Workshop Orienta

New perspectives in School Guidance, for children and against segregation. University of Malaga.

Organized by: Department of Theory and History of Education and M.I.D.E.
Date: February 24, 2018, from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM.
Location: “Paulo Freire” Degree Hall. Faculty of Education Sciences. University of Málaga. Teatinos Campus s/n. 29071-Málaga
Information and registration: workshoporienta@uma.es.

Summary

A working meeting that aims for egalitarian communication between two groups (school professionals and families with enrolled children), with the objective of carrying out a preliminary evaluation of the orientation experience in schools in the Spanish State, which must be inclusive. To this end, an intensive day of assemblies, presentations, and workshops is convened for people involved in educational inclusion, which will conclude with strategic lines for continuing to work towards the necessary transformation of schools.

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 itself manipulated and twisted to the point of being used as a justification for an institution that remains largely 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 distress generated in these groups, intensely manifested through social networks over the past few years, reached a turning point in January 2018 with a post in which the counselor Mª José Corell (SPE C-30 Borriana, Castellón) invited people to share emotions, experiences, analyses, and practices that could help break the cycle of stagnation in which they found themselves. Many families then expressed emotions such as distrust and fear towards professionals, passivity and submission, doubts about the proposed practices, helplessness 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 arise 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 pressures from all sectors, the dangerous certainty of the supposedly objective use of clinical diagnoses as psychoeducational 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 serve as fertile ground and justification for the working meeting.

With almost heroic initiatives, some families and professionals have been trying to dislodge what prevents all children from being educated together.

It occurs to me that we can join forces. Get together, even if virtually, to create a space to share, where we realize we are not alone. Where we can search together for paths that help us move forward.María José G. Corell, School Counselor, Castellón.

On the other hand, the University of Málaga has been proposed as the venue for this meeting due to its convergence with the research focus of the Project titled “Emerging Narratives on Inclusive Schooling from the Social Model of Disability. Resistance, Resilience, and Social Change,” which is being coordinated by Ignacio Calderón Almendros and Mª Teresa Rascón Gómez. Likewise, previous works have delved into this issue, evidenced in various publications (Calderón and Habegger, 2012; Echeita and Calderón, 2014; Calderón and Echeita, 2015; Calderón, 2014; Calderón and Ruiz, 2015; Calderón and Echeita, 2016; Calderón & Habegger, 2017; among others): School Counseling needs transformations, an issue evidenced by the current surge of new decrees regulating it in Catalonia, Asturias, Valencian Community, etc., and adapting it to inclusive schooling, although some of these texts leave much to be desired.

In our case, it has been several years since we made an “energetic and desperate call for attention to those who, directly or indirectly (as educational administration technicians, practicing professionals, trainers, or researchers), work in the field of guidance, so that we reflect on whether our guidance, practices, teachings, or research — particularly regarding psychopedagogical evaluation — are contributing to the discrimination of students who need it, or if, on the contrary, they can be configured as one of the levers for their full equality and recognition. In short, whether we want to be a constitutive part of the problem of oppression and exclusion that affects them daily in school, or part of the solution for their full educational inclusion.” (Echeita and Calderón, 2014). In other words, it is about choosing to be part of the problem or the solution. This Workshop aims to contribute to the development of these necessary solutions.

We cannot allow our children to constantly hear themselves referred to as ‘the child with the problem’. […] If they are designated as such, we will end up convincing them that they really have a problem. And that, and no other, will be their real problem.Carmen Saavedra, mother of Antón, La Coruña.

A few brushstrokes about the Research Project

This research project starts from three premises, closely related to the Workshop presented on these pages:

1) The activism of persons with disabilities and their environment promotes educational inclusion and social change. 2) The knowledge that emanates 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, the research aims to recover stories of activism from families and professionals who are resolutely fighting to make school a place where all children find recognition through presence, learning, participation, and success in the pre-compulsory and compulsory stages. It seeks to document and analyze the experiences of families and professionals who are striving to ensure that Article 24 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, ratified by Spain (UN, 2006), is fulfilled. However, the research proposal goes far beyond these legal terms.

The study will document the new narratives about disability and inclusive education that originate within this group in order to recognize their value and disseminate them; we will delve into the educational conceptions, experiences, and professional practices involved in school inclusion processes; it will help to understand the collaboration mechanisms used by these groups; and finally, we will create resources that make visible and foster new conceptions of functional diversity and articulate proposals to promote inclusive education.

To achieve these objectives, the research team will ethnographically immerse itself in the circumstances of these individuals who are constructing narratives far beyond the conventional boundaries of what we have understood as school, and who are attempting to force the transformation of the institution through new cultural elaborations and vital and social cartographies. We will use the biographical-narrative methodology, understanding that it perfectly suits the study’s aims.

Within this methodology, we will make use of different methodological approaches: the development of numerous micro-life stories or autobiographical accounts, the construction of 5 in-depth life stories of activists or professionals committed to inclusion, and a documentary analysis of current legislation regarding equity and inclusion in schools.

The final report will have two formats: text and audiovisual. Metaphorical analysis will be used for both final reports. Finally, the audiovisual report will be the subject of two analyses developed through two discussion groups, one of them with a group of activists in defense of functional diversity.

The research aims for understanding, but also for the expression of individuals and groups who are often not legitimized in their constructions. Therefore, research is in itself transformative and a tool for social change. Furthermore, the findings are intended to serve as guidance for future proposals more oriented towards action. These narratives and the analyses derived from them will be useful as initial guidance for future participatory research and citizen action proposals that organize groups to make the struggles for this social change more effective.

This is my most urgent question: to make education contradict ‘nature,’ that is, to vociferously reject any feeling and perception that there are children who are born with ‘bad luck’ and that we can do nothing about it.” Carlos Skliar (2018) Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences.

Purpose of the Workshop

The meeting

It is about generating a meeting between families and professionals to reflect from an egalitarian dialogue, with the intention of developing a participatory diagnosis of the reality of school guidance in relation to inclusion, and of finding the strategic lines to continue working on the transformation of schools.

A few days ago we went to some attractions that have been set up near home for Christmas. There, waiting in a line, Lucía approached a woman while I was talking to Marcos and I approached. I felt something strange in my heart, she was a person talking to her without knowing she had autism and you don’t know what a big difference.

Being one of them, but truly, is very difficult. We have to get rid of everything we have learned incorrectly and create new patterns about people with diversity. They are people, not labels or numbers or anything like that. They are human.Belén Jurado, Lucía’s mother, Madrid.

Workshop Objectives

The purpose of this meeting is broken down into the following objectives:

Promote the construction of networks for collaboration and activism for inclusion.
Carry out a participatory evaluation of the situation of school inclusion and guidance in particular, from the experience
Provide a space for expressing desires, concerns, doubts, and proposals.
Re-establish the necessary trust between professionals and families, through people committed to the democratization of schools.
Recognize and legitimize certain conceptions and practices that, despite not being mainstream, lead to the educational improvement of schools.
Document life experiences of persons with disabilities in their school trajectory or that of their families.
Know and deepen the educational conceptions of school professionals involved in the movement for the rights of persons with disabilities.
Develop narrative, audiovisual, and artistic materials that promote more complex and profound perspectives on human reality, inequality, and differences in functioning.
Design strategic lines to promote the real and effective development of the inclusive school.

The research starts from Booth’s perspective (1998) when he puts forward 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. So much so that this author emphasizes the value of these narrative proposals being able to give voice even to those who lack words. In other words, the research seeks to question and even break the power relations that dominate research practices.

This issue concerning the silence of the subaltern is meticulously analyzed in Spivak’s (2006) article, where she reflects on the difficulty the subaltern subject faces in expressing themselves and being heard. This difficulty stems from the absence of spaces that accommodate these voices which have historically been silenced. Spivak’s theoretical approaches converge on a common idea: the subaltern cannot speak, because in addition to lacking those spaces to be heard, they always need the representation of Western intellectuals who, by interpreting the discourse from a hegemonic position, transform and misinterpret it, thereby altering its meaning.

The proposal for narrative research seeks to confront this reality, understanding that only from the voices of people identified by their disability and their allies can new narratives emerge that overcome hegemonic interpretations of disability and schooling. Therefore, it is about researching with, rather than researching about, as Moriña (2017) indicates. We aim, thus, to understand research from an inclusive perspective (Parrilla, 2009; Rojas, 2008).

As we have been arguing, institutions, and very specifically schools, steal language and discourse from students and their families, leaving them disarmed in the face of practices that lead people to exclusionary paths, objectification, and social and educational death. They come to be defined by schools, and the language (as discourse and practice) of schools forces them to abandon their demands. They are disarmed and demobilized, largely through the power of normality; their differences are transformed into identities defined by power. In this process, students are forced to conform to an exclusionary dichotomous scheme: camouflage themselves in the norm by renouncing their differences or become the opposite, the abnormal. And the abnormal ceases to be recognized and heard. However, they always had a voice. We therefore need to rescue it in order to shape new possible realities. This is the emancipatory approach (Barton, 2005; Calderón, 2016; De La Rosa, 2010) recognized in narrative methodologies, which facilitate social and personal transformations by investigating “discomfort” (Wolgemuth & Donohue, 2006).

On the other hand, in other contexts, we have had very enriching research experiences in which we have developed participatory strategies to generate common projects (Sepúlveda et al., 2008; Sepúlveda, Calderón and Torres, 2012). It is about establishing the necessary guidelines so that the participation of those involved can find channels that serve the collective construction of knowledge, to think about the reality they live and communicate it, as well as the production of strategic lines of action in collaboration with other actors. In this sense, the Workshop can represent a first step towards Participatory Action Research projects for an inclusive school in the different places of origin of the participants.

When Víctor was 4 years old, I told the counselor that perhaps the caregiver wasn’t as necessary, that I saw a support teacher as more necessary. The answer was blunt: ‘If you want more support teacher, Víctor should go to the special education center.’ That put me in the place the administration wanted me to be. In docility. Complaining or demanding made no sense if I wanted my son to remain in a mainstream school. But the moment comes when you have to decide between defending what you believe in or remaining in docility.

I regret that that moment of awakening came so late; today I look at my publications from four years ago and I don’t recognize myself. I thank all of you who have taught me that another education is possible, that what was beating inside me was not a mistake. That was the first step. Then came losing the fear, not all of it, there’s always an ember that can ignite. That is true liberation. Not being afraid. Susana Fajardo, Víctor’s mother (Badajoz).

Work dynamic

How the meeting is structured

The Workshop is an intensive work day. The day will be distributed as follows:

9:00-10:00 AM. Presentation of the day, ideas for organization, and work proposal.
10:00 AM-12:00 PM. Plenary Assembly. A first approach to the reality of schools and guidance.
12:00-12:30 PM. Break.
12:30-14:00 h. Workshops. Participants will be divided into the different thematic proposals that emerge from the assembly (maximum 4), which will be distributed in different spaces (Classrooms 0.14, 0.15, and 0.16, and the Degree Hall if necessary). Small group work on diagnosing the situation.
14:00-15:00 h. Lunch
15:00-15:30 h. Brief Plenary Session to share the work done in the workshops.
3:30-5:00 PM. Continuation of the work in the workshops.
5:00-6:00 PM. Plenary Assembly. Sharing of the work from the workshops and organization of the analyses (Flowchart).
6:00-6:30 PM. Break.
6:30-8:30 PM Plenary Assembly. Development of analyses, communication, and action planning.

If the task of grading is the least educational part of their work for teachers, then in this specific function of school guidance, a good part of the school’s selective and classifying function is distilled, something that, without a doubt, hinders the democratic and inclusive project of the institution. In this sense, all of us—including guidance counselors—have the obligation to make the right of all students to an inclusive education effective and put it into practice.Calderón and Echeita (2016:38) University of Malaga and Autonomous University of Madrid.

They are present but cannot be there.

There are people who, despite their interest in participating in this meeting, will not be able to be in Malaga in person. For them, we will previously request very brief information in video format so that they can be present in the sessions.

Furthermore, the plenary sessions will be broadcast via streaming so that they can be followed by interested people within and outside our borders.

The hashtag #workshoporienta will be used on Twitter so that people following the debates and the assembly work can participate live.

Finally, in-person participants will have free Wi-Fi access, courtesy of the University of Malaga, which will allow for fluid communication with those who cannot attend.

One cannot adequately answer the question of whether education can change society in fundamentally democratic directions without also seeing society from the perspective of one of the multiple oppressed groups.Michael W. Apple (2015:58), University of Wisconsin.

Plenary Sessions: “Paulo Freire” Degree Hall Workshops: Classrooms 0.14, 0.15, and 0.16. Faculty of Education Sciences. University of Málaga. Teatinos Campus. Louis Pasteur Boulevard, 25. 29010, Málaga.

Registration (free)

Send an email to workshoporienta@uma.es with the subject: Registration, and the following details: name and surname; relationship to the topic of the meeting; profession; email address, phone number.

Contacts

Ignacio Calderón Almendros
Department of Theory and History of Education and MIDE. Office 8.10. Faculty of Education Sciences. University of Málaga. Teatinos Campus (unnumbered). 29071, Málaga Website: www.ignaciocalderon.uma.es Email: ica@uma.es

María José G. Corell
SPE C-03 Borriana. Manuel Cubero, 7. 12530, Borriana Castellón Email: mjosegcorell@hotmail.com

All this work from the Workshop, beyond the evident usefulness it will have for each participant regarding reflections, critiques, and proposals aimed at action, will have a dual functionality. The proceedings of the day will become part of the ethnographic material for the research project “Emerging Narratives on Inclusive Schooling from the Social Model of Disability,” and will therefore be video-recorded for subsequent analysis. Attendees agree to the cession of this material for the exclusive use of the research. Part of this material may be published in text or audiovisual format, also to socialize the Workshop’s conclusions on social media.

Bibliographical references cited in this project

APPLE, M.W. (2015). Building alliances among our differences. Cuadernos de Pedagogía, 461, 55-60.
BARTON, L. (2005). Emancipatory research and disabled people: some observations and questions. Educational Review, 57, 317-327.
CALDERÓN-ALMENDROS, I. & HABEGGER-LARDOEYT, S. (2017). Education, Disability and Inclusion. A Family Struggle against an Excluding School. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam/Boston/Taipei.
CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. and ECHEITA SARRIONANDIA, G. (2016). Unavoidable challenges for the construction of inclusive schools. Graó Dossier, 1, 35-41.
CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. (Coord.)(2015). Topic of the Month: Inequality, not diversity. Pedagogy Notebooks, 461, 48-87.
CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. (2015). Conquering schools as sites of hope. Pedagogy Notebooks, 461, 50-54.
CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. and ECHEITA SARRIONANDIA, G. (2015). The right to inclusive education and current psychopedagogical assessment practices. Incompatible realities? Revista Prolepsis, 18, 82-88.
CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. and RUIZ ROMÁN, C. (2015). Education as liberation from oppression: personal and social constructions of Disability. In F. Kiuppis & R. Sarromaa Hausstätter (Eds.), Inclusive education twenty years after Salamanca (pp. 251-260). Peter Lang, New York.
CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. (2014). Education and hope on the borders of disability. Cinca, Madrid.
CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. and HABEGGER LARDOEYT, S. (2012). Education, handicap and inclusion. A family struggle against an exclusionary school. Mágina-Octaedro, Granada.
DE LA ROSA, L. (2008). Ángel’s life story. Cerebral palsy, normality and communication. Madrid: La Muralla.
ECHEITA SARRIONANDIA, G. and CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. (2014). Obstacles to inclusion: questioning conceptions and practices on psychopedagogical assessment. Àmbits de Psicopedagogia i Orientació, 41.
ECHEITA, G.; SKLIAR, C.; DUCK, C. AND CALDERÓN, I. (In press). Conversing about inclusive education from two oceanic shores.
MORIÑA, A. (2017). Investigating with Life Stories. Madrid: Narcea.
PARRILLA, Á. (2009). What if research on inclusion were not inclusive? Reflections from a biographical-narrative research. Revista de Educación, 349, 101-117.
ROJAS, S. (2008). The “voice” of people with intellectual disabilities in educational research: rethinking research practices. Revista de Educación, 345, 377-398.
SPIVAK, G.C. 2006. Can Subaltern Speak? In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by C. Nelson and l. Grossberg, 271–316. London: Macmillian.
RUIZ ROMÁN, C.; CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. and JUÁREZ, J. (2017). Resilience as a form of resisting social exclusion: a comparative analysis of cases. Pedagogía Social. Revista Interuniversitaria, 29, 129-141.
SEPÚLVEDA RUIZ, M.P., CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I., RUIZ ROMÁN, C. and BELTRÁN, R. (2008). Participatory action research: a training strategy to transform reality in a youth reform center. Investigación en la escuela, 65, 101-112.
SEPÚLVEDA RUIZ, M.P., CALDERÓN ALMENDROS, I. and TORRES MOYA, F.J. (2012). “From the individual to the structural. Participatory action research as an educational strategy for personal and social transformation in a center for juvenile offenders”. Revista de Educación, 359, 456-480.
SLEE, R. (2011). The extraordinary school. Madrid. Morata.
WOLGEMUTH, J. & DONOGHUE, R. (2006). Toward an inquiry of discomfort: Guiding transformation in “emancipatory” narrative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(5), 1012-1021.