Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress International Special Education Conference Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity? 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland

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Reflecting on the role of consultants in the field of Inclusive Education:
lessons from the South

Windyz Ferreira
University of Paraiba, Brazil
windyzferreira@aol.com

Introduction

Since Salamanca the wind of inclusion has been blowing over us all. The number of initiatives (e.g. studies, programmes, publications, public policy, etc.) that aim at the development of inclusive education systems and schools has grown worldwide. Despite current progress, and the gradual consolidation of inclusive education theory and practice, mainly in countries of the North, there is still an urgent need   for many more initiatives and changes.   It has been in this specific worldwide context of combating educational exclusion that we have witnessed the rise and growth of the demand for an expert in the field of inclusive education, a category of person usually known as a ‘consultant’.

My own experience over the last ten years - and that of colleagues from different continents - has led me to realise that what we have come to call the inclusive education consultant seems to have become a key person in the co-ordination of initiatives towards inclusion. The external consultant is a person who does not belong to the particular context in which he or she will work. The external consultant is not a member of the local group and he or she may be a foreigner or a person who was born in the country, but is still an ‘outsider’. Local history, culture, style of social relations, and other features are unknown for an ‘outsider’, therefore, any external consultant will face the challenge of making sense of the local context in order to be able to support educational improvement.

For instance, a colleague from England and I were external consultants in an inclusive education project in Portugal from 1999 to 2002 (Ainscow and Ferreira, 2004; Costa and Paes 2000). Both of us were foreigners in Portugal, and we were foreign to each other too. As a result of this, we fairly often had different perceptions on different issues. As foreigners, we had to learn about the local education system and the Portuguese style of social relationships in order to collaborate with our local colleagues. It is interesting to note that, despite the fact that the majority of us were Portuguese speakers, the official language was English and we had a translator mediating the whole communication process all the time. I can affirm that everything was at once delightful as a learning process, challenging, and sometimes really threatening …

When working as external consultants we tend to think, investigate, read and write about processes of changing towards more inclusive education systems as if we are dealing with something straightforward. First there are the invitation and initial contacts. Second, when possible, we undertake a few field visits.   Then we negotiate the project content, the budget, the participants, the material, the timetable of activities and so on. Then the project begins with or without the support of local partners. Everything seems neat and to be falling into place, but in reality the process is really a ‘messy’ one.

Waiting to be found in the local context, which I stress again is unknown for the consultant, are plenty of resources and capacities, but obscuring them are an even greater number of barriers and tensions. Right at the heart of these tensions there are people and their subjectivity, that is, everyone’s personal agenda and interests; fear and lack of confidence; prejudices; explicit and implicit politics; macro policy, disputes between groups etc. All these factors are there, but they are apparently invisible …

In this paper, then, by reflecting on my own professional development towards the role of an external consultant in the last ten years, I try to shed some light on the contexts and factors that are, according to my perspective, crucial to the construction of this role, particularly in regard to collaboration between the consultant and local partners. My main argument is that these factors remain invisible to the current debate, and if we really want to make progress towards inclusion we have to learn how to deal with these subtleties insofar as they are closely connected to the issue of collaboration between people involved in the project.  

The growing importance of the role of external consultants in this field and the increasing demand for them should be part of our reflection and concern. So by introducing this theme into the ISEC agenda, I intend to invite you to reflect with me on these factors and will use for this purpose three guiding questions. These are:

• What are the factors that contribute to the development of the role of a consultant in the field of inclusive education?
• What is the professional profile of this consultant and how can he or she make better use of collaboration?
• What lessons can be learned from a Southern experience in regard to supporting more effective collaboration between external consultants and the local communities in which hey work?

With this reflection I hope to be able to contribute to an improvement in the quality and effectiveness of this kind of work in countries where needs and barriers are immense, and opportunities and resources are extremely scarce.

Exploring factors that contribute to the development of the role of a consultant in the field of inclusive education

If we ask ourselves what has changed for each of us since the publication of the Salamanca Statement (UNESCO 1994), certainly some of us will identify important transformations. Those from local educational authorities or schools may remember experiences of working in partnership with external consultants. Parents may recollect professionals who have collaborated with them more or less effectively. Others may remember situations that are worthy of being remembered and learned. Many others may have realised that they have ultimately become consultants in the field of inclusive education, as I have myself.   Looking back ten years, I can see that a few factors played a major role in my professional development. Amongst them, the most significant were:

• being introduced to key people in the field of inclusive education who created opportunities for me to participate in relevant events;

• acquiring up to date knowledge about inclusive education and developing that knowledge further by virtue of having access to people and experiences internationally;

• learning about networking and using it as an integral part of my the work

• learning the English language.

Diagram 1: key Factors for professional development

All these factors are narrowly connected and part of a wider process of a professional development I was immersed in, as we will see following.  

Accessing key people and building capacity in the field of inclusion

From 1996-2000 I lived in England while I was undertaking a PhD at the University of Manchester. During that period I met several scholars, academics, representatives of government, and researchers who had a key role in the capacity building process I went through, and that led me to work as a consultant in the field of inclusive education. Some of them were particularly important in this process because, in my view, they contributed directly to my professional development. These colleagues were institutional leaders in their posts, and have welcomed me in by inviting me to take part in activities to which they were connected, such as project co-ordination, production of materials in the field, co-ordination of teams working in schools, university activities and more. They opened up a universe of work unknown to me until then.  

Leadership is legitimated by the process of social exchange between those involved in the relationship, according to the ‘theories of transactional leadership’. That is to say that the members of the group exchange loyalty and competences for privileges that can include influence, honour, status or even physical things, such as protection, support or salary (Chemers 1995).   So, having being welcomed and supported by members of an elite group in the field of inclusive education I became a ‘new member of the leadership team’ and had access to some of the power, privilege and prestige (Taylor 1997, p. 26) that my collaborators had. Throughout these years, and still today, these connections have gradually granted me credentials and validated my competence as an expert in this field.  

Acquiring relevant knowledge and building up experience

The process of capacity building I went through was enriched by my experience at Manchester University over the course of four years. During that period I was engaged in an intense process of appropriation of new ideas and knowledge, which were all very valuable to me, and which played a major role in my professional growth. At the same time, “I could begin to understand how countries of the South such as mine, Brazil, have a very small share in the ‘cake’ of scientific knowledge.” (Ferreira 2001). Amongst several factors I identified, two stood out particularly.

First, the opportunity I had to access an extensive source of knowledge and information from all over the world in both hard and electronic copies. In the majority of Brazilian universities such a richness of material is not available. Second, the opportunity I had to undertake a Masters degree in Educational Research Methodology. In Brazil there are no degrees in research methodology and the large majority of private and public universities still have no masters or doctorate programmes.   Post Graduate programmes in the field of education are still undergoing a process of implementation and development which is significantly less advanced than that in European higher education institutions.

All these context-bound variables had an impact upon the construction of my role as a consultant. The knowledge, experience and skills I acquired during that period, plus the new qualification of a PhD in Education, and the ability to undertake research have strengthened my credentials. After returning to Brazil, access to Information and Communication Technology was a powerful tool in keeping me connected to global developments in the field of inclusive education and in remaining part of international networks.

‘Catching up’ with developments in the field of inclusive education and the role of networking

I know now that access to ICT has prevented me from being excluded from the international network of inclusive education since I returned to my country in 2000, and two specific interconnected initiatives had a special role. First of all the launching of The Enabling Education Network, the office of which is at Manchester University. Second the foundation in 1998 of the Brazilian NGO Education for All (Ed-Todos), of which I am President.

Ed-Todos adopted EENET as a role model and became EENET’s regional partner in 2000. As a consequence of this partnership, I became a member of EENET’s International Steering Group, and this allowed me to gain a clear understanding about the inherent power of networks and promoting the sharing of information, experiences and knowledge to support human resource capacity-building processes by using the virtual tools that are available today. Throughout these years, networking became a central activity in my work as a consultant and researcher.

Learning the English Language

The English language was and still is a sine qua non for me to be able to make connections, to achieve knowledge and to network. In fact, there is an overwhelming dominant use of the English language in the academic publishing tradition (Bieler 2000).

Although I recognize the English language as a key factor in my development, I am aware that mine is just a single experience, and is related to the opportunities provided by my academic career; there are still millions of non-English speakers excluded by that factor from participating in the worldwide movement towards inclusion. Somehow ‘we have to break the imperialism of the English language by a determined campaign to ensure access in more languages (Chinese, Arabic, Russian, etc.) and eventually in more local languages like Swahili’, as Professor Mittler remarked in his comments on this paper (Mittler, 2005)

Apart from the English language factor, the three other ones, that is, key people, knowledge and networking in the field of inclusive education are. in my view, directly linked to the issue of collaboration in projects and programmes that aim at the development of more inclusive education systems.

My professional development was furthered by the opening up of opportunities to which I could never have had access without the help and support of key people I had met during my time in Europe.   Knowledge and information about inclusive education formed the basis for supporting capacity-building processes through face-to-face collaborative work or through networking. And networking is today a major resource for fast collaboration via electronic tools that can reach out to large numbers of people in all parts of the world.

I am aware that collaboration at a distance cannot allow us to dispense with face-to-face interaction, nor can ICT respond to a whole range of needs in professional development or collaborative work in this area. Nonetheless, my experience, and that of many colleagues, indicates that we can make effective use of ICT as a means to promote collaboration at any level, for instance between Northern and Southern colleagues, amongst teachers, between the representatives of organisations etc., as the example below reveals.

Presently I am co-ordinating an action-research project in partnership with an 'insider' primary education teacher, Ms. Martins. Its aim is the development of inclusive practices in mainstream classrooms through the provision of in-service teacher training. Ms. Martins participated in a similar project I coordinated in 2004, which involved ten municipal schools and which was funded by the local municipal educational authority (SME 2004). One of the outcomes of this project was the development of local Teacher Training Materials that were not published because an election intervened and there was a change in the ruling political party. Ms. Martins contributed to these materials too. During my visits to her school I was able to see the changes she implemented in her teaching practice by introducing collaborative learning in line with the training materials. On one of my visits, I was told that Ms. Martins was respected by her colleagues and that she was feeding them regularly with ‘inclusive novelties’ so they could try to respond to learning differences in their classrooms. I asked her about it, and Ms. Martins explained that she was sharing some of the inclusive strategies she learnt with her colleagues and that they were interested in learning a bit more. Encouraged by this, I invited her to carry out a new project in her school with the objective of testing the Teacher Training Materials we had produced and to support the systematic development of these teachers. So, we started our work in March 2005. I now visit this group of eleven teachers once a month and on each occasion we coordinate a workshop together (Ms. Martins is being trained for this role). We gather on Fridays to plan the workshop Ms. Martins is going to lead on the next Monday, and then we have long chats by phone to exchange information about the session.

knowing the relevance of systematic collaboration amongst teachers and also how hard it is to promote it in the Brazilian context as we will see later, we adopted a few strategies to consolidate collaboration by using ICT. We set up an email list using which everyone involved in the project is expected regularly to share information, a system which some use more than others. Teachers were invited to share their experiences in the classroom in a daily basis. They ‘talk’ about strategies they have used, about pupils' responses, they self assess the results, ask for suggestions and make suggestions. Ms. Martins and my role in the list is to help and stimulate the group to understand the importance of reflecting on their classroom experiences and to share these experiences as a means to collaborate with one another in order to push their practice forward.

Personally I consider networking and ICT powerful tools for promoting collaboration, but making this statement alone is not enough to persuade teachers to go for it! At the beginning, for instance, one of the teachers was firm in stating that she would only carry on networking if she could see that it was helping help ‘her’ pupils. Another teacher has apologised and stated that she ‘was not good at using ICT’. However, now they are both very active on the list and engaged in collaborating with others because they have gradually understood that they can use ICT to communicate with and get support from colleagues to improve their practices and results.  

So, considering all these factors and the current demand for external consultants in the field of inclusive education, I believe it is time to reflect on how this new kind of professional can make better use of collaboration to promote inclusion.

Exploring the profile of external consultants in the field of inclusive education

Ten years ago, The Salamanca Declaration and Framework for Action called upon the world to foster ‘international cooperation among governmental and non-governmental, regional and inter-regional organizations with the objective of supporting the move towards inclusive schools’ (74, p.45). In order to do this, Salamanca (UNESCO 1994) states that:

‘technical assistance should be directed to strategic fields of intervention with a multiplier effect, especially in developing countries [and] an important task for international co-operation is to support the launching of pilot projects aimed at trying out new approaches and at capacity building” (75, p. 45).  

Since this call was made, external consultants have often been invited to support the development of inclusive education worldwide. But who are these professionals? What do they have in common? How are they working? What kind of support are they providing and how effective has this sort of collaboration been?

‘Consultant’?   An issue of terminology

Consultants working in the field of inclusive education can be designated in many different ways, as the diagram 2 shows. They may be from different fields of knowledge too, such as Psychology, Arts, Medicine, Journalism, Special Education (this may be the largest group), Sociology, Literature, Physical Education, Human Rights, Social Services, Pedagogy, and Speech Therapy. All of these consultants, however, certainly have a few features in common, including the commitment to the rights to education and to inclusion; the fact that they are now or have been 'involved' in one way or another in the field of education, and they have years of working experience that presuppose professional expertise, that is, theoretical and/or practical knowledge that is relevant for inclusion.

In my case, I started out as a liberal professional working in the field of speech therapy in the southeast of Brazil and worked with people with communication disorders. In 1992 I became a senior lecturer in the field of Special Needs at the University of Paraíba, located in the northeast of Brazil, where I worked in Teacher Education. This academic post was a turning point in my career, and was where I first   became engaged with the education and training of teachers. It was also in the same post that, in 1995, Professor Peter Mittler visited my university and I heard about inclusive education for the first time.

Diagram 2: Consultants terminology

External consultants have to make sense of the local context

Making sense of the diverse and unknown contexts is an important step in successful collaboration (Ferreira 2001, Ainscow 1999). First of all, this involves obtaining an overview of the national legislation, and of the structure and functioning of the education system as a whole to get a grasp of its particularities and complexities, as the Brazilian example below shows.

Brazil has a population of 180 million, of which 50 million are children and young people of school age. Around 97% of them are enrolled in public schools located in the 28 states and approximately 5600 municipalities that make up Brazil.  

A new National Education Law (MEC) was passed in 1996 and has changed the structure of the system. For the first time in history, it recognized that education of children from 0-6 years old is a right, and it made education of children over the age of 6 compulsory. The new law established that municipalities are now in charge of grades 1 to 8 (Ensino Básico) and the individual States of the Federation of Brazil for years 9-10 of schooling (Ensino Médio). The education system is still going through a process of adjustment to this new arrangement, and there are further changes to legislation are being passed.

In addition to the country’s educational panorama it is important to get consistent background information that may include getting to know about the general features of the school and its community; the school's planning and routine; the teachers’ work routine; the main problems that affect the system, and so on. This information allows the consultant to gain an initial understanding of that particular reality and begin the clarification of some significant issues to be dealt with later. For example, some essential information about school routine in Brazil would be:

Depending on the region of the country in which schools are located, some of them cater for different pupils in different shifts during the day. The school may have from two to four shifts that run from very early morning (06:50am) to evening (as late as 10:40pm). The large majority of teachers work in two or three different schools in order to enhance their low salaries. Currently, non-graduate teachers are supposed to be studying for university degrees in order to qualify by 2007, as laid down by the same law of 1996. It is also the case that the large majority of head teachers work in that role in one school, and as ordinary teachers at other schools during other shifts.

There are still numerous details in the system that can only be discovered and understood throughout the process of working with the local partners. In this case, formal and informal conversations are crucial for gathering relevant official information, and for discovering the private views people hold about those official stances and policies. Here a short note on Latin American history may be useful.

Most Latin American countries have a history of authoritarian regimes. Collaboration and support, therefore, have to be understood within this particular context. In Brazil, for instance, attitudes and behaviours are strongly shaped by this historical starting point, which in my view are often manifested in a hard, negative and critical attitude towards others. This can be seen in different contexts of human activity including the workplace and I consider that they harm the quality of social relations. In educational settings, too often, I have seen disagreements on professional issues turning into personal arguments that drive people apart for long periods. They may work together in the same place but they do not talk to each other, nor even greet each other.

In one of the many schools I have visited in my country, I was invited to talk informally with a group of teachers during their break. I briefly presented the project I was co-ordinating, I introduced the principle of inclusion as guiding the project, and then I invited them to get to know a bit more by talking to their colleagues –

 Silvia and Maria - teachers involved in the project. Suddenly and angrily, one of the teachers interrupted me and said: 'Oh! Silvia is a saint, you know?

She can do everything with her pupils, but I cannot and will not. I have not been prepared to work with this “type of child” and no one will convince me that I have to do this. Let her carry on her mission!'   

This teacher looked really upset about my presence, the subject under discussion and the idea of anyone interfering with her established, settled way of working. So, her message was: ‘do not come here to interfere in our business’. Of course, if I was going to work with the school as a whole, this attitude would become a major barrier against developing a collaborative team, and as a consultant I would not be able to overlook it, but would have to address and tackle it.

It is very common to see these confrontational attitudes when a teacher does something well and tries to share it with her colleagues. The colleagues will certainly react negatively: ‘she or he is trying to show off, oh, please don’t!’ When a headteacher expresses a wish to promote collaborative teamwork or share decision-making processes, staff may respond with disregard because they see the head as `trying to create a demagogy’. This kind of attitudinal routine, according to Ms. Martins, tends to snowball and the workplace environment fills with conflicts.

As a Brazilian consultant I have been developing ways in my own country to tackle this sort of attitude and use of language by addressing them as part of the training sessions. I provide lots of funny and interesting examples, as well as I ask for examples from other participants. All the examples are very realistic and, therefore, people can identify the same kind of attitudes that they may have themselves. On the other hand, I stress that educators have values that have been forgotten and neglected by the system. I strongly argue that we have to re-learn these values by identifying, recovering and accepting them. We also have to celebrate teachers’ abilities, skills and knowledge because these are at the core of their work.   More than anything else, we have to share what we know with one another because this is the basis for ensuring our professional development.

By making sense of the local context and getting closer to locals, any consultant will be in a much better position to foster collaboration, and by adopting participatory approaches, to deal with local issues and priorities.

Participatory approaches to support collaboration

The relationship between consultant and partners is an important means of ensuring the quality of this kind of work. I have learned that a participatory approach is essential when providing support to local educational authorities or school communities. As I have said elsewhere, consultants ought to “listen to the voices of the practitioners and collaboratively identify solutions with them to overcome problems or barriers that hinder educational developments” (Ferreira 2003).   In order to do this, the relationship between consultants and locals should be horizontal to be more effective, that is, the power of decision making should be shared amongst all involved, and does not lie only in the hands of the consultant. The participatory approach is central to inclusion so that, at this level of partnership, the idea is that consultancies should foster enriching exchanges between the consultant and local partners whereby both parts learn from each other and help each other’s development.

Surprisingly, participatory approaches do not usually seem to be what practitioners are expecting. Very often people take the consultant’s credentials per se for granted and this seems to be enough for many just to ask for 'a proposal' based on what the consultant thinks is important, what he or she considers the best way to deliver it, how he or she will assess the results, etc. As many of you will no doubt have found too, I have seen vertical approaches too often, and know that they are neither effective nor useful in promoting important changes on the ground.

In the field of inclusive education, the vertical approach runs counter to the very core of the principle of inclusion. As we have said, the idea that the ‘expert’ consultant has the answers, the recipes, the means to analyse and assess what others are doing runs against concepts of participation, sustainability and empowerment.   So, here lies a real challenge for the consultant: how to promote effective collaboration that has ‘the flexibility to deal with the uniqueness of particular occurrences and contexts that allow social organizations ... to be understood from the perspectives of different participants’? (Ainscow 1999: 37)

On a global scale, there is an endless diversity of contexts and cultures, and one may infer from this that there are also diverse perceptions about external interventions, such as preconceptions against, and disregard for the status and wisdom of the consultants. For instance, according to Mittler (2005) “in the UK there is a deep skepticism on the part of practitioners concerning the street credibility of the outsider consultants [that leads them to ask] what do they do anyway, he/she only told me what I knew already.” Conversely in other countries, there may be a too exaggerated respect for the expertise of the visiting consultant, particularly if they are from European countries or America: this is the case in Brazil, and I am sure the same holds true in most of the Latin American countries.

Despite the still-dominant Northern culture that what is good for the North is good for Southern countries, in my perspective all of us as consultants and partners should identify local resources that are vital for the success and the sustainability of our initiatives.

Local human resources and sustainability

Resources are an important issue when moving towards inclusion.   Resources mean different things in different education systems, and they differ across various contexts too.   In the Latin American continent, all sorts of resources in the field of education tend to be scarce. In Brazil there is an overall understanding that resources mean mainly ‘material resources’ such as notebooks, pencils, books, computers, equipment adapted for special needs, pedagogical materials, school budgets for internal activities (e.g. training, parties) etc. In England, on the other hand, ‘the demand for more resources usually means extra money for more staff, though when more staff are appointed, there is not always clarity in how they are to be used’.   (Mittler 2005)

The UNESCO OPEN File (2001, p. 42) very properly addresses the place and value of human resources in the process of developing inclusive education by stating that:

‘for all countries, teachers are the most costly – and most powerful – resource that can be deployed in the education system. The development of the teaching force is, therefore, crucial, particularly in countries where other kinds of resources are relatively scarce. As the systems become more inclusive, professional development is particularly important because of the major new challenges that face both ordinary school teachers – who have to respond to a greater diversity of the students' needs – and special educators – who find the context and the focus of their work changing in major ways.’

So, school communities committed to inclusion are expected to achieve such an understanding as an important step in the process of change. In order to support the development of a new frame of reference about human resources and their importance for collaboration to promote changes, the external consultant should address issues of social relations including living together, supporting one another, being friends and respecting one another’s individuality, mutual support and partnerships, etc. as the example of Olinda school illustrates:

The school was an ordinary public school in the Northeast region of Brazil with many problems: scarcity of resources, de-motivated staff, indiscipline, unappealing physical and emotional atmosphere and poor relations with the local community, as the new headteacher told me.   Gradually, however, the school changed. The head and the deputy head decided to serve as role models and began to work towards turning the school in a welcoming environment. Aware of a lack of support, they began by just informing the school community what they were going to do: cleaning, painting, cheering the school up with plants, lively colors, etc. They started, and gradually others joined them ... They painted the walls, brought in plants,   decorated the classrooms, created a common area for producing toys and pedagogical materials using scrap materials. Other drawings were made by the students, parents and teachers. The two leaders used some money from the school and some from their own resources in order to organize annual parties for the staff. Day by day, participation increased and the school became a better place to be. In line with creating an inclusive culture, they have decided that the school should receive any child from the community. Today (2002) they have a total of 623 students, of whom 97 were children and adults with disabilities, and 122 young people and adults that were illiterate.

In the Olinda school, the leadership of the senior management team was key in creating change. This school was not part of any inclusive education project, but the head and the deputy were undoubtedly guided by the principles of inclusion. It seems to me that because barriers are so significant in Brazil, it is hard for the communities of schools to understand that people are a powerful resource for development.   These barriers can be overcome, however, and one factor that may help them to change is the development of a common language or a ‘language of practice’.

Supporting collaboration by developing a language of practice

The process of change is mediated by language, which in turn mediates social relations. Depending upon the way language is used, it can facilitate or hinder collaboration. In order to facilitate collaboration in Brazilian projects, I have been in the habit of making agreements on ground rules involving the use of a constructive, supportive language when commenting on others’ classrooms experiences; avoiding criticism without offering suggestions; not making jokes about personal characteristics or style; thinking how to identify and use resources instead of keeping ‘moaning about it’ or blaming the government for not providing it. So, stating clear rules seems to be an important task for the consultant in order to prevent use of language or of behaviour that can prevent collaboration.

In addition to this, in the process of developing inclusive education, language is always important because it is at the core of the collaborative attitude towards others. Cooperative learning amongst teachers can be shared through the ‘language of practice’ (Ainscow 1999) which will help those involved to gain a new perspective on reality – on their practice. In this context, the language of practice is a language in which colleagues can talk to one another by sharing in detail the way they did something, that is, it is like telling the story of a personal event in someone’s life. By doing this everyone is gently led through a process of reviewing their own way of speaking and doing things, and this is vital to the process of moving practice forward.

By supporting a gradual learning of the use of the language of practice, the consultant will help practitioners to understand its value in their learning and development and, at the same time, will give them a sense of ownership of the in-service capacity-building process. When the consultant is committed to developing a ‘language of practice’ that is accessible and meaningful for each social group he she is working with, participation, engagement, collaboration, and therefore, success, are more likely to happen.

The development of a language of practice demands allocation of time and a better management of the existing time in order to allow practitioners to gather to share information.

Planning, time management and collaboration

Planning and time management are very important elements for the development of inclusive policy and practices in schools, and they are shaped by the local culture. In countries below the Equator, the weather has a strong impact on the way people behave and the way time is perceived. Consultants ought to be aware of this in order to be able to understand how people operate.

In Brazil we are very poor at managing time in general, so planning is a weak aspect of our education system. It seems to me that the lack of skill in managing time properly appears to be compensated for by a sense of improvisation and creativity that gives the false impression that something has been done … and day in day out, educators participate in endless meetings that lead them nowhere but to frustration and a sense of worthlessness.   The lack of timely, organized planning thus generates inefficiency at all levels of school functioning.

We all know that schools cannot stop in order to make time for planning. This means that a process of collaborative planning will demand a common effort to use time in a more effective way. In this sense, members of the school will have to make time within their regular routine to ensure that they will be able to exchange knowledge, experience and skills about their practices. In the project I am working on with Ms. Martins, the head teacher has agreed to 'lend' us an hour and half of the twelve hours that are allocated weekly for regular teachers’ meetings in which they are supposed to address pedagogical issues. Ms. Martins uses this hour and half on Mondays.

Of course, in an educational system as complex as that in Brazil, time allocation and management is indeed a major issue, but despite this my experience in Brazilian schools has shown me that it is possible to succeed in it so long as collaboration is perceived as useful by those involved.  

The link between planning and time-management is extremely important, and therefore consultants in the field of inclusive education cannot neglect it in their agendas, particularly when working in countries below the Equator. Of course, to foster changes at these levels is a not an easy task for consultants because they are not ‘there’ long enough to support the implementation and development of those changes; however,   successful collaborative work depends on using   time properly to plan together with the objective of promoting a quality education for all.

The challenges of collaborative consultancy for promoting inclusion

In my view a consultant should be, above all else, a ‘collaborator’; someone who is in position to provide ‘technical assistance’, as stated by Salamanca, and even more importantly someone who is able to work collaboratively with the objective of supporting capacity-building. In the field of inclusive education, particularly, the whole notion of ‘an expert who comes to analyse what others are doing is somehow inconsistent with the principle of inclusion and it goes against the very concept of participation, sustainability and empowerment’ (Mittler, 2005), which are at the heart of inclusion. This is exactly why collaboration in consultancies is a major theme that we should look at carefully.

Collaboration between people and groups is always problematic because it involves dealing with issues of social relations including disputes, disagreements, misunderstandings, power, conflicting ideologies etc. Furthermore, collaboration is shaped by factors such as history, culture, ideologies, language, and the hidden or explicit agendas of individuals or of political parties, of which the consultant may not be aware, nor willing to get embroiled in. But in this kind of work the consultant is bound to be deeply immersed in the culture of the system or organization, and once in there, he or she needs to learn about its characteristics and the role of that culture in supporting changes; whether and when policy and practice are effective; relationships between action and results, etc., in order to be able to properly perform the ‘technical assistance’ he or she was commissioned to provide.   Easier said then done, as the saying goes!

My experience as a consultant has gradually shown me that working collaboratively towards inclusion necessarily means building up a relationship of trust and support between myself and the local partners (Ferreira 2001). This seems to be a starting point to ensure the gathering of quality information from them, based on which we will re-think together their reality, contexts, needs, resources, etc. The process of thinking together about ‘their’ particular organisation and working plans somehow implies ‘assessing’ the way they function and the kind of social relations that permeate their interactions. Inevitably, this sort of reflection will tend to disclose inherent fragilities in the existing situation, and it is likely to provoke discomfort, worry and sometimes fear for the ‘insiders’, who may feel vulnerable. In addition to this, teachers and educators in general need time and ‘opportunities to reflect upon proposals for changes that will provoke impact in their values and convictions.’ (Mittler 2000; Mittler 2003)

In this sense, the external consultant should be aware of and attentive to the possible constraints, embarrassments and turbulence (Ainscow 1995) that a joint reflective process may generate. The consultant should even be prepared for the fact that this turbulence can be intensified when reality is manipulated, for instance, when a new procedure is tried out, or an existing one done in an alternative way that diverges from long standing practice. Consultancy work, therefore, very often means stepping on uncertain ground, adopting a completely open posture towards the new environment and stepping back to re-focus. (Ferreira 2001)

We all know that not everybody is prepared to foster collaborative teamwork. Not everyone can perform the role of a ‘collaborator’ because of personal traits or believes, which are independent from possessing demonstrable knowledge and experience in the field. We all know too that there are endless subtleties in each of the contexts an external consultant may act upon. Nonetheless, today I wonder whether the consultant’s ‘competences’ are enough to support changes, and whether providing ‘technical assistance’ is really going to make a difference. That is why I have turned towards myself and am asking what lessons can we learn from a Southern experience in regard to supporting more effective collaboration between consultants and locals?   So, here is what I identified.

Final words…

Fifteen years after the launching of the movement of Education for all (UNESCO 1990) and ten years after Salamanca (UNESCO 1994), there has been a large number of pilot initiatives to support developments towards inclusion that involved external consultants in both countries of the North and the South (UNESCO 1999, UNESCO 2001a, UNESCO 2001b, Costa and Paes 2000, SME 2004, EENET 2004).   In fact, most of the projects and programmes that aim at the development of more inclusive education systems for all involve the participation of external consultants who collaborate in the process of change, that is, people who will provide ‘technical assistance’ and support to promote local capacity-building.

Nonetheless, considering the slow advancement towards a high-quality inclusive education for all, these experiences indicate that pilot projects can too easily become isolated initiatives that do not lead to widespread change in practice in the country or even in the region where it has been implemented. Despite the value of and contribution provided by pilot projects, they just touch the edge of education systems that historically were built for a privileged few.

A question that remains to be further explored about the role of external consultants is how can we ensure greater and more effective collaboration from this kind of consultancy as a means of fostering inclusion? As we have seen, there are already several factors that can be identified in the construction of the role of a consultant in the field of inclusive education. My experience has just provided some input about them, for instance, the importance of connecting with key people; the value of acquiring knowledge and building up capacity in inclusive education, and the recognition of the crucial role of networking and sharing of information in order to ‘catch up’ with the fast worldwide developments.

I argue that external consultants should become key people in breaking down the barriers that can isolate the various separate initiatives by incorporating in their work the commitment to collaborate with locals in beginning processes of networking and information sharing about what they have done, achieved, learned and produced in their projects in order to ensure the sustainability and development of the initiative. So, it is time for us to consider how external consultants can also make use of these tools to promote collaborative work, networking and dissemination.

It is time to deepen our understanding and knowledge about the profile of and the work developed by consultants in order to clarify a set of guidelines that should orient their action in unknown contexts. In this paper I have stressed, as we have seen, the necessity of making sense of local contexts before beginning work; the unavoidable need to adopt participatory approaches in order to support collaboration and to provide an inclusive role model.   I have addressed the relevance of the identification of local resources that are crucial to the process of capacity-building and sustainability. Last, but not least, is the collaborative effort in order to contribute to the development of the language of practice, which is fundamental to support capacity-building and networking.  

It is also time to learn more about collaboration in partnerships between North and South, a form of collaboration that can become a powerful means to foster the   sustainability of initiatives and local empowerment. Not the kind of empowerment that means ‘the consultant will graciously give power away to those who lack it’. No, that kind of process is not inclusive at all! I mean empowerment built by the locals themselves in the process of professional development and improvement in practice. The external consultant will be a catalyst, a supporter who will help people to have more confidence in the skills, abilities and knowledge they already have. The consultant collaborating in this way can make a major contribution for Southern educators to re-discover their value and repertoire, to help them to make the familiar unfamiliar.

Promoting and supporting inclusion and inclusive education is for me a social and political personal commitment, and consultancy work is the way I foresee myself and others contributing to this major global agenda, the importance of which may be recognised fully only in the future. So, I hope that we can do better soon.   So, I finish with a statement about the meaning of collaboration given by a teacher:

“Collaboration is to be together and have the intention of growing as human beings. In this process, collaboration will help us to widen our vision of the world and will prevent us from getting isolated in an island of solitary ideas … We must take the risk, we must share in order to respond to our doubts, and to feel more certain about our future as educators. ”

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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the contributions of my colleagues Mel Ainscow, Peter Mittler, Rosita Edler and Monica Pereira dos Santos to the ideas presented in this paper

Professor Peter Mittler (England), Mrs. Ana Maria Benards da Costa (Portugal), Professor Mel Ainscow (England), Mr. Carlos Manhiça (Mozambique), amongst others

www.eenet.org.uk

www.edtodos.org.br

This project is a personal initiative and has no funding.

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