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Vulnerable to silence. School stories of young people with disabilities

Anabel Moriña Díez. University of Seville. Faculty of Education Sciences. Department of Teaching and Educational Organization. Seville, Spain.

SUMMARY. The purpose of this article is to present and analyze the trajectories, experiences, perspectives, and assessments of young people with disabilities who have been schooled in diverse educational contexts. The data presented in this work are part of a broader investigation whose aim has been the analysis of the construction of the social exclusion process of young people between 18 and 25 years of age.
The methodology used in this study has been biographical-narrative, as it allows for a dynamic, participatory, and comprehensive approach to the issue of exclusion by giving voice to the participants through the narration of their life stories.
This work focuses on a subsample of the study (that formed by young people with disabilities). Likewise, a single area of those that make up these life stories is presented: the school paths and experiences of these young people. Specifically, through a cross-sectional analysis of these school narratives, the results revolving around five questions are presented: Are educational trajectories that run throughpaths parallel?; an educational mainstream that segregates?; an educational context specific that facilitates initial integration experiences?; a social life limited to special contexts?; and, finally, a learning process in the classroom that does not guarantee the participation and belonging of all? The conclusions of this work will revolve around the barriers and aids to educational inclusion that these young people identify in their school histories.

Keywords: social exclusion, educational exclusion, inclusive education, biographical-narrative methodology, disability.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this article is to explore and analyze the background, experiences, perspectives and opinions of young people with disabilities who have been educated in a number of different educational contexts. The data that appear in this paper are part of a wider investigation whose purpose is to analyze the construction of the process of social exclusion in young people between the ages of 18 and 25.
A biographical-narrative methodology is used in this study, because, in giving voice to the participants through the narrations of their life stories, the chosen methodology enables a dynamic, participative, comprehensive approach to be taken to the topic of exclusion.
The paper focuses on a subsample of the study (the subsample of young people with disabilities). Furthermore, only one of the component realms of the subjects’ life stories is presented the educational pathways and school experiences of the young people. Transverse analysis of these accounts of school yields results that revolve around five questions: Educational careers that travel parallel paths? An «ordinary» educational context that segregates? A «specific» educational context that facilitates the first experiences of integration? A social life limited to special contexts? And lastly, a learning process in the classroom that does not guarantee the participation and belonging of «all»The conclusions of this paper revolve around the barriers to educational inclusion and the aids to educational inclusion that these young people identify in their school stories.

Key words:social exclusion, educational exclusion, inclusive education, biographical-narrative methodology, disability.

Theoretical bases

Inclusion and social exclusion are two closely linked processes that are part of the same dynamic. This connection implies that, to the extent that barriers acting as mechanisms of social exclusion are reduced, it is possible to contribute to the generation of practices leading to social inclusion.

Both processes can be identified on a continuum where they would occupy opposite extremes. An idea that this approach suggests is that there is not a single form of exclusion, but rather that one can speak in terms of various degrees of it that can lead to different personal experiences and social histories (Subirat, 2006; Tezanos, 2001). From this perspective, exclusion can be defined as a dynamic, social, and complex process that implies a denial of fundamental rights and includes deprivations, among others, of economic, social, political, and educational rights, etc. In this area, there is widespread agreement in pointing out the multidimensional nature of social exclusion. It can also be understood as a phenomenon that involves the interaction of various risk factors responsible for shaping people’s paths (Atkinson, 1998; Kronauer, 1998; Tezanos, 2001).

On the other hand, another significant characteristic that helps explain social exclusion processes is that they are not circumstantial, as the causes leading to situations of exclusion are structural (Witcher, 2003). Social exclusion is the result of a specific social, political, cultural, and economic structure. The very organization of society, directly or indirectly, is what generatessurplus populations.

This argument is also supported by authors such as Barton (1996), Oliver (1990), or Shakespeare and Watson (1996), who, from the social model of disability, have provided a series of explanations about how exclusion is generated. This model denounces that it is the practices, attitudes, and policies of the social context that generate the barriers or aids that either hinder or favor access and participation in different areas. Hence, there is some consensus in affirming that labor, economic, educational-training, and social (family and community social networks) exclusion are among the main factors that can lead to exclusion (Brandolini and D’Alessio, 1998; Jiménez et al., 2003; Kronauer, 1998; Levitas, 1998; Malgesini and García, 2000; Subirats, 2004; Tezanos, 2001).

Current research establishes a close relationship between social and educational exclusion. The former is more general, while the latter is more specific. Furthermore, the literature review conducted indicates the educational sphere as one of the most potent factors generating exclusion. Thus, Macrae, Maguire, and Melbourne (2003) have contributed to the thesis that school exclusion can generate social exclusion in the medium and long term. These authors present data showing how recent studies reference young people who could be considered individuals in situations of or at risk of social exclusion. These young people share, among other traits, frequent absenteeism from school, limited or nonexistent academic qualifications, etc. Another author supporting the link between social and educational exclusion is Howard (1999). For him, the group of persons with disabilities is one of the most vulnerable to social exclusion processes. He justifies this argument by explaining that this group often receives more restricted training compared to boys and girls their age, which can limit opportunities, for example, for employment and, therefore, make access to economic independence difficult.

Conceptually, educational exclusion, like social exclusion, can be defined as a process that unfolds through various phases. It is a complex phenomenon attributable to diverse factors, structures, and dynamics (Slee and Allan, 2005). Some phenomena associated with educational exclusion, according to Escudero (2005), include: school dropout, educational failure, lower-than-desired levels of training, school conflict, etc. The situation of school exclusion can be recognized, for example, in children who cannot access education, in those who drop out of school, in those who, while attending, are ignored in their differences (special educational needs, social origin, ethnicity, gender), and in those who, having completed the different educational stages, do not manage to integrate satisfactorily into society. Educational exclusion, therefore, can occur in access, as well as in school processes and outcomes.

Likewise, it is also possible to establish a continuum where one end is the right to education and the other is total inclusion. Within this continuum, it is also possible to identify school integration practices, which are currently questioned, for reasons including their inability to guarantee the learning and participation of all students on equal terms. This is because their main purpose is to reintegrate someone or some group into the normal life of the school and community from which they were excluded, which would be achieved by adapting them to the context into which they are integrated, without questioning or revising existing practices. Therefore, although integration and inclusion are sometimes used as synonymous concepts, they connote opposite meanings.

In this sense, inclusive education can be considered a process that fosters the participation and belonging of all students (Booth and Ains- cow, 1998). Social and educational inclusion can therefore be considered a way of living, a particular style of acting and participating in society, of understanding and considering each person (Ainscow, 1999; Arnáiz, 2003; Corbett, 2001; Echeita, 2006; Parrilla, 2002, 2007; Sapon-Shevin, 1998; Slee, 2001). From the perspective of inclusive education, the school and the classroom are conceived as a community that must guarantee the right that all students have to learn alongside their peers within a common curricular framework.

Authors like Torres (2008) support this inclusive school approach, in which no type of practice that could generate discrimination or segregation has a place. Instead, for this author, the school must take a more active role through, for example, denouncing discourses and practices that legitimize any educational exclusion process.

Precisely, biographical-narrative methods are an appropriate methodological tool for denouncing and explaining the processes of oppression, discrimination, and exclusion that some groups suffer (Booth & Booth, 2006; Goodley, 2001). We share with Owens (2007) the idea that this type of methodology can contribute to liberating the voices and stories of people who have habitually been silenced.

Finally, in the specific case of people with disabilities, Tim Booth (1998) explains that the “thesis of the excluded voicefacilitates, through narrative methods, access to the perceptions and experiences of oppressed groups who lack the authority to make their voices heard through traditional academic discourse. Other authors such as Biklen (2000) or Tangen (2008), in addition to highlighting this liberating character, emphasize the idea of how the studies carried out demonstrate that when the voices of people with disabilities are heard, it contributes to an increase in proposals for improvement to move towards inclusive education.

Methodological design of the research

The information presented in this article is part of a broader research project titled The construction of the social exclusion process in young people: Guide for the detection and evaluation of exclusion processes(1). This study, currently in its final phase, has been developed at two universities: the University of Seville and the University of Cantabria. The general purpose is to analyze the construction (as a personal experience) of the social exclusion process in young people aged between 18 and 25 years (2).

The total sample of the study is composed of 48 young people in situations of or at risk of exclusion belonging to groups vulnerable to processes of inequality due to minority culture or ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic class, and gender. The methodology used is biographical-narrative research, which allows participants to have a voice through the construction of their life stories.

The research design is organized around two phases. The first aims for a descriptive and explanatory approach to exclusion processes through the narration of the life trajectories of different young people who have personally experienced processes of social exclusion. In a second moment of this first phase, a comparative analysis is carried out of the main barriers and aids that the participants in the study recognize in their processes of social inclusion or exclusion. The second phase is a direct consequence of the results of the previous phase, and is subdivided into two stages or moments that advance from the identification of exclusion indicators to the actual design of a guide for detecting and evaluating the social exclusion process.

The information analyzed for this article focuses exclusively on the subsample of the disability group consisting of nine young people. Among the new young people, at the time we collected the information, most of them are between 22 and 25 years old. The exception is three girls between 18 and 20 years old. The participants are people with disabilities resulting from intellectual, speech or hearing difficulties, vision, and mobility impairments. Likewise, their life stories are not presented, but fragments of them, as it is not the purpose of this work to know the construction of the process of social exclusion globally, but instead, it is chosen to analyze a single area of exclusion: the school paths followed by young people so that, through their experiences, reflections, and emotions, they explain how they interpret their own school experiences. Through a cross-sectional analysis of different key aspects in the school histories of the participants, the barriers that act as obstacles to their full participation and learning that exclude these young people are identified and analyzed, while at the same time, the support they themselves find in their diverse educational experiences is pointed out.

After identifying the sample and obtaining informed consent from each of the participants, the following data collection techniques were generally used with each of them: self-presentation, biographical interview, biogram, life line, and photo technique.

Self-presentation consists of a brief description that the person makes of themselves. Through various questions (e.g., how would you introduce yourself?, what circumstances in your life have been most important to you?, etc.), the aim is for the person narrating their life to reflect on their self-image and certain aspects of their life that have been, are, and will be relevant in their biography.

The biographical interview (or guided retrospective self-analysis (Bolívar, Domingo, and Fernández, 2001)) consists of an in-depth interview in which, through various questions, young people are invited to reconstruct their life stories. In this research, a distinction has been made between two biographical interviews; both take place at different times. The first interview aims to reconstruct the family socio-educational context and the social context, along with personal data, while the second addresses the school context and development, the work context and development, and finally, future perspectives.

Regarding the biogram, it is a graphical representation of the young people’s life trajectory viewed from the present. It combines biographical chronology and the evaluation of events.3

The line of change aims to delve into the perspectives and assessments that young people make about some of the most significant moments in their lives. Through a three-column chart, each participant identifies an important event in their life (central column), places it in time (left column), and describes and evaluates it in terms of its impact on their own life (right column).

In the photograph, each participant is invited to select and comment on a photograph from their life, freely chosen because they consider it important. This technique, as Aldridge (2007) suggests, allows for the evocation of memory and provides great detail about the narrated scene.

Regarding data analysis, following the proposal by Bolívar, Domingo, and Fernández (2001), we have sought to combine narrative analysis (emic perspective) with paradigmatic analysis (etic perspective). In this process, an individual analysis of each life story is carried out first, attempting to respect the voices of the young people and avoiding value judgments and interpretations. In this part of the analysis, what is truly of interest are the narratives of the life stories themselves, in which it is possible to develop a plot or argument that reveals the unique and subjective character of each story. In the second part of the analysis, from a paradigmatic approach and through all the transcriptions of the documents generated with the indicated techniques, a data analysis has been carried out following the proposal by Miles and Huberman (1994). To this end, we rely on the Maxqda2 data analysis software. For this data analysis, categories and codes were inductively generated, which subsequently allowed for a comparative analysis of all the collected information. Specifically, the categories that guided this analysis were 14:

• Socio-demographic data. 
• Social relationships.
• Barriers to inclusion.
• Critical incidents.
• Habits.
• Self-image.
• Perception of themselves by others. 
• Desires.
• Satisfactions/dissatisfactions.
• Expectations.
• Inclusion support.
• Worldview.
• Sense of belonging.
• Affinities and preferences.

Specifically, the data presented in this article come from the cross-sectional analysis of those collected in relation to the school environment in the nine life stories of young people with disabilities.

Results

This section provides an approach to the educational exclusion stories of young people. To do this, we address the most significant and relevant issues that have arisen from the analysis of all their narratives. In total, this analysis has led us to five questions: are educational trajectories that run along parallel paths?; does an ordinary educational context segregate?; does a specific educational context facilitate initial integration experiences?; is social life limited to special contexts?; and, finally, is the learning process in the classroom not guaranteeing the participation and belonging of all?

The purpose of this article is not to generalize about the opinions and perceptions expressed by these young people. It is not, therefore, about their voices representing others, but rather, through a cross-sectional and comparative analysis of their school histories, to identify the barriers and supports that these nine young people experience in their educational journeys. Specifically, barriers are recognized by them as obstacles to inclusion that hinder or limit learning, belonging, and active participation, under equal conditions, in educational processes. Supports, on the other hand, represent elements of the educational context that contribute to being socially and educationally included in classrooms and schools. Based on the narratives of the research participants themselves, it is possible to reflect on how the various practices, behaviors, and attitudes generated by certain school experiences influence their lives.

An educational trajectory that runs along parallel paths?

The phases of schooling that the young people have gone through constitute initial data that can help contextualize the stories of the new participants. All of them share school trajectories characterized by continuous ruptures. Their stories are different from those of other students their age, as they have had to face and adapt to continuous changes (remaining in a combined integration educational center along with attending an integration support classroom; changing schools two or even more times within the same educational stage; combining teaching in a mainstream context and in a special education context, etc.).

Regarding their academic results, there are also clear commonalities. Seven of the nine young people have studied up to Compulsory Secondary Education. Of these, only two have obtained the School Graduate title. The exception is one young woman, who is currently finishing a university degree. The option for many of these young people once they have finished or dropped out of Secondary Education has been to participate in Social Guarantee Programs (P.G.S.) with a wide variety of qualifications (hairdressing, wallpapering, home care assistant, etc.) and vocational training courses for people with disabilities (office assistant, industrial refrigeration, etc.). This is a fact shared by almost all the boys and girls; they start in mainstream educational settings, but prefer to continue in special settings (4) as the best alternative to finish their studies (in their life stories, this circumstance extends to other contexts, such as work or social life).

A mainstream educational setting that segregates?

If I had started, and they had put me directly in the special education classroom, then maybe I would have had a slightly better time. (Sergio’s life story).

I, myself, would have liked to change schools and stay in the special school for the deaf, right? To have more friends, but since I had support there (Mainstream School), I had to put up with it. (Blanca’s life story).

A truly controversial piece of data that appears redundantly in these young people’s stories is the one that points out that schooling in inclusive educational contexts is experienced as a painful and also segregating process. For these young people, the experiences offered in inclusive contexts have not provided academic or social opportunities, but rather, in many cases, have been identified as obstacles in their educational paths. As they seem to perceive it, the educational process would have been less harsh if they had been schooled solely in specific contexts, as they understand that in these contexts, the rejection and discrimination experienced in ordinary educational settings would have been avoided.

For this reason, their assessment of the years schooled in integration educational contexts is negative. As the following narrative shows, as has happened in the stories of other young people in this research, in the centers where they were schooled, a process of labeling and stigmatization took place. These processes were made transparent through various behaviors (whether it was by where they sat in the classrooms, by their trips to the support classroom, because they were referred to using labels and clichés, etc.) that made differences identifiable as an attribute of a few. As Corbett (1991) has argued, the dominant culture towards diversity has been to view it negatively. This is the approach present in the school trajectories of the nine participants. Therefore, an approach to diversity linked to deficit conceptions that do not recognize diversity as a value is appreciated.

R5: She was known for DA (learning difficulty), for that aspect, but nothing else.
P: Known by your classmates?
R: And because of other classes too… the teachers… all the teachers say my name and they already know who I am…
P: And how did that make you feel?
R: How did it make me feel? Many times there were moments, many, that I wished I were normal, in a way, why? Maybe to go more unnoticed, in that aspect… because I didn’t want to stand out just because I had a hearing impairment, because I was deaf. (Ana’s life story)

And although it may seem paradoxical, as we have already pointed out, it has been precisely the experiences in a special schooling context that, according to these young people, have helped to improve their self-esteem and self-concept, by offering them a space where they feel useful, helped by their peers and teachers, and where they experience their first friendships. They prefer to take refuge in a safe place like specific contexts, where they usually find a much more welcoming, less hostile, and socially less unequal environment.

We find this situation worrying, as it implies acknowledging a significant educational paradox: the segregating nature promoted by some mainstream schools leads students and their families to consider the suitability of specific, segregating models over inclusive ones. Something similar happens in Pitt and Curtin’s (2004) research, as the young people participating in that study, after being schooled in mainstream settings and not having positive experiences there, opt for education in specific centers.

A specific educational context that facilitates the first experiences of integration?

R: What I remember most, what, that, the day they told me I had to go to a support class and that’s where I met those kids.
P: And, how old were you then?
R: At 6 years old, and, and, what happened was that I felt useful there, the support teachers would give me things, tasks just like them, which is what I could handle, and I felt useful there, I felt good, I got along very well with them (…). It’s like if you take a footballer and put him in Manchester out of the blue, to give an example, and the Manchester managers get along very well with him, but he plays terribly there, and now there’s the other team, Recreativo de Huelva, they take him to Recreativo de Huelva, and he plays very well there and this and that, it’s where he feels good playing, in the lower team because he sees himself as important there. (Sergio’s life story).

This young person simply raises a particularly alarming situation: how a complementary tool in the processes of inclusive education, such as support, can become a way to escape the exclusion processes experienced in mainstream classrooms. It is not surprising, therefore, that the majority of participants perceive integration support as practically the only help they have received throughout their schooling, arguing that it was in this context that they truly felt useful and on equal terms, by learning the same as the rest of their classmates, by receiving the attention and support of teachers, and by not suffering the constant humiliation experienced in mainstream classrooms.

But at the same time, some participants criticize the support activities planned by the center; above all, those that take place in the integration support classroom have been seen as obstacles in their school trajectories. Thus, in the stories of Ana, Desiré, and Blanca, support reinforced the labeling process experienced in mainstream classrooms, as they were the only ones who attended these classes. Furthermore, they disapproved of the type of support received, considering, on the one hand, that the number of teachers assigned to this action was insufficient and, on the other hand, that the professionalism of the teachers dedicated to this task was questionable. In this regard, Blanca refers to her center’s speech therapist and how the role she played in her linguistic improvement was practically imperceptible. Once again, from this perspective, support becomes a double-edged sword: while ostensibly serving inclusion, it actually generates segregation and exclusion.

R: I asked the speech therapist to help me write and summarize, and she told me, “Look, that’s not my responsibility; what’s my responsibility is the photocopies I give you (…)”. I didn’t value the speech therapy classes at all because they gave me a vocabulary worksheet of synonyms and antonyms, and they only told me what was right or wrong; I looked it up in the dictionary and wrote it down, yes, but I didn’t learn anything because I didn’t learn the meaning of what I was looking for here; I’d grab the word, cross it out, and put it in its place. (Blanca’s life story).

This brief comment about an experience in a support classroom places us before a truly complex and difficult issue. That is, the support that the young people in our study outline is seen as contradictory. On the one hand, it is a space for recognition, help, and personal validation, but on the other hand, it is another link in the chain that leads to labeling and marginalization.

A social life limited to special contexts?

In a work by Fernández Enguita, Gaete, and Terrén (2008), it is explained how the type of interactions, both social and academic, established between peers are significant for personal educational aspiration and academic achievement levels. Likewise, these authors recognize how a person’s self-perception, in terms of positive or negative self-image, is largely a result of the social group to which they belong. In relation to this, we pose a question: how might the peer groups in the life stories we are examining have contributed, to a greater or lesser extent, to the construction of self-concept and self-image? The answer to this question comes from the voices of the young people themselves, for whom their classmates in the mainstream classroom did not exactly facilitate this process.

R: They treated me terribly. My classmates never wanted to sit next to me.
P: And why did they do that to you? Do you remember that?
R: I don’t know, they’d see me as a mongoloid or something… They didn’t want to stand next to me (…) they looked at me with a bad face. (Desiré’s life story).

R: I wanted to be one of them, but they didn’t let me. Sometimes they didn’t let me. I didn’t like the kids who laughed at me, because then I saw myself as nobody, like I saw this kid is laughing at me, he’s laughing at me because he’s surely better than me and I’m nobody (…) Q: And what did you do to be…? How did you show them you wanted to be part of them?
R: Well, I’d go over to play with them, I’d try to talk about animals and they’d talk about football, for example (…)
Q: Could you give an example?
A: For example, when I was a kid, I didn’t know how to run, and many times my friends, when I was 6 years old, would say, ‘Come on, let’s play a race.’ They would race, and since I couldn’t run well, they would tell me, ‘Well, no, Sergio, you don’t play because you don’t know how to run.’ Of course, I understood then, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to run, I can’t run with them’ (…)
Q: And what would you have liked your classmates to do for you that they didn’t do?
R: Well, for example, on that topic of when I was a kid and used to race with them, even the girls used to beat me in races, they told me, look Sergio, even if you don’t know how to run, you’re going to race with us and we’ll run at your level. (Sergio’s life story).

In the nine life stories analyzed, the accounts of all the young people invite us to think that the behaviors and attitudes of their peers in the mainstream context have not contributed to their acceptance or inclusion in the classrooms; rather, everything seems to indicate that they have acted as a source of exclusion. This type of barrier (their own peers) present in all the school stories analyzed for this work is also experienced by our young people as the most painful, as it limits the possibilities of social relationship in the classroom and school to marginalization or ignorance by their equals.

In the accounts, we can identify direct discrimination in the form of open and clear rejection by classmates, through social isolation. However, other times the barriers manifest through extremely negative and even aggressive attitudes and behaviors: insults, mockery, and, on occasion, physical aggressions that extend beyond classroom life and are reproduced in other settings, in each and every one of the boys’ and girls’ school and extracurricular activities.

On the other hand, in these life stories, once again, the help in establishing social relationships comes from peers in specific contexts (peers from the support classroom, from the special education center, etc.). It is with them that these young people regain their social image and self-esteem, where they learn what it is like to feel like an equal, with whom they feel valued, and where they meet their first friends.

Q: And did any of these friends, classmates, significantly influence your schooling? Did any of these classmates influence you?
A: Mostly, those from the support school.
Q: Why?
A: Because yes, because with them I discovered that I was someone (…).
Q: And at recess, who did you go with?
A: With the support staff.
Q: With the support staff always? Why?
A: Because I felt just like them (…). We always had the same conversation… about this or that, it wasn’t like with my other classmates, I would talk to them about cars and they would jump into a conversation about football. (Sergio’s life story).
It’s like you know everything, but something is missing. So, by entering there (meeting a group of deaf people), I discovered a part of myself that I still need to discover. So, by entering there, I realized that there were more people like me. And that helps you to be stronger, to see that you are not alone.

A learning process in the classroom that does not guarantee the participation and belonging of all?

As we approach the teaching and learning process in the classroom as described by the young people, we will distinguish three areas of classroom life: the academic role of peers, the role of teachers, and the methodology used in the classroom.

As we have seen in previous sections, the boys and girls in this study have not found it easy to establish personal relationships and friendships with their classmates in the mainstream classroom. We will now hear from them how it has also not been easy to establish peer academic support relationships. In fact, the most frequent complaint that emerges throughout all the conversations with the nine young people is the complete absence of academic support from their classmates in the mainstream classroom. Sergio’s story perfectly illustrates this criticism, as emphasis is placed on this issue when revealing the lack of help from his peers, who considered that, since he did not have the same academic level, he should do different tasks, and therefore, he only received help from them exceptionally.

R: When I was a kid, maybe I was in my regular class; I would approach a classmate of mine from my regular class and ask, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Well, I’m doing some math problems.’ ‘Let me do them, I want to do them.’ ‘No, don’t tell the teacher to give you those problems because it’s too difficult for you.’ (…) At that moment, it was a barrier she put up for me. If at that moment she had told me: ‘Yes, wait, I’ll tell the teacher to give you this problem and help you,’ that would have made it an easier path for me, and it would have been easier because she would have been opening doors for me. But the moment my classmates acted like that with me, even if they didn’t mean any harm, what they did was close doors on me one after another (…)
P: And what would you have liked your classmates to do that they didn’t do?
R: Instead of maybe laughing, they told me: you don’t understand, but I’ll explain it to you… (Sergio’s life story).

On the contrary, continuing with this same life story, Sergio did feel the academic support of his classmates in the support classroom by giving and receiving help from his peers. Thus, we can appreciate how the formal support context (outside the classroom) again offers academic opportunities to the boys and girls.

I already felt good there (support classroom) because I saw myself as one of them. We did things together, subtractions, additions. Then there were psychology games; we did them together. I went with them to recess together… What one talked about, we always had the same conversation: about this or that. (Sergio’s life story).

Regarding the role played by teachers, the stories from this research speak of the limited contribution of this group to the social and academic inclusion of these young people, whether due to passivity towards their educational and social needs (such as the absence of educational activities for certain students, inflexibility towards methodological changes, ignorance or permissiveness of insults and humiliation received from their peers, etc.) or due to excessive attention, not requested by the student.

Q: How did you get along with the teachers?
A: Awful and well, both.
P: Well, why?
R: Because sometimes they didn’t pay attention to me. (Desiré’s life story).
R: For example, the language teacher who gave us everything in writing and all that… and I told her to write more slowly on the board, and she said she couldn’t waste so much time. Look, I can’t, the light from the window, I can’t, and I was already tired. And if I stopped, she would scold me, so I had to ask my classmates for my notes. (Blanca’s life story).

When we invited young people to reflect on the attitudes and practices of teachers that had been helpful and supportive, all of them, without exception, agreed that those who helped them were the ones who showed interest in them, dedicating more time to them in class, seating them in the front row, being patient with them, supporting them during classes, and even after they had finished.

R: And what else?… That… I value the good teachers I’ve had, because they were on top of me supporting me, telling me to sit in the front row so I could explain things better (…). I remember their patience with me. For the students in my school who didn’t need support, they explained it once, but for me, 20 times. (Sergio’s life story).

R: Facilitations? The teachers who helped me. That is, they would say, for example, we have to study this lesson, and they would come to help me study it, to give me more help to learn it. (Luisa’s life story).

Finally, how the classroom is organized, the way tasks are developed in the classroom, has been identified as a significant barrier in the teaching-learning process. Regarding classroom methodology, two situations emerge:

• That of those young people who report having studied in classrooms where the work was guided by the same, single type of educational activity for everyone, without any adaptation to learning needs. In this sense, activities were not planned considering the strategies, methods, and support that might be needed, but rather thinking of a typical student or, as other authors have described, a single size (Tomlinson, 1995).
• Classroom methodologies that considered their presence through activities different from those of others, unique to them and carried out in isolation. This is a frequent situation experienced by the nine participants. Learning in their classrooms happens completely disconnected from what the rest of their peers do, even occupying a different space in the classroom.

Q: Did you do different tasks in class?
A: No, the same. We copied a book and copied from the book. (Desiré’s life story).

A: He sometimes paid attention to me (the teacher), because he was explaining something to the 20 students and I was doing something different that the teacher told me to do, so sometimes he would come over and ask how things were going with Sergio, this and that. (Sergio’s life story).

Therefore, the arguments of the young people in this study do not help us identify methodological proposals that make it possible to respond to all students in the classroom, but their voices and stories invite us to reflect and consider how we can build inclusive classroom communities.

Conclusions

A general reading of the results of this work may lead to the conclusion that, for these young people, ordinary educational contexts have not acted as a source generating processes of learning and social participation. On the contrary, for them these scenarios have contributed to generating discrimination and segregation in their school histories. This same conclusion appears in recent works such as those by Connor and Ferri (2007), Gibson (2006), Pitt and Curtin (2004), or Shah (2007).

In the nine life stories analyzed, young people perceive that there are more barriers encountered in their school trajectories than help offered. In this sense, taking up the idea from the previous paragraph, school integration contexts do not offer positive educational experiences. These boys and girls describe an evidently critical panorama when recalling their experiences in ordinary educational contexts.

The arguments provided by the research participants also coincide with some of the main criticisms made of the school integration model: how this process has been basically limited to the physical integration of students with disabilities, how practices have been characterized by a process of assimilation in classrooms, with this reality being taken as normal, or how ordinary educational practices have not been questioned or revised.

However, the same does not happen when they recount their experiences in special settings, as they value their suitability. Although it may seem paradoxical, it is in these settings that young people experience their first instances of integration, which in many cases act as a lifeline to overcome the social, curricular, and methodological void suffered in mainstream classrooms. Most of the time, the support classroom for integration is precisely their main point of reference when reconstructing their school histories. It is in this space where the construction of self-concept and self-esteem improves, contributing to the rebuilding of a damaged identity. The first networks of friends emerge in these contexts; there they feel protected, as equals. They also feel part of the group by being able to give and receive help from their peers, by everyone learning on equal terms, and by having a professional attentive to their needs.

We cannot end this article without reflecting on and pointing out the risk involved in presenting this benevolent image of segregated education without denouncing it, because even though special settings are the most integrating for young people, they are still special and segregating, meaning they are false integrating settings. In this regard, mainstream educational settings must change. It is necessary to review and improve the practices in these settings to make them places where all young people feel safe, welcomed, and part of a true social and academic community.

Schools cannot stand by and become complicit in practices that generate educational exclusion. The path forward cannot be to create special classrooms or parallel tracks that provide students with educational and social support they do not receive in mainstream classrooms. We believe the direction to follow must be one that leads to inclusive education processes, where all students are valued, and whose purpose is the recognition of the right of all to full learning and participation, and in which barriers that contribute to developing exclusion processes are eliminated.

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Electronic sources

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Contact address: Anabel Moriña Díez. University of Seville. Faculty of Educational Sciences. Department of Teaching and Educational Organization. C/ Camilo José Cela, s/n, 41018, Seville, Spain. E-mail: anabelm@us.es.

Notes

1. Research funded by the Ministry of Education and Science, R&D&I, 2004-07, Ref. SEJ 2004-06193-C02-02/EDUC, Dirs. Ángeles Parrilla and Teresa Susinos.
2. Additional information about this research can be found in the works of Susinos and Parrilla (2004, 2008), Gallego & Moriña (2007), Susinos (2007), etc.
3. The article by Beijaard, Van Driel, and Verloop (1999) can offer more detailed information on this technique.
4. Elsewhere in this article, we will repeat this idea and provide the reflections that the young people themselves make about this reality.
5. R is the abbreviation for response (response of the study participants) and Q for question (question asked by the researcher).