Special Education Policies in the State of Alagoas

ABSTRACT:

This paper presents an analysis of the Special Education policies produced and enacted in the State of Alagoas, Brazil (1990-2018). The theoretical framework is based on the policy cycle approach, enactment theory and concepts of Pierre Bourdieu's theory. The research data were collected through documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews and classroom observations, having been submitted to the relational analysis proposed by Bourdieu. It is argued that there is a tendency in the State of Alagoas to reproduce/recontextualize national policies, resulting in policies with a low capacity for articulation with reality, as well as with the needs of the subjects. The results indicate limited autonomy in the production of legal texts that normalize Special Education and insufficient presence of the State in guaranteeing the minimum conditions for the enactment of these policies in Alagoas. As a consequence, the difficulties in transforming the educational system into an inclusive space are exacerbated.

KEYWORDS:
Special Education; Alagoas; Enactment theory

RESUMO:

Este artigo apresenta uma análise das políticas de Educação Especial produzidas e colocadas em ação no Estado de Alagoas (1990-2018). O referencial teórico fundamenta-se na abordagem do ciclo de políticas, na teoria da atuação e em conceitos de Pierre Bourdieu. Os dados da pesquisa foram levantados por meio da análise documental, entrevistas semiestruturadas e observações de sala de aula, tendo sido submetidos à análise relacional proposta por Bourdieu. Argumenta-se que há uma tendência no Estado de Alagoas em reproduzir/recontextualizar as políticas nacionais, resultando em políticas com baixa capacidade de articulação com a realidade, bem como com as necessidades dos sujeitos. Os resultados apontam limitada autonomia, na produção dos textos legais que normalizam a Educação Especial e presença insuficiente do Estado na garantia das condições mínimas para a atuação dessas políticas em Alagoas. Como consequência, agravam-se as dificuldades em transformar o sistema de ensino em espaço inclusivo.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Educação Especial; Alagoas; Teoria da atuação

1 Introduction

The aim of this paper is to present a synthesis of a broader research on the policies of Special Education in the State of Alagoas, Brazil (Pavezi, 2018a). This research covered the period from 1990 to 2018 and aimed to analyze the extent to which these policies have ensured the right to education for the subjects of the target population of Special Education (TPSE), regarding access, quality as well as development and learning opportunities.

The research was based on a pluralist epistemological perspective in order to combine approximations and complementarities of the policy cycle approach (Ball, 1994; Bowe, Ball, & Gold, 1992;), enactment theory (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2016) and concepts of Pierre Bourdieu's theory (Bourdieu, 2001, 2004a, 2007). This theoretical framework required the analysis of policies in different contexts, taking into account the peculiarities of the contextual dimensions that influence their translation in the context of practice. The research involved document analysis, interviews and observations, being the field research carried out in a school of the State Network and another of the Municipal Education Network of Delmiro Gouveia - Alagoas⁴.

Among the reasons for choosing the state of Alagoas and the municipality of Delmiro Gouveia⁵ was the commitment of researchers to include, as participants, agents who work with Special Education policies, as one of them teaches in Higher Education, in teachers' training courses. It is a municipality located in the uplands of the sertão of Alagoas, benefited by the program of Restructuring and Expansion of Federal Universities - (Reestruturação e Expansão das Universidades Federais - REUNI), with the offer of Higher Education, public and face to face from 2010 through the creation of Campus do Sertão of the Federal University of Alagoas.

Other reasons were related to illiteracy rates, educational rates and incidence of disability in the population of Alagoas. The illiteracy rates verified through the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios Contínua - PNADC), which, in 2016⁶, were around 19.4% among young people aged 15 and over, and 46.1% among Alagoans of 60 year old or over, being the highest in Brazil.

The educational indices of the state of Alagoas, the municipality of Delmiro Gouveia and the schools surveyed, presented in Table 1, also motivated this research, although we do not consider the Development of Basic Education Index (Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica - IDEB) the best way to measure the quality of Basic Education.

Table 1
Development of Basic Education Index: Brazil, Alagoas, Delmiro Gouveia and surveyed schools (2011-2015).

	Initial grades of Elementary Education					Final grades of Elementary Education					High School7
Year↓	BR	AL	DG	SC	MS	BR	AL	DG	SC	MS	BR	AL
2011	5,0	3,5	3,4	2,5	3,5	4,1	2,6	2,7	1,7	2,2	3,7	2,9
2013	5,2	3,7	3,5	3,7	3,7	4,2	2,8	3,1	2,2	3,4	3,7	3,0
2015	5,5	4,3	3,7	3,7	3,6	4,5	3,2	3,4	3,2	3,7	3,7	3,1

Source: Elaborated by the authors based on the National Institute for Educational Studies and Research "Anísio Teixeira" - INEP (2007-2015).
• Legend: Brazil (BR); Alagoas (AL); Delmiro Gouveia (DG); State School (SC); Municipal School (MS).

The data on the incidence of disability in the world population, Brazilian population and that of the state of Alagoas presented in Table 2, were one of the main aspects for the definition of the research field.

Table 2
Incidence of Disability in the World, Brazilian and Alagoan Population (2010).

	Population
Disability level	World	Brazil	Alagoas
Some kind of disability	15%	32,18%	38,32%
Significant disability	2,2 to 3,8%	8,27%	10,88%

Source: Elaborated by the authors based on the World Health Organization ([WHO], 2011) and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics ([IBGE], 2010).

The theoretical framework, explained below, allowed a comprehensive analysis of the policies of Special Education in the state of Alagoas as it is understood all the contexts in which it is produced and enacted.

2 Theoretical-methodological framework

As already explained, the theoretical-methodological framework was constituted from approximations and complementarities of the approach to the policy cycle, the theory of policy enactment⁸ and the concepts of Pierre Bourdieu's social theory, with emphasis on the concepts of field, habitus and symbolic power (Bourdieu, 2001, 2004a, 2007). This framework offered quite satisfactory elements for the analysis of the policy trajectory and aspects of its translation in the context of practice.

The policy cycle approach consists of three main contexts: context of influence, context of text production, and context of practice.⁹ In summary, we can state that: a) context of influence: it is the context in which a public policy is initiated, discussed and disputed by various groups of interest; b) context of text production: this is where the dominant discourse on policies is represented by political text that can take various forms such as: legal texts, comments and pronouncements on the policy; and c) context of practice: this is where policy is put into action and subject to interpretation and recreation, it is where it produces effects and consequences (Mainardes, 2006, 2018a).

The theory of enactment understands that policies are not merely implemented, but they are put into action, that is, they are subjected to processes of interpretation and translation, according to varying contextual dimensions. The contextual dimensions are as follows: a) situated contexts: location, history, profile; b) material contexts: infrastructure, financial resources; c) professional cultures: responsibility, values, management; and d) external contexts: pressures and expectations.

Pierre Bourdieu's social theory considers the presence of structure underlying the social. The structures, the representations and the actions constitute the social field and the habitus of the agents, and are continuously constituted by them. The main concepts of this theory can be presented as follows. In Bourdieu's theory, habitus is "a system of dispositions acquired by implicit or explicit learning which functions as a system of generative schemes" (Bourdieu, 2003, p. 125). Field is a segment of social space, a relatively autonomous microcosm, with its own laws and rules, capital and an object of specific interest. Symbolic power is the power to construct reality through the construction and legitimation of symbolic systems in the social field. Symbolic power is present in all microcosms. However, in the global social field, this power is legitimately exercised by the State through the acts of its component institutions, or acts of the State (Bourdieu, 1989a, 2001, 2004b).

The analysis of education policies, in this perspective, begins even before its elaboration in text form and continues until its enactment in schools (the policy in action). It departs from the context of global influences, which, in Bourdieu's theory (1989a), can be explained from the concept of symbolic power, which is made up of dominant representations that surpass the borders of nations, being located in the social field or macrocosm.

3 Methodology

This is a qualitative research with an investigative focus on the complex and multifaceted nature of the object, which allows us a relational analysis from its historical, social, economic, political and cultural determinants. The object was constructed from the notion of field, taking into account that, according to Bourdieu (1989b, p. 27), it is not isolated from a set of relationships from which the essential of its properties derives.

From the perspective of Bourdieu's reflexive Sociology, we must constantly keep an eye on both the object and the researcher in order to break with common sense, that is, break with pre-constructed representations of the object and that are shared by the agents involved, including the researcher (Bourdieu, 1989b).

The scientific character of the investigation is given by the rigor and epistemological vigilance of the researcher. Hence the need to explain three elements of epistemological studies of education policy: epistemological perspective, epistemological positioning and epistemological approach (Tello, 2012). The epismethodological approach refers to the coherence between research objectives, theory, analysis and conclusions, as well as the coherence between epistemological perspective and epistemological positioning (Mainardes, 2017, 2018b; Mainardes & Tello, 2016). In the research, we tried to observe if the methodological aspects of the research were coherent with the perspective and with the assumed epistemological position.

Initially, a documentary survey was carried out in order to collect, analyze and interpret the existing theoretical contributions on the subject. This survey made it possible to identify gaps in research on Special Education in the State of Alagoas and how research would contribute to filling these gaps (Pavezi & Mainardes, 2019a). Then, the theoretical framework and the methodological design of the research were defined. Methodological triangulation (Ferreira, Schimanski, & Bourguignon, 2012) was used based on the use of different techniques in data collection, which, in this case, was done through document analysis, semi-structured interviews with 17 social agents who worked with Special Education policies in the State of Alagoas (managers of the Alagoas Secretariat of Education, manager who worked at the Delmiro Gouveia Municipal Secretariat of Education, school managers, teacher of the Multifunctional Resource Room (MRR), in service and auxiliary teachers of the State School and a Municipal School teacher). Participant observations were conducted in the common classroom, MRR and other school spaces.

In order to analyze the context of influence, we selected international, national, state and local documents on Special Education policies. In the context of the production of the text, we analyzed documents that guided the implementation of Special Education policies in the State of Alagoas, whether or not produced by the State.

4 The context of influence

The global social field or macrocosm is permeated by a set of dominant representations that cross the borders of nations. These representations constitute the symbolic power because they are accepted and exert influence in specific fields. The educational field and the field of education policies, subfields of the global social field, although functioning on their own logic, are pressured and tensioned by the dominant representations in the macrocosm. The ability of these subfields to retranslate the outside world, creating their own answers, will define the degree of autonomy in the enactment on their object. Figure 1 below presents the selected international and national documents, and indicates the likely influences of those on them, as summarized below.

Figure 1
Influences of international documents on national documents.

In general, it can be concluded that: a) Special Education policies, since the 1990s, have been built from the perspective of the so-called social inclusion; b) the perspective of essentialization remains present in international and national documents; c) since the 1990s, the private economic field has been influencing Brazilian education policies more systematically, mainly through the actions of the Education for All movement (Pavezi & Mainardes, 2018).

It is noticed that the Acts of the Brazilian State, in the use of their legitimate symbolic power, produce the education policies and Special Education policies. However, these policies do not exclusively reflect the interests of the State, nor all the interests and demands of society, since the global field of education policies, added to the national private economic field, has been supreme in their definition. This finding reinforces the idea of ​​Bourdieu (2011, 2014) regarding the absence of full autonomy on the part of the State and the bureaucratic, political and legal fields, and indicates the strong power of the economic field over the State, which ends up acting in favor of the interests of this field.

In the next section, we present the findings that we classify and analyze as characteristic of the context of text production in the State of Alagoas.

5 The context of text production

The analysis of the context of the text production was challenging because there are only a few documents related to Special Education in the State of Alagoas. We found that the policies of Special Education of the State of Alagoas tend to reproduce/recontextualize national policies, resulting in policies with low ability to articulate with the State reality, as well as with the needs of the subjects.

In 1973, the Board of Specialized Education was created within the State Secretariat of Education. One of its functions was the coordination of Special Education, but we verified that, only from the 1990s onwards, the State started to elaborate its own normative documents. Table 3 below shows the actions of the Board of Specialized Education, aimed at TPSE students, within the State Education Network of Alagoas, starting from 1973.

Table 3
Actions of the Board of Specialized Education, aimed at TPSE students, within the State School System of Alagoas, since 1973.

Year	Action	Location
1973	Assistance to students with visual impairment.	Cyro Accioly State School for the Blind (current Cyro Accioly State Center for Specialized Educational Assistance for the Visually Impaired).
	Assistance to the hearing-impaired student.	Special classes from three State Schools using the oralization method.
	Assistance to the student with moderate mental disability.	Special classes from seven State Schools.
	Assistance to the student with severe mental disability.	Association of Parents and Friends of the Exceptional (APAE). Pestalozzi Association, Alagoas Rehabilitation Center (CREAL) and Helena Antipoff Rehabilitation Center.
1980	Professional education with the implementation of professional woodworking workshop.	Cyro Accioly State School for the Blind.
2001	Implementation of the School Inclusion process for students with disabilities.	Schools of public education networks.
2005	Start of deployment of multifunctional resource rooms.	Schools of public education networks.

website

Next, we present a summary of the documents related to the policies of Special Education in Alagoas:

1. Law no. 5,805 of January 31, 1996, which established the State Week of Persons with Disabilities, regulates an action created by the Associations of Parents and Friends of the Exceptional in 1964¹⁰, under the name National Week of the Exceptional, which happens every year in the period of August 21-28. The text of Law no. 5,805/1996 presents advances in relation to the original proposal of the Associations of Parents and Friends of the Exceptional that was focused only on the actions developed by them, in relation to people with intellectual and multiple disabilities.

2. In 1998, the Government of the State of Alagoas was a pioneer in enacting Law no. 6,060/1998, which officially recognized The Brazilian Sign Language and other expression resources as a common means of communication. At the national level, this recognition came with the enactment of Law no. 10,436/2002.

3. The text of the Education Plan of the State of Alagoas 2006-2015, approved by Law no. 6,757 of August 2006, pointed to the limited scope of policies aimed at TPSE students, indicating as responsible for this situation the existence of "few non-governmental institutions" (Law no. 6,757, 2006, p. 47), while recognizing the need for the expansion and application of Special Education policies.

4. The current text of the Education Plan of the State of Alagoas, approved by Law no. 7,795 of 22 January 2016, effective from 2016 to 2026, reproduces 18 of the 19 strategies proposed for Goal #4 in the 2014-2024 National Education Plan¹¹ and presents 14 other strategies. The themes of the 14 strategies deal with: monitoring compliance with Goal 4 and its strategies; provision of books adapted for visually impaired students; hiring highly qualified professionals; construction and renovation of schools for accessibility; meeting alternative and augmentative communication needs; family orientation and support; specific pedagogical proposal based on the elaboration of the Individualized Education Plan; democratization of access to Higher Education; promotion of public campaigns and hearings; teacher training; subsidy for policy making. Two of the specific strategies of the Education Plan of the State of Alagoas caught our attention. Strategy 4.38 states that the State should support policymaking "that meet the educational specificities of students with disabilities, global developmental disabilities and high skills or giftedness" (Law no. 7,795, 2016, p. 19). This statement sounds like a setback in relation to what the State had proposed in the previous Education Plan of the State, but failed to fulfill. More than subsidizing, it is the State's competence to elaborate, define and produce its own Special Education policy, respecting the provisions of national legislation. In strategy 4.25, the Government of the State of Alagoas proposed to hire qualified and skilled professionals on Higher Education level to work with the different specificities of TPSE students. However, such positions had not been created so far. In practice, most of these professionals are being hired as temporary, through selections of the notice board that sometimes are explicit about requirements regarding the background necessary to act in some functions, while, other times, this information is omitted. We could verify this statement by comparing the contents of the Notice Board no. 002/2015 of the Alagoas Secretariat of Education, regarding the requirement of education and description of the pertinent attributions to the position of classroom assistant with the declarations of classroom assistants who participated in the research as well as through observations. In the State School surveyed, the classroom assistants were responsible for the individualized monitoring of TPSE students included in regular classes. However, the education requirement in accordance with the notice board is of "Secondary Teaching Level Certificate. Certification in Special Education courses (40 h)".

5. Ordinances no. 195, 1,325 and 12,764, issued by the Alagoas Secretariat of Education in 2016, dealt respectively with the establishment of enrollment standards for the 2016 school year, learning assessment system and 2017 enrollment standards. Specifically geared toward Special Education, they provide some guidelines for dealing with TPSE students. We noted that the texts of these Ordinances use the terms contained in the current documents of the national policy of Special Education, such as Resolution no. 04/2009, Decree no. 7,611/2011, National Education Plan 2014-2024 and the Brazilian Inclusion Law. They demonstrate an effort to ensure access, prioritizing: the provision of vacancies for TPSE students; proposing adaptations regarding the evaluation and promotion of these students. Ordinances no. 195/2016 and no. 12,764/2016 require the applicant for a vacancy in a state school system to declare if he/she is a person with a disability¹² and, for the purposes of confirmation of enrollment, present the report confirming the declared disability. Article 6 places people with disabilities as a priority in the distribution of vacancies. The requirement of the report is not an indispensable condition for the student of TPSE to receive SES¹³. However, our analysis of the text of Ordinance no. 195 is that it intended to ensure priority in enrollment for students of TPSE by proving the declared disability. Ordinance no. 1,325/2016, when dealing with the evaluation system, presents as specificity for Special Education, in its article 3, § 2, item III, that:

III - Special Education - will take place through the pedagogical evaluation as a dynamic process, in which the qualitative aspects prevail and that indicate the pedagogical interventions, enabling the teacher to create strategies considering the specific needs of the students with disabilities, global developmental disorders, and high skills/giftedness, such as extending work time and using Sign Language, Braille text, computing, or assistive technology as an everyday practice, being evaluated in the necessary competences for their social inclusion according to the specific descriptive opinion for the public of Special Education. (Ordinance no. 1,325, 2016, p. 3).

The registration of the evaluation process of the included students of TPSE also received attention in this Ordinance, indicating that it is done using individual form and descriptive opinion. Considering that these students attend the MRR, the registration of the evaluation of the SES must be done through portfolio/dossier, including: a list of the students attended, frequency; Individual Assistance Plan; and case reports. Regarding the promotion of this student, Ordinance no. 1,325 / 2016 establishes:

Art. 14 For the Special Education student, in cases where he/she does not obtain school performance for the promotion, the Class Council will analyze each case and issue a Descriptive Opinion, considering:

I - Age, avoiding generating or increasing the age/schooling distortion;

II - The social experiences lived;

III - Individual development occurred during the school year.

Sole Paragraph - Special Education students should be assessed primarily in a qualitative manner so that the emphasis should not be on cognitive aspects but on the skills required for their social inclusion, even if the basic learning for the next grade has not been achieved. (Ordinance no. 1,325, 2016, p. 8).

Although, in the normative guidelines of this Ordinance it is understood that all students of Special Education, besides being in the common classroom, have been receiving SES in MRR, our observations attested that this attendance is not being guaranteed for all. Therefore, the State Schools of the municipality of Delmiro Gouveia are unable to comply with the provisions of this Ordinance in relation to everything related to SES. This statement is supported by the fact that the SES is not being offered to any of the 15 TPSE students declared in the 2015 School Census.¹⁴ We highlight that the number of students of TPSE is higher than what has been indicated in the School Census, because the schools are only informing those who present medical report, which is in disagreement with the Technical Note no. 04/2014 of the Ministry of Education, the Secretariat for Continuing Education, Literacy, Diversity and Inclusion and the Policy Board of Special Education, although this is one of the legal subsidies of Ordinance no. 1,325/2016. The only support service for the inclusion of TPSE students in the State Schools of Delmiro Gouveia municipality is the provision of a classroom assistant who exclusively accompanies the TPSE student with a report, but does not participate in the planning or evaluation of this student. Other aspects related to the classroom assistant assignments are discussed in the next section.

In addition to the highlighted aspects, this study allowed us to identify how the education of TPSE students has been approached in this set of documents that normalize Special Education in the State of Alagoas. Among other issues, we noted that: a) schooling is still identified with the guarantee of access to Basic Education and SES, nevertheless, it remains linked to the presentation of a report; b) the indications to provide a "specific and accessible " (Law no. 7,795, 2016, p. 19) pedagogical proposal and to establish that, in the school evaluation of the students of TPSE, the "competences necessary for their social inclusion" (Ordinance no. 1,325, 2016, p. 3) suggest a flexibility based on curriculum reduction and disbelief about the learning capacity of these subjects (Pletsch, 2014; Pletsch, Rocha, & Oliveira, 2016); c) although they foresee the use of pedagogical technologies that promote the learning of TPSE students, they do not define how to operationalize partnerships to undertake research that develops them; and d) these documents, for the most part, have a more expressive concern with the prevention of disabilities, the social integration of persons with disabilities and their insertion into the labor market, to the detriment of ensuring their learning.

6 The context of practice: applying the enactment theory

In this section, we present a synthesis of the analysis based on the use of the enactment theory (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2016). It is in the context of practice that policy effectively materializes through the action of social agents who, influenced by their life histories, their socioeconomic and cultural reality, their possibilities, resources and objective conditions, interpret and recreate policies producing effects and consequences.

We need to be aware of the false appearance of awareness of the agents' practices, which end up spontaneously adjusting to the needs of the field, which leads them to act from incorporated structures, more or less automatically where "the agent is not entirely the subject of his/her own practices" (Bourdieu, 2001, p. 169).

6.1 Situated contexts

Revealing the characteristics of the situated contexts of the researched schools involved the analysis of elements that brought them closer and also differentiated them in relation to the performance of Special Education policies. In order to understand if and how these characteristics were interfering in the enactment of Special Education policies and, consequently, in guaranteeing or not the right to education for TPSE students, we focused on some elements, such as: a) Administrative dependence and geographical location in relation to the educational authorities; b) History and characteristics of the communities in which the schools were located; and c) Data on enrollment in Special Education.

We verified limited State action in guaranteeing the minimum conditions for the enactment of Special Education policies. Hence, the provision of education is inadequate from the point of view of legislation, irregular from the point of view of the agents' education and limited from the point of view of ensuring access of TPSE students to ordinary education and to SES.

In the schools investigated, we observed that: a) TPSE student enrollment was being carried out, but did not meet all the demands of this population; b) the offer of SES in MRR did not include all students of TPSE due to the reduced quantity and poor distribution of these classrooms in relation to the demands presented; c) the criterion of the requirement of the report to provide the SES, or to guarantee the accompaniment of an assistant to these students, indicated that this practice was part of the way that the policies of Special Education had been acting in the Delmiro Gouveia' State and Municipal Schools.

These findings are related to the lack of knowledge of the school agents and parents of TPSE students regarding their educational rights, which compromises the search for assistance and specialized support. Symbolic violence is exerted by the State in curbing access to knowledge. This curtailment occurs mainly due to the difficulties of access of the population to school education, and the poor quality of education offered. The predominance of the ethos of the "rule of the coronels" contributes for the social agents to see, in the governors, the providers of all their needs, thus limiting the social struggles.

6.2 Material contexts

The analysis of the dimension of material contexts reveals the concrete possibilities for the implementation of policies. Each federated entity and each agent of the educational field have their share of responsibility in the enactment of Special Education policies. The responsibility for access to some technical and financial support rests on the State and Municipal administrations. We found a fragile engagement of institutions and agents to access resources to ensure the educational right of TPSE students and their inclusion. This implies the concrete possibilities for the implementation of Special Education policies.

Financial resources impact the material conditions of schools. We observed aspects involving: a) physical infrastructure of schools; b) features for architectural accessibility adaptations; c) didactic-pedagogical resources of accessibility to the curriculum. The material characteristics of situated contexts lead agents to act in different ways with education policies, based on the concrete possibilities that the environment provides them.

The analysis of this contextual dimension made it possible to perceive the strategies and creativity of agents who, even in the face of limited material resources, put policies into action and account for their results.

6.3 Professional cultures

In this contextual dimension of the policy enactment, the habitus of the school agents was analyzed: teachers in service, classroom assistants, caregivers, SES teachers, pedagogical coordinators and principals.

The process of putting a policy into action involves its recontextualization from interpretation and translation, which occur in different instances. Therefore, although the focus of this dimension has been the school context, we address the interpretations and translations of agents who worked in other instances of the Educational field and Education Policy field.

We analyzed the elements of professional culture considered most significant for understanding the object. One of the elements analyzed was the representation of the agents in relation to the responsibility for inclusion. The level of responsibility that school agents attribute to their position in the educational field interferes with the way they translate and enact Special Education policies.

The permanence of the personalist culture, in which the mayor is indicated as the most responsible in relation to inclusion, is a factor of strong influence on the agents' action. Since the mayor is a representative of the State, he/she legitimately exercises symbolic power and violence. The world view legitimated by State institutions and agents in Alagoas seems to us to be more authoritarian and less democratic, given the social and cultural characteristics of local society.

This limitation in democratic processes is present in schools. The absence of election for the definition of the management position is a mechanism that reinforces the conservative function of the school. The principal exercises the specific symbolic violence to the educational field, and when appointed, tends to represent the interests of the State. This situation points to the supremacy of the field of symbolic power (State) over the educational field. Therefore, we understand that the level of autonomy in school management is limited, which negatively interferes with the enactment of Special Education policies.

Regarding the presence of TPSE students in schools, we identified a double exclusion process in the researched context. On the one hand, those who are not in the education system, either because the family does not seek the vacancy, or because of abandonment or dropout, or because they are hospitalized or bedridden in their homes. These students self-eliminate and cease to dispute a new position in the social field, because they do not access the cultural capital. On the other hand, we realized the exclusion of those who remain in the educational system and suffer the effects of a process of marginalization from within (Bourdieu & Champagne, 2001). Both in the drop-out situation as well as in the marginalization within, TPSE students do not spontaneously self-eliminate themselves from the educational field, but are driven to do so by the selective and exclusionary character of the school (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1975). For those who remain in the educational system, elimination is only postponed.

We identified several factors that evidence this exclusion operated within schools, such as: 1) insufficient and inadequate provision of support services for inclusion (lack of Brazilian Sign Language interpreters, insufficient provision of SES, professionals temporarily hired and without adequate training, failures in architectural adaptations); 2) automatic promotion of TPSE students for the following stages of schooling detached from learning; 3) isolation of TPSE students and professionals who work with them within the school, as if they were a foreign body to the common school environment. These factors, associated with other contextual characteristics and the habitus of school agents, contribute to the elimination of these subjects from the educational field, as well to the demonstration of the complexity of inclusion in regular schools.

6.4 External contexts

Elements of external contexts exert pressure and influence on the ways in which school agents operate with education policies. We analyzed the following elements from external contexts: a) the point of view of the surveyed agents regarding the school's image along with the local community and educational authorities; b) the relevance or not of the Basic Education Development Index (known in Brazil as IDEB) in educational practices; c) the school management support policies offered by the Alagoas Secretariat of Education, the 11th Regional Education Management (Gerência Regional de Educação - GERE) and Delmiro Gouveia Municipal Education Secretariat, in order to promote inclusion; and d) expectations of the agents involved in the research, and their point of view about the expectation of parents, in relation to TPSE students.

We noted that the reputation and relations of the school with the educational authorities influence the enactment of policies. These relationships are very much marked by cronyism and the exchange of favors, rather than legally based. This implies differentiation in resource allocation and staff recruitment and training.

In the researched context, we identified some concerns with the large-scale evaluations and results of the Basic Education Development Index. The presence of TPSE students was not a concern for the Index. We consider that this lack of concern is related to the objective conditions of the social field, which have few job opportunities and continuity of schooling. In this sense, the school may be contributing to the reproduction of the current structure and its function seems to be based on a certain determinism and fatalism.

We noted that there are no permanent policies to support schools so that they can be an inclusive environment. We found that emergency measures are applied in the face of the emergence of demand, that is, Special Education policies are enacted based on improvisation. The requirement of the report creates a breath for the Secretariats, both financially and in terms of staff recruitment. The fact that almost all Special Education agents are hired temporarily causes discontinuity and economy of support services and directly implies the adaptation of TPSE students.

Although improvised, school agents enact Special Education policies. This enactment is influenced by their expectations regarding the effects of schooling for TPSE students. The implication of these expectations can be manifested in the lowering of these students' aspirations for their own performance/success in school, as an adjustment of their desires to their possibilities of achievement (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1975).

7 Final considerations

Given the above, we argue that the education offered to the TPSE students in the researched public schools in the State of Alagoas, Brazil, is configured as a limited care regarding access, quality and opportunities for development and learning. In this sense, it is an educational offer that has not guaranteed the right to education for all subjects, hindering their maximum level possible of development.

We understand that it is necessary to confront the State and to claim rights, as State Acts are often punctual and, in many cases, do not correspond to legal requirements. It is important to highlight that each federated entity and each agent in the educational field has its share of responsibility in the enactment of Special Education policies.

Although the current Special Education policies present weaknesses, they are instruments that guarantee the educational right to TPSE students. However, they have not yet exerted the effects proclaimed in the context of this and other cited research. This stems from the fact that policies are designed for the best possible context, regardless of the objective conditions of particular realities (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2016).

We believe in the possibility of overcoming the observed condition. This belief is based on the recognition of the class struggle for symbolic domination and the plasticity of the habitus. Considering that the dominated and the dominant have the same tools to know and understand the social world, which leads to the naturalization of the current power relations, it is necessary to become critically aware of the condition of domination. Bourdieu (1999) warns that awareness and good will are not enough to overcome a situation of domination. Transgression and the breaking of a social frontier can have a liberating effect by bringing about the unthinkable. We believe that the construction and dissemination of knowledge can be the triggers of the crisis necessary for a successful symbolic revolution.

• 4
  The research project was submitted to the University Research Ethics Committee of the State University of Ponta Grossa and approved on August 17, 2016, according to Opinion no. 57975516.9.0000.0105.
• 5
  The characterization of these contexts and the history of Special Education Policies in Alagoas can be found in Pavezi & Mainardes (2019b).
• 6
  Retrieved on January 30, 2018, from https://cidades.ibge.gov.br/brasil/al/pesquisa/10070/62922
• 7
  There is no record of High School Development of Basic Education Index in the municipality.
• 8
  On policy cycle approach and enactment theory, see Hostins and Rochadel (2019), Lima, Souza and Luce (2018), Lopes (2016), Mainardes (2006, 2018a), Mainardes and Gandin (2013), Pavezi (2018b), Rosa (2019), among others.
• 9
  By deepening his analysis and responding to criticisms made about the policy cycle, Ball (1994) added two other contexts: the context of outcomes or effects and the context of policy strategy. These two contexts fit and broaden the aspects to be analyzed in the contexts of practice and influence respectively, being considered an extension of them (Mainardes & Marcondes, 2009).
• 10
  On this issue, Rafante (2015) clarifies that this initiative was promoted by the Association of Parents and Friends of the Exceptional and Pestalozzi Societies, but it was instituted on August 24, 1964, by the President of the Republic, Marshal Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, who issued Decree no. 54,188, establishing the National Week of the Exceptional Child (terminology used at the time to refer to people with disabilities), which would be celebrated throughout the national territory.
• 11
  Goal 4: "To universalize, for the population of 4 (four) to 17 (seventeen) years with disabilities, global developmental disorders and high skills or giftedness, access to basic education and specialized educational assistance, preferably in the regular school system, with the guarantee of an inclusive education system, multifunctional resource classrooms, classes, schools, or specialized public or covenant services" (Law no. 13,005 of June 25, 2014).
• 12
  In compliance with the provisions of Law no. 7,853 of October 24, 1989 (on support for persons with disabilities) and Decree no. 3,298 of December 20, 1995 (on National Policy for the Integration of Persons with Disabilities), as amended by Decree no. 5,296 of December 2, 2004 (on priority assistance to persons with disabilities).
• 13
  The decision as to whether or not to offer SES results from the study of each case identified by the school or declared by the family as a TPSE student. The SES teacher, in collaboration with regular school teachers, the family and other sectors such as health and social care, elaborates the individualized SES Plan. The report may be a supplementary document that will be attached to the SES Plan, but is not mandatory, as the requirement for clinical diagnosis may impose barriers to the access of TPSE students to the education system (Joint Technical Note no. 01/2014).
• 14
  Data retrieved on September 26, 2017, from http://matricula.educacenso.inep.gov.br/controller.php

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  25 Nov 2019
• Date of issue
  Oct-Dec 2019

History

• Received
  19 Apr 2019
• Reviewed
  15 Aug 2019
• Accepted
  16 Aug 2019