Interview with Alexandra Ayach Anache, PhD, President of Brazilian Association of School and Educational Psychology - ABRAPEE

Abstract

Acting in the area of School and Educational Psychology, Alexandra Ayach Anache, PhD. has built an important career as a researcher and activist in the area of Disability. Our interviewee of the History Section of the Journal of School and Educational Psychology is currently President of ABRAPEE - Brazilian Association of School and Educational Psychology, in the 2018-2020 biennium and was President of the XIV National Congress of School and Educational Psychology from 28 to 31. August 2019, at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul. She is the author of several publications and advisor of theses and dissertations that analyze public policies for people with disabilities in Brazil. Her important contribution to the knowledge of the area can be expressed in this interview conducted by Marilene Proença.

Keywords:
School Psychology; Special Education; disability

Resumo

Atuando na área da Psicologia Escolar e Educacional, a Professora Doutora Alexandra Ayach Anache construiu uma importante trajetória como pesquisadora e militante na área da Deficiência. Nossa entrevistada da Seção História da Revista Psicologia Escolar e Educacional é Presidente Atual da ABRAPEE - Associação Brasileira de Psicologia Escolar e Educacional, no biênio 2018-2020 e foi Presidente do XIV Congresso Nacional de Psicologia Escolar e Educacional de 28 a 31 de agosto de 2019, na Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul. É autora de várias publicações e orientadora de teses e dissertações que analisam as políticas públicas para pessoas com deficiência no Brasil. Sua importante contribuição para o conhecimento da área pode ser expressada nesta entrevista realizada por Marilene Proença.

Palavras-chave:
Psicologia Escolar; Educação Especial; deficiência

Resumen

Actuando en el área de Psicología Escolar y Educacional, la Profesora Doctora Alexandra Ayach Anache construyó una trayectoria importante como investigadora y militante en el área de discapacidad. Nuestra entrevistada de la Sección Historia de la Revista Psicologia Escolar e Educacional es Presidente Actual de la ABRAPEE - Asociación Brasileña de Psicologia Escolar e Educacional, en el biênio 2018-2020 y ha actuado como Presidente en el XIV Congreso Nacional de Psicología Escolar y Educacional del 28 al 31 de agosto de 2019, en la Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul. Es autora de varias publicaciones y orientadora de disertaciones y tesis que analizan las políticas públicas para personas con discapacidad en Brasil. Su contribución para el conocimiento del área puede ser expresada en esta entrevista realizada por Marilene Proença.

Palabras clave:
Psicología Escolar; Educação Especial

Marilene Proença: Alexandra, it is a great pleasure to conduct this interview. I wish you could tell us a little about your educational background in Psychology and how the theme of Inclusion and Disability became part of your concerns.

Alexandra: It is with great pleasure that I participate as President of ABRAPEE, as it is one of the main scientific institutions of Brazilian Psychology, perhaps Latin America. It has always been a protagonist of the advances we have made in the field of education.

I have been in Special Education since the 1980s, when I was a teacher at the Pestalozzi Society of Campo Grande, MS. In 1985, I was a Psychologist at the South Mato Grosso Institute for the Blind Florivaldo Vargas. I studied the education of visually impaired students in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, when I came across the effects of iatrogenesis in the lives of these people, in the other words, the supremacy of technique or even the reports over the qualified listening needed to identify the needs of the individual. Raad and Tunes (2011) reported that this phenomenon could manifest clinically, socially and structurally. Thus, the exacerbation of medical reports and the categorization of subjects have secondary effects on people's lives, and consequently deepens the culture of medicalization of life phenomena, according to a normative standard of conduct (Moysés, 2001).

In addition, it is also employed to buffer emotions, which are, in some psychological approaches, pernicious phenomena whose manifestation is detrimental to reason or autonomy - which exposes misgivings.

It was up to the psychologist at that time, more precisely in the decade from 1985 to 1990 to evaluate the mental functions of the subjects who applied for a place at the Florivaldo Vargas Blind Institute. On this occasion, I questioned this practice, as there were no adequate instruments for the purpose and it was necessary to teach them how to read and write, to move autonomously and to take care of their own lives. I understood that the institution did not intend to serve students with intellectual disabilities, because they do not have professionals prepared to work with individuals with multiple disabilities.

The master's degree give me conditions to participate in the construction of the State Policy of Special Education of Mato Grosso do Sul (1991) and to collaborate for the decentralization of the Special Education services of that state, because it was the philanthropic special institutions that mostly attended the students with disabilities. In addition, I worked in several continuing education courses for teachers of the state school system and for the technicians who were part of the Special Education teams of the State Department of Education. It is noteworthy that the principle that underpinned Brazilian educational policies from 1973 to 1990 was that of integration, which was characterized as,

[...] a dynamic and organic process, involving efforts from different social segments, to establish conditions that enable people with disabilities, with problems of conduct and giftedness, to become an integral part of society as a whole. (Decree 69, of August 28, 1986).

My master's dissertation defended on November 16, 1991 was the first research on the subject of the Special Education field conducted in the Postgraduate Program in Education of the Federal University of MatoGrosso do Sul.

When studying the education of students with visual impairment, I problematized the diagnoses that were made by professionals who worked in special classes in this state, as they referred students with disabilities, including those with visual impairment. The criterion was the learning disability they were supposed to have in the learning process.

At the time, I interpreted the generalization of referrals to special classes for mental disability as conceptual problems, since it was considered that all individuals with disabilities, including visual disabilities, could also have (intellectual) mental disabilities (Anache, 1991). Although diagnosis was not my object of study in master's research, it remained a matter for further study in the future.

Because my master's dissertation being the first in the UFMS Postgraduate Program in Education to study Special Education in Mato Grosso do Sul, with the theme of visual impairment, I was invited to participate in the elaboration of the State Education Policy of Mato Grosso do Sul (1990) and contribute to the decentralization of Special Education services of that State, since it was the special institutions of philanthropic character that mostly served the students with disabilities.

For this purpose, it was necessary to expand the continuing education courses, specializations, other events aimed at qualifying the professionals, and so, I worked in several continuing education courses for teachers of the state school system and for the technicians who were part of the Special Education teams of the Secretariat of Education of that State. It is worth noting that the principle that underpinned Brazilian educational policies was integration. However, the education for all movement was expanding worldwide to combat the various forms of oppression and misery in third world countries. The 1990 Jomtien Declaration was emblematic in this regard¹.

It is worth noting that the theoretical and methodological bases that underpinned the master's research were the studies of Gramsci's texts, since I conducted studies with Gilberta Sampaio de Martino Jannuzzi, PhD. and Ana Lúcia Eduardo Farah Valente, PhD. I learned from them that transformation was only possible if we invested in education. Guided by this motto, I participated actively in the construction of the UFMS Postgraduate Education Program, Campo Grande campus, guiding research in the area of ​​special education and others related to learning processes.

As a Professor of Educational Psychology, and a student of the Special Education area, I carried out several extension projects with the technicians of the three Psychopedagogical Support Units of the Mato Grosso do Sul State Department of Education, located in three different regions of the city of Campo Grande, which was intended to serve students with disabilities. I followed all the work of implementation of this service, in an attempt to offer conditions of access and permanence of the students considered disabled in the regular schools of the different parts of the city of Campo Grande.

On this occasion, I came across the difficulties that professionals had regarding the referral criteria for special classes of students with learning disabilities. They were classified as mildly handicapped. At that time, there was a high rate of dropout and repetition and school failure was an alarming social phenomenon. In addition, I found that students with the most severe disabilities, including multiples, were enrolled and attending philanthropic institutions, while in the special classes of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul were students who failed school, which could not always be considered mentally handicapped.

The work of the Psychopedagogical Support Units was based on the Piagetian perspective. In the 1980s to 1990s the ideals of constructivism were being disseminated in Brazilian education, such as the motto learn to learn. The student was conceived as active person in the learning process, and to build his or her own knowledge. An autonomous subject was sought. In this process, the teacher should offer conditions to the intent, since it is bored that nobody taught anyone. However, by the way, I insisted on continuing to teach. My insistence was based on the understanding that higher psychological functions did not naturally mature but they were constituted in the relationship to the social. This understanding was latent in my practice as a teacher at the Pestalozzi Society of Campo Grande (1980 - 1984) and later as a psychologist at the Institute of the Blind (1985 - 1988). My goal when receiving a student was to identify the learning possibilities because the difficulty had already explored. Based on this experience, I realized the limits of the theory that guided the pedagogical practices of this period, that is, I experienced the psychologization of education.

The historical cultural theory was fundamental to problematize the whole process of learning evaluation that was carried out in the context of the Units. I started my studies with the first books that came to Brazil: Social Formation of Mind (Vygotsky, 1984) and Thought and Language (Vygotsky, 1991) at the time I began to base my criticism on the educational proposals in that context. It should be noted that the aforementioned works were coming out of hiding due to the period of repression that the country experienced during the military dictatorship.

Although the available books presented translation problems, making it difficult to understand some fundamental concepts such as mediation, the relationship between learning and development, and the Proximal Development Zone, I understood that learning was the key to providing the transformation of the individual into a subject of the own existence.

It was inevitable the need to delve into the productions of the Soviet authors who in the early twentieth century intended to build a psychology that would contribute to the construction of a new society, so they had to study the processes of formation of consciousness. I studied the epistemological assumptions that underlie the foundations of the psychological thinking of Luria, Vygotski, and Leontiev. Contributions from the cultural historical perspective allowed me to deepen my studies on the importance of the Proximal Development Zone to build an assessment that would provide visibility into the learning characteristics of students being referred for assessments on suspicion of mental retardation.² In 1994, Students who had difficulties in the learning process and experienced years of failure and repetition were referred for evaluation and diagnosed with mild mental disabilities.³ These students were mostly in special classes because the most severe were in specialized institutions.

Several authors from the Special Education area had been problematizing the referral criteria and evaluation methods, especially Ferreira (1995). This dilemma mobilized us, as well as the concerns of the professionals from the Psychopedagogical Units of Mato Grosso do Sul recorded in our study meetings. Considering that the problem arises in the concrete conditions of life, and that research should be committed to the transformation of society, we believe that it would be pertinent to deepen our studies, when we decided holding a doctorate in the area of ​​School Psychology and Human Development at the University of São Paulo. The choice was not random, as we studied the texts of Patto (1991) who at the time had published her book Produção do Fracasso Escolar. She denounced the exclusionary educational practices present in Brazilian schools, which were legitimized by evaluations based on the principles of eugenics. One of the author's criticism targets was the production of reports issued by professionals.

In time, eugenics was a term used by Francis Galton (1822-1911), who defined it as the study of agents under social control who can improve or deplete the racial qualities of future generations physically or mentally. The influence of this conception was significant in Brazil, as observed in the works of the Brazilian League of Mental Hygiene in 1923. In 1926, the intention was to sanitize the country as prophylactic measures, especially in the area of ​​health and education. Anache (1997) stated that causes of socio-economic-political problems were justified by the presence in Brazil of "inferior races", such as blacks and Indians. They were considered lazy and low intelligence people. The mental health of the working class was one of the targets of the sanitation process, especially to maintain order and avoid social tensions due to the deepening economic problems of the time. In this context, psychology was requested to provide techniques for social hygiene at work and with prophylactic measures, including for individuals considered normal.

Considering the important contributions of Patto (1984, 1991) on the problems of the reports used in Special Education, which were based exclusively on psychological tests that, for the most part, had no validity, that is, the interpretations obtained through them did not present solid scientific⁴ interpretations for the Brazilian population and also Kassar (1993) reported, that when the Secretary of Education of the State of Mato Grosso do Sul suspended the preparation of the report, students continued to be sent to special classes.

Considering that the homogenization of the classes was the fundamental principle that governed the institutional relations, we suspect that the diagnosis of the way it was performed had been used as a tool to legitimize social inequalities within the school. However, there was a need to build an assessment for educational purposes, or rather to support the construction of appropriate methodologies to provide learning for students with disabilities. This hypothesis was confirmed in the doctoral dissertation entitled Diagnosis or Inquisition: the use of psychological diagnosis in school, defended in 1997, under the guidance of Professor Maria Júlia Kovàcs.

I identified in the doctoral research that there was a lack of investments in students who could not keep pace with their class. I came across several situations similar to those found by Souza (1996), when she conducted research in public schools in São Paulo with children called "slow" and found that they were grouped in rooms for the "problematic". These students had discredited by their teachers and exhibited an intense level of aggressiveness as well as a feeling of undervaluation and the horror of feeling or even becoming "crazy".

Dechichi (1993) Mattos (1994) stated that the group of children who were sent to special classes at the time did not have a psychological assessment report or when they had it was incomplete and did not offer subsidies to contribute to the learning process of this audience. Anache (1997) added to these conclusions that the diagnoses were based on the application of Laureta Bender's Visomotor Gestalt Test, the Tree House and Person Drawing Test and the Wechsler Scale (WISC), regardless of the characteristics of the children. The aggravating factor was the fragility of applications and corrections, thus compromising the veracity of the results. In this way they had little to say about the child's educational needs, serving only to legitimize what was already known, the difficulty of learning.

It was necessary to build a prospective learning assessment, informing what the student knows and likes to do by providing guidance to help overcome the difficulties of the schooling process. I understood at the time that the diagnosis referred to the systematic study of the subject, with or without the use of instruments that should be appropriate to the educational needs of children. I defended the thesis that the diagnosis should assume the role of mobilizing agent of the situation by ascertaining the social determinants of the subject's action, especially in the case of students who had difficulties in schooling. Following this reasoning, I informed that it was necessary to master the knowledge of the techniques, the contents about human development and the issues related to educational practices. In this course Machado (1996) was my interlocutor, when she defended the thesis that it was necessary to reinvent the psychological evaluation.

Thus, it was not enough to reveal who had the diagnosis of mental retardation; this would not solve all the problems related to the referral of children to special classes. If, on the one hand, the diagnosis was not so omnipotent to modify postures related to the student's segregation that had submitted to it, on the other hand, it was given the "power" to decide on the referrals to be oriented to them, so his effects are wide range, leave marks and seal destinations.

This thought has led me to this day because psychological assessment has allowed me to learn with the other and not about another. I sought an evaluation methodology that would offer visibility to the human being, with all its characteristics, but focused on learning.

Studying the learning processes was the central axis of my work as a university teacher, since I started my university career in 1985, teaching the psychology of education discipline in teacher training courses until 2001, and then when I attended the opening of the psychology course of the university. Grande Campus, MS.

The guiding axis of my teaching, research and extension projects revolved around learning in different contexts, so I organized this memorial based on the analysis of my academic activities that were not restricted to the completion of formalities, but a new encounter that allowed me understand the threads we help weave. Therefore, writing about what it was to be a university professor at UFMS was another adventure, mainly because now more mature I authorize myself to agree with Soares, that to assume this career

[...] implies accepting the rules of the game. Like any social institution, the university is organized and structured according to certain criteria and norms. Some deserve censorship: those that transform the university into a predominantly bureaucratic structure, detrimental to its function and purposes, or those that sought to establish a hierarchy founded on the exercise of power. These must be combated. The others, the authentic ones, must be defended. And to defend them is to fight for a university organization that is fundamentally characterized by administrative and academic autonomy and self-regulation, it is to fight for a hierarchy that is founded exclusively on the intellectual capacity and the quality of the academic and scientific activity of its members. (Soares, 1991, pp. 23-24).

Reading and analyzing the records of teaching, extension, research, publications and other technical and scientific works, allowed me to organize this memorial in thematic axes, which will be presented articulating the temporal register with the subjective meaning⁵ that were being gestated in the period course of this construction. I say this because when you tell a fact, you tell the experience, and it

[...] it can only be known through the subjective consequences and side effects that happen in the subjective configuration of the experience and not by the experience itself. The emotions and symbolic processes that are organized in the course of an experience are not isolated processes; they are subjective senses that have their basis in the subjective configuration of this experience, in which all the participating psychic processes are subjectively organized (González Rey, 2012, p. 28).

Subjective configurations are organized in the course of action and express the subject's commitment, integrating with the network of subjective meaning in the experiences. There is a “complex plot of motivational aspects” that would need to be deciphered to understand the relationships between action and the conditions to make them viable (González Rey, 2012). Studying human motivations as systems that integrate themselves into experiences, concretized in actions, was only possible from the contributions of Qualitative Epistemology based on the historical cultural perspective that has been developed by González Rey (2005, p. 5). This author stated that:

Qualitative Epistemology emphasizes general principles of knowledge production. It defends the constructive and interpretative character of knowledge, which in fact implies in understanding knowledge as production and not as linear appropriation of a reality, which presents us. Reality is an infinite domain of interrelated fields independent of our practices; however, as we approach this complex system through our practices, which in this case concern scientific research, we form a new field of reality in which practices are inseparable from the sensitive aspects of that reality.

Considering that I have adopted this theoretical perspective since 2005, I was challenged to guide myself through it to build information about the last eight years of academic work. Therefore, I place myself as a researcher of my subjective senses constituted in the professional trajectory in the above period, which allowed me new transits, and constructions. In time, subjective meaning is one of the main categories of Subjectivity Theory, based on the historical cultural approach, it is defined as “[...] particular relation that takes place between symbolic processes and emotions in a culturally delimited space of activity of the subject, in which both processes are mutually implicated without the cause of the other's appearance.” (González Rey, 2002, p. 12).

Considering that the subjective senses express subjectivity and synthesize the processes of sense and meaning, with distinct configurations in different life situations, the activities recorded in the Lattes Curriculum go beyond formality and presented the various ways in which I became involved with university life, therefore The Memorial inevitably placed me in the condition of a research subject, since the resumption of the work made it possible for me to build new possibilities to continue inventing my life as a university professor.

Marilene Proença: How do you currently analyze the inclusion policies of people with disabilities in Brazil?

Alexandra: Given the above about my professional career, I can say that there were advances in the construction and consolidation of rights of groups that were historically excluded from society. However, given the material conditions, these rights occur through concessions and conquests. As for example, IBGE (2010) reported that in Brazil still has 9.5 million children aged 0-3 years and 1.1 million 4-5 years out of school. Brazil still had 535,000 children aged 7 to 14 years out of school, of which 330,000 were black. In the poorest regions, such as the North and Northeast, only 40% of children completed elementary school. In the most developed regions, such as the South and Southeast, this proportion was 70%. In addition, there were 21 million students between the ages of 12 and 17, and of every 100 teenagers enrolled in elementary school, only 59 finished 8th grade and only 40, high school. School dropout and missed classes occurred for different reasons, including violence and teenage pregnancy⁶. Souza and Tavares (2013) stated that to cope with this situation, the National Education Plan should serve 7 million students, in other words, half of this contingent should reach the first initial levels of elementary school it is still necessary to include 1.5 million young people who are out of school. This situation deserves care and requires greater investment.

Regarding school inclusion, the Census of Basic Education (INEP, 2013) found a 78.2% increase in the target audience of special education in mainstream classes from 2007 to 2012. In 2007, in exclusive schools / classes 348,470 registrations took place and in common classes 306,136. In 2012, there were 199,656 enrollments in exclusive schools / special classes and 620,777 in regular classes.

The data indicated that expanding the supply of places in mainstream schools was not enough to comply with the inclusion goals set out in the Jomtien Declaration (1990). In addition, Education for All is a principle that has challenged Brazilian education and not only refers to the special education public; it requires substantial transformations in access, curriculum, vocational training and infrastructure. Paraphrasing Mészaros (2005) “It will require the creation of a very different educational alternative”.

The increase in enrollment of the target audience of special education in mainstream schools deserved attention, as there is no official information on the successes of the current national policy on the schooling conditions of these students, as has been shown by some Brazilian researchers (Glat & Pletsch, 2012).

The survey data showed increased enrollment of students with intellectual disabilities, hearing impairment, visual impairment, global developmental disorders and high skills / giftedness, with the first group being the majority, as well as research by Meletti and Bueno (2013). They reported that:

Enrollment of students with intellectual disabilities showed a significant increase, reaching, in 2010, practically 2.5 times more than the base year. It is worth noting that these enrollments represent on average 52% of the total of students with special educational needs in the analyzed period, reaching 62.57% in 2010. That is, the sum of all the enrollments of students that present another type of condition that composes the target population of special education does not exceed that of students with intellectual disabilities. (Meletti & Bueno, 2013, p.80).

The significant increase in enrollment of students with intellectual disabilities will deserve attention in future research, because if on the one hand, indicated the broadening of access, on the other, suggested caution with regard to the diagnoses that are made in special education service networks.

Opinions were divided on the approval criteria of students with intellectual disabilities, as there is a group of teachers who advocated that these students keep pace with their group and there were those who advocated the need to respect the student's learning process, adapting the content and adapting the way it is taught through playful strategies. Note that in both situations, the disability was decisive to assess the student, because sometimes is denied, sometimes valued. The difficulty was to provide learning conditions for the student, varying strategies, methodologies and allowing them access to available cultural goods.

The regional inequalities were determinant in the different configurations that SEA assumed in the researched municipalities and the expansion of the enrollment of the target public of the special education did not guarantee success in the schooling process, compromising the construction of the educational project that intended to educate all.

Marilene Proença: From your experience and from the studies developed on the subject by you or under your guidance, what contributions do you think Psychology can bring to the theme of Disability?

Alexandra: Psychology was the protagonist and sustained the productions of the Special Education field with themes related to learning, development, psychic functioning, emotions of affection, sexuality, relationships and actions within the family, school, health, law, engineering, architecture and social work. If we carry out a literature review in the Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations of the Higher Education Personnel Improvement Coordination Portal (HEPICP), there are more than 1000 thousand registered titles from 2008 to the present day.

School / Educational Psychology, in the context of special education, assumed commitments that responded to the social, economic and political needs of society. Nevertheless, Bueno (1993), Jannuzzi (2004) and Mazzotta (2011) have shown that the medical and psychopedagogical view underpinned the foundations of special education, whose approaches were mostly given to the individual's disability over his learning possibilities. In the midst of this criticism, we cannot fail to consider that, from various theoretical perspectives; much has been done to place students with disabilities at the center of the learning process. In the literature review by Anache and Mitjáns (2007) and later with Brito (2016), it was observed that all works that addressed the learning theme stated that students with disabilities learn, if there are investments.

There are severe criticisms about the pathologizing perspective in most of the productions in the field of School / Educational Psychology in the last twenty years, and have demonstrated the need to invest in actions that promote the consolidation of special education public policies from the perspective of inclusive education (Anache, 2005a e b; Raad & Tunes (2011). Among the prominent discussions is the need to widen access, but also to provide conditions of permanence for students to be able to complete their courses at the various levels of education.

Studies by the National Observatory of Special Education pointed out weaknesses in the implementation of the current national policy of Special Education from the perspective of Inclusive Education, among which the definition of the target public of special education, the school and curriculum organization, and the teacher education stood out.

Certainly, school and educational psychology has much to contribute in the construction and consolidation of public policies and the promotion of actions and pedagogical relations that advance the change in the culture of educational institutions.

The difficulties of operationalizing the National Policy of Special Education from the perspective of Inclusive Education (Brasil, 2008) are centered on the one hand on the changing attitudes, beliefs and values ​​of education professionals and on the other on the resources, services and knowledge that need to be established to that can provide conditions for overcoming barriers to the learning of people with disabilities.

The most delicate issue of a Special Education policy is precisely to define the aims it intends to achieve, since the challenges of contemporaneity and the complexity of human existence in today's society impose demands on educational systems that are no longer met by simple schooling aimed at for instrumental learning limited to the mere reproduction of curricular content. Although the learning of these contents cannot and should not be discarded for their formative importance, it no longer occupies the central place of the educational problem, because in a society in permanent process of transformation in its ways of living, thinking, feeling and acting, so existential disruptions lead to increasing levels of pressure on the traditional way of teaching and learning. Without the adoption of concrete measures to transform the school's social space, public policies aimed at Special Education cannot be successful. The transformation of the school into a welcoming and humanized space is one of the basic conditions for the school attendance of all students, and especially those who need additional support to overcome barriers to their learning, serving to stimulate their permanence and promoting their success in learning pathways and trajectories.

For the inclusion of all students in learning spaces ranging from early childhood education to university to happen, educational work must take into account the plurality of interests, needs and desires that permeate these social spaces, freedom of choice of individuals. The tensions produced by differences place on the psychologist the growing need to establish channels of multilateral dialogue (in some cases multiethnic and multicultural), and to appropriate the use of technologies, through the explosive amount of access to information available today in all fields of knowledge.

We need to consider that, in contemporary times; the different educational spaces have become much more complex and are in permanent transformation. Therefore, in the case of the Special Education Policy, we must take into account some central premises, among which we highlight the following:

1. . The essentially human nature of educational processes, since education is not done outside human relationships, in this sense, educational work presupposes permanent dialogue between all actors involved in the educational context;

2. . The contradictions between individual and society, which are reproduced within the school, since the school is not a politically neutral space free of power relations;

3. . The school as a space of tensions in which existential conditions, historically constructed, can generate conflicts of interest between the members of the different groups that operate there.

4. . Educational public policies are institutional-legal initiatives that seek to solve a specific problem within the political agenda of a particular power group, however these policies do not do without individual and collective action to be implemented and operationalized at that time. The social subjectivity of the groups responsible for its implementation starts to guide how politics will be institutionalized in the concrete space of the school.

About this, we cite as an example, let us remember the information from the National Observatory of the National Education Plan - NEP⁷- (2016), in the link that addresses Goal 4, regarding the implementation of the Special Education Policy from the perspective of Inclusive Education, created by the Ministry of Education in 2008, ensured that

[...] students with disabilities, global developmental disorders and high skills or giftedness, segments that make up the target audience of Special Education, have the right to attend the common classroom and, when necessary, receive specialized educational assistance in the field inverse period of schooling. Historically, these people have been excluded from the education system or sent to special schools and classes. (Brasil, 2014, p.11).

From 2007 to 2014, because of the implementation of this policy, the enrollment of these students in regular schools increased from 306,136 to 698,768 (an increase of 118%). In 2014, 78.8% of these students enrolled in Basic Education were studying in common classrooms, and that, in the authors' version of this site, signaled [...] “a break with the history of exclusion”. They put as a perspective the need for investments “[…] in the formation of educators, the improvement of the pedagogical practices, the architectural and technological accessibility, the construction of learning networks, the establishment of partnerships between the actors of the school community and the intersectional approach of public management” ⁸.

Marilene Proença: What challenges do you think still need to be faced with the theme of Inclusion of people with disabilities?

Alexandra: Among the challenges for the evaluation of this policy, we found the absence of information, which would only be possible if it were monitored, as well pointed out by the informants of the site:

There is no data to monitor this goal. The surveys and the IBGE Census do not provide complete information to diagnose the situation. Such mismatch is a symptom of the historical neglect regarding the theme. Auxiliary indicators help to give an overview of the situation.⁹

The 2016 School Census reported that 82% of students with disabilities, global developmental disabilities or high skills are in regular classes. Of this set, 57.8% of Brazilian schools have students with disabilities included in regular classes. In 2008, this percentage was only 31%. Regarding Higher Education, there was also a significant increase. According to Cabral (2016) in 2015 was registered 33,377 enrollments of the target audience of special education. It is possible that this number will increase with the implementation of the reserve in higher education by Decree 9,034, of April 20, 2017.

Given the above, we understand as pertinent to take the special education policy from the perspective of inclusive education as a reference to understand how School Psychology has been inserted in this path to identify its limits and its possibilities in this field. To this end, we organized this paper by presenting an analysis of the current conjuncture on special education, in order to establish interlocutions with this area with School / Educational Psychology in the historical cultural perspective.

Marilene Proença: Being at the head of the Brazilian Association of School and Educational Psychology, what do you think the entity has already contributed to this Inclusion theme and what aspects do you think could still be expanded within the scope of the Association?

Alexandra: I understand that ABRAPEE is an entity that is based on the principles of inclusive education, because all its actions demonstrated how it was protagonist in the construction of public policies aimed at the emancipation of the human being. There is an effort to ensure commitment to the transformation of society. However, the movement of society and the complexity of this historical moment, the challenge is to maintain the rights of people who have been historically excluded from society, including those with disabilities.

In this sense, we need to work so that the school psychologist is present in educational institutions to contribute to the construction and implementation of pedagogical political projects that promote conditions for all that everyone can learn together.

Therefore, we hope to contribute to the training of this professional through our publications and participations in international, national and regional events, expanding our representations to other Brazilian states, maintaining interlocutions with other entities of psychology, education and health and rights councils, strengthening them.

Referências

• American Psychiatric Association. (1995) DSM IV - Manual diagnóstico e estatístico de transtornos mentais 4a ed. Porto Alegre: Artes Médicas.
• Anache, A. A. (2007). A pessoa com deficiência mental entre os muros da educação. In Campos, H. R. (Ed.), Formação em Psicologia Escolar: realidades e perspectivas (pp. 213-244). Campinas: Alínea.
• Anache, A. A.; Mitjáns, A. M. (2007). Deficiência mental e produção científica na base de dados da CAPES: o lugar da aprendizagem. Psicologia Escolar e Educacional, 11(2), 253-274. https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S1413-85572007000200006
  » https://doi.org/10.1590/S1413-85572007000200006
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• 1
  Approved by the World Conference on Education for All. Jomtien, Thailand - March 5-9, 1990.
• 2
  Term used in the period that I performed the research.
• 3
  According to the Mental Disorders Diagnostic Manual classification, 4th edition (2005), individuals with mental retardation were classified as mild, moderate, severe and profound.
• 4
  Urbina, 2007, proposed the concept of validity.
• 5
  The concept of subjective meaning was built by Fernando Luiz González Rey and refers to the different forms of expression of subjectivity. Being understood as [...] “organization of the processes of sense and meaning that appear and organize themselves in different ways and at different levels in the subject and personality, as well as in the different social spaces in which the subject acts” (González Rey, 2005, p.19).
• 6
  These data were taken from the UNICEF / Brazil website and refer to the 2010 School Census. Available at http://www.unicef.org/brazil/en/activities.html
• 7
  And an ordinary law effective ten years from 06/26/2014, provided for in Article 214 of the Federal Constitution. He set the guidelines, goals and strategies of achievement in the field of education. Therefore, municipalities and federation units must have their education plans approved in accordance with the PNE. It is available at: http://www.observatoriodopne.org.br
• 8
  Information available at: http://www.observatoriodopne.org.br/metas-pne/4-educacao-especial-inclusiva.
• 9
  Information available at: http://www.observatoriodopne.org.br/metas-pne/4-educacao-especial-inclusiva.

• 19
  This paper was translated from Portuguese by Ana Maria Pereira Dionísio.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  02 Dec 2019
• Date of issue
  Jan-Dec 2019

History

• Received
  30 Sept 2019
• Accepted
  18 Oct 2019