ‘STUDENTS FOR INCLUSION’ COLLECTIVE (2021). How to make your school inclusive. Ministry of Education and Vocational Training.https://bit.ly/3FRmxK8

CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. & VERDE FRANCISCO, P. (2018). Recognizing diversity. Short texts and images to transform perspectives. Octaedro.https://bit.ly/3FVgB2U

CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. & RASCÓN GÓMEZ, M.T. (Coords.)(2020). Analysis and proposals for a new Education Law. Citizen conversations about inclusive schools. Octaedro.https://bit.ly/40g2r4q

CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. & RASCÓN GÓMEZ, M.T. (Coords.)(In press). The role of the University in building inclusive education systems. Difficulties, proposals, and challenges. Octaedro.https://tinyurl.com/22a64l4y

CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I., MORENO PARRA, J. & COLECTIVO ALTEREVALUACIÓN (In press). An inclusive psycho-pedagogical assessment. How to make it a key piece for a school concerned with everyone, without exception. Octaedro.

RADIKALES DESADAPTADAS COLLECTIVE (2024). How to dissent. A guide (or companion). Octaedro.https://octaedro.com/libro/como-disentir/

Selection of Book Chapters

SOLDEVILA-PÉREZ, J.; CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. & ECHEITA, G. (2022). My (school) life is expendable: radicalizing the discourse against the miseries of the school system. In J. Collet, M. Naranjo & J. Soldevila (Ed), Global struggles for inclusive education: lessons from Spain (pp.17-32). Springer, Switzerland.https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-3-031-11476-2_2  

RASCÓN GÓMEZ, M.T., CIVILA SALAS, A. & CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. (2022). Research in inclusive education and transfer in initial teacher training: difficulties and challenges. In Vila, E. and Hijano, M. (Coords.), Knowledge transfer and educational research (pp. 61-82). Octaedro. https://doi.org/10.36006/09503

MARTÍNEZ MARTÍN, M.; CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. and VILLAMOR MANERO, P. (2019). The role of practice in the training of education professionals. In Vera Vila, J. (Coord.), Training to transform. Social change and educational professions (133-156). GEU Editorial, Granada.https://bit.ly/3Kc6wkv

CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I.; RASCÓN GÓMEZ, M.T. & ALONSO BRIALES, M. (2020). Investigating to build inclusive education. In Vila, E. and Grana, I. (Coords.), Educational research and social change (pp. 189-209). Octaedro.https://bit.ly/40iraFb

RASCÓN GÓMEZ, M.T., CIVILA SALAS, A. & CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. (2022). Research in inclusive education and transfer in the initial training of teachers: difficulties and challenges. In Vila, E. and Hijano, M. (Coords.), Knowledge transfer and educational research (pp. 61-82). Octaedro.https://doi.org/10.36006/09503

Selection of Scientific Articles

ALONSO BRIALES, M., & VERA VILA, J. (2022). In-service training in non-university teaching staff: a fundamental modality in their ongoing training. Teoría De La Educación. Revista Interuniversitaria, 35(1), 167–184.https://doi.org/10.14201/teri.28285

CABELLO, F., RASCÓN, M. T. AND ALVARADO, A. (2019). Multimedia perspectives on resilience and education: Educommunication innovation for the resilience of children at social risk. Revista de Iberoamericana de Educación Superior, 10(28), 157-169.https://doi.org/10.22201/iisue.20072872e.2019.28.434

CABELLO, F. AND RASCÓN, M. T. (2019). Audiovisual narratives on resilience and education. Revista de Innovación Educativa, 19(80), 77-92.

CABELLO, F., RASCÓN, M. T. AND HERRERA, D. (2019). Socio-spatial and temporal horizons of marginalization: The case of Los Asperones. Andamios. Revista de Investigación Social, 41, 355-383. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.29092/uacm.v16i41.729

CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. & ECHEITA, G. (2022). Inclusive Education as a human right. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. https://doi.org/ 10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1243

CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I.; MORENO PARRA, J. & MOJTAR MENDIETA, L. (In press). School inequality and discrimination based on ability during confinement. Family experiences in participatory research processes. Revista Complutense de Educación.

CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I.; MORENO-PARRA, J. & VILA-MERINO, E. (2022). Education, power, and segregation. The psychoeducational report as an obstacle to inclusive education. International Journal of Inclusive education.https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2022.2108512

CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. (2018). Deprived of human rights. Disability & Society, 33(10), 1666-1671.https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2018.1529260

CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. (2023).  Researching with communities to promote inclusive education.  Lead the Change Series, 140, 2-4. https://bit.ly/3Kb68CN

CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. & RASCÓN GÓMEZ, M.T. (2021).  Retóricas, posibilidades e infancias desgarradas. Sobre la educación inclusiva en la LOMLOE. Cuadernos de Pedagogía, 526, 74-80. https://bit.ly/3zcSHvO

CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. (Coord.)(2019). Tema del Mes: Desafíos de la educación inclusiva en la educación secundaria. Aula de Secundaria, 33, 12-25.

CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. (2019). Differences and Inequality in Schools: The Languages of Oppressed People as Hope. Ars Vivendi Journal, 11, 2-11.https://bit.ly/2GzQ7Wf

CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. & RASCÓN-GÓMEZ, M.T. (2022). Weaving struggles for the right to education: Collective and personal narratives for inclusion from the social model of disability. Pedagogía Social. Revista Interuniversitaria, 41, 43-54.https://doi.org/10.7179/PSRI_2022.41.03

HERRERA FERNÁNDEZ, M.M., MATÉS LLAMAS, C., FARZANEH PEÑA, D. & BARRADO FERNÁNDEZ, S. (2021). Walking towards inclusion through participatory action research in an educational community. Revista Latinoamericana de Educación Inclusiva, 15(2), 135-153.https://bit.ly/3zc1yhy

MOJTAR-MENDIETA, L. & CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. (2021). Silenced voices leading school changes. Enabling Education Review, 10, 28-29.https://bit.ly/3lEDO2t

MORENO PARRA, J.; FERNÁNDEZ TORRES, P. & CORTÉS GONZÁLEZ, P. (2022). Intelligence in the initial training of counselors. Student perspectives. Revista de Educación, 398, 87-110.https://sede.educacion.gob.es/publiventa/d/26348/19/0

VEGA DÍAZ, C. AND DE OÑA COTS, J.M. (2021). Research to transform: building Social Education from the analysis of one’s own experience. RES: Revista de Educación Social, 33, 113-130.

VILA, E.S. (2019). Rethinking the educational relationship from the pedagogy of otherness. Theory of education. Interuniversity journal, 31(2), 177-196.https://doi.org/10.14201/teri.20271

JURADO, B. AND CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. (2024). Violations of the right to education that occur daily in our schools. And nothing happens. AOSMA, Journal of Educational Guidance, 33, 118-127.https://tinyurl.com/2amyyx8u

CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. (2024). Trampling the right to (inclusive) education or fighting to achieve it. Forum. Journal of Educational Organization and Management, 63, 5-10.https://tinyurl.com/2f4u56q2

VILA MERINO, E., RASCÓN-GÓMEZ, M.T. & CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. (2024). Disability, stigma and suffering in schools. Emerging narratives for the right to inclusive education. Educación XX1, 27(1), 353-371.https://doi.org/10.5944/educxx1.36753

Selection of Conferences in International Congresses

ALONSO-BRIALES, M., DE OÑA-COTS, J.M. & VEGA-DÍAZ, C. (2021). Lifelong learning for inclusive education. Paper presented at World Educational Research Association 2021 Focal Meeting, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I.; RASCÓN-GÓMEZ, M.T. & CABELLO-FERNÁNDEZ-DELGADO, F. (2021). How to make our schools more inclusive? The case of Spain. Paper presented at Comparative Education Society of Asia (CESA) 12th Biennial Conference, Kathmandu, Nepal.

CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. (2022). Involving communities in the promotion of inclusive school cultures. 1st International Conference on Education and Training – Thinking education in transition times, Lisbon, Portugal.https://www.icet2022.pt/en/content/abstracts/abstract-book/abstract-book.html

CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I.; RASCÓN-GÓMEZ, M.T. & MOJTAR-MENDIETA, L. (2022). Intersectionality, emerging narratives, and inclusive education in Spain. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting 2022 (AERA). San Diego, USA.https://hdl.handle.net/10630/24086

CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I.; MORENO-PARRA, J.J. & VILA-MERINO, E. (2021). Education, power and segregation. Psychoeducational evaluation as an obstacle to Inclusive Education. Paper presented at World Educational Research Association 2021 Focal Meeting, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.https://hdl.handle.net/10630/22679

CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I.; RASCÓN-GÓMEZ, M.T. & MOJTAR-MENDIETA, L. (2022). New Discourses for a Necessary Transformation: Intersectionality, emerging narratives, and inclusive education in Spain. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Research Meeting 2022 (AERA), San Diego.https://hdl.handle.net/10630/24086

CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. & AINSCOW, M. (2023). Researching With Communities To Promote Inclusive Education In Latin America. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting 2023 (AERA), Chicago, USA.

CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. (2021). Educational inclusion and equity in Latin America. Paper presented at the 2021 Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) Conference: Social Responsibility within Changing Contexts, Seattle, USA.

MOJTAR-MENDIETA, L., CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. & RASCÓN-GÓMEZ, M.T. (2023). Students as subjects. Resistance and collective resilience to challenge barriers to inclusion. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting 2023 (AERA), Chicago, USA.

RASCÓN-GÓMEZ, M.T. & MOJTAR-MENDIETA, L. (2021). Inclusive or exclusive education? A challenge for the Spanish School system. Paper presented at World Educational Research Association 2021 Focal Meeting, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

RASCÓN-GÓMEZ, M.T.; CABELLO FERNÁNDEZ-DELGADO, F. & CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. (2022). Emerging and transformative narratives on inclusive education through documentary cinema. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Research Meeting 2022 (AERA), San Diego.

RASCÓN-GÓMEZ, M.T., CABELLO-FERNANDEZ, F. & CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. (2023). How to make the participatory social documentary a tool for educational inclusion? Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting 2023 (AERA), Chicago, USA.

MARTÍNEZ-DE-ILARDUYA, I. & CALDERÓN-CANO, M. (2024). Don’t judge a book by its cover. Paper presented at the World Down Syndrome Day 2024 (DSI), United Nations, New York, USA.https://creemoseducacioninclusiva.uma.es/w/hoCjpAbhyycdfYtVAxFxuB

Notes

  1. UN (December 13, 2006). Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. United Nations.https://bit.ly/2X6oZGC
  2. UN, Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (2017). Report of the inquiry relating to Spain under article 6 of the Optional Protocol.https://bit.ly/3Zzql9L
  3. Kemmis, S. (2006). Participatory Action Research and the public sphere. Educational Action Research, 14(4), 459-476.https://doi.org/10.1080/09650790600975593
  4. Brydon-Miller, M. & Maguire, P. (2009). Participatory Action Research: Contributions to the Development of Practitioner Inquiry in Education. Educational Action Research, 17(1),https://doi.org/10.1080/09650790802667469
  5. Bertaux, D. (1981). Biography and Society. Sage
  6. Frankl, V. (1991). Man’s Search for Meaning. Herder.
  7. Cyrulnik, B. (2002). Ugly Ducklings. Resilience: An unhappy childhood does not determine life. Gedisa.
  8. Bruner, J. (1991). Acts of Meaning. Beyond the Cognitive Revolution. Alianza Editorial.
  9. Booth, T. (1998). The sound of silenced voices: issues concerning the use of narrative methods with people with learning difficulties. In L. Barton (Ed.), Disability and society. Morata.
  10. See: European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education (2018). Evidence of the link between inclusive education and social inclusion. EADSNE. Hehir, T.; Pascucci, S. & Ch. Pascucci (2016). Summary of the evidence on inclusive education. Alana Institute.
  11. UNESCO (2020). Global Education Monitoring Report 2020: Inclusion and education: Everyone without exception. UNESCO.

A participatory research for the conquest of the right to education.

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