Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress
International
Special Education Conference
Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity?
1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland
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Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland |
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Maria Helena Rubin
Maria Amelia Almeida
Federal University of São Carlos
São Carlos - São Paulo – Brasil
The schooling of individuals with intellectual disabilities has gone through transformations each epoch in accordance with society’s values, culture and vision of the world, human beings, disability itself and the possibilites of educating the disabled. In Brazil, for example, despite the recent advances which have occurred and are ongoing in the schooling of people with intellectual disablilities, there still is a predominate conception that the disability is inherent in the person and his organism. This view holds that the disabled have a reduced potential for learning complex concepts and relates their ability to learn to their disability. As such, educational practices based on this view greatly limit and even deprive disabled individuals of investment in their schooling. This disbelief is much more serious in the case of young people and adults, who are, legally, over the conventional age for initial schooling.
However, it is a fact that the education of young people and adults in Brazil in recent years has been going through analysis and reformulation on the national level, demonstrating that many educators and politicians are concerned with the efficiency and structure of this type of education.
New alternatives and proposals are arising with the intention to seek and offer quality education that will permit these individuals with disabilities who did not become literate during the educational system’s conventional schooling years, to become citizens with the same rights and obligations as the rest of society. In addition, Education, is considered a right of all citizens including persons with intellectual disabilities, whether it is pre-school, elementary or education for young persons and adults.
If there is a growing concern with illiterate normal young people and adults, why isn’t there the same concern with mentally disabled young people and adults who also were not able to become literate at the conventional age?
Ide (1992) studied the question of the schooling of individuals with intellectual disabilities, characterizing the situation as much or more serious when she states:
The person with intellectual disablities has been considered a person who merely mechanically receives the knowledge that others have, without ever participating in the construction of knowledge. Normally, teaching proposals are based on the belief that the academic failures of theses children are due to the inherent “defects” of these students (Ide, 1992, p.41).
However, this situation can and should be reverted in favor of effective learning by these students in true compliance with the law, if the programs elaborated are not based on “deficits ”. This compliance is possible if the curriculums, programs and educational planning for students with intellectual disabilities contemplate the content of elementary education which is not reduced or diminished because this education is occurring later in life, but are elaborated in accordance with the potential these persons certainly possess. As Fonseca (1987) states:
(...)it is necessary to believe in the possibilities of the intellectually disabled (...) The intellectually disabled can acquire very complex aquisitons. There is much to do in scientific and educational areas (...) Learning, contrary to what is thought by many authorities, does not depend only on the learning individual’s inherent internal abilities, it constitutes a corollary equilibrium between these internal learning abilities and the external conditions of teaching, inherent in the individual who teaches (Fonseca, 1987, p. 56).
These views permit the conclusion that the individual with intellectual disabilities is capable of learning, once there is belief in their potentional and they are offered real and objective learning situations that are relevant to their socio-cultural context, chronologial age and interests.
What the Research Reports about Learning in Persons with Intellectual Disabilities in Brazil
Brazilian scientific production in the area of Special Education has made great advances, principally since the late 70’s, due to the creation of the Graduate Program in Special Education at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCAR) and the Master’s Program in Education at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro – UERJ (Nunes, Glat, Ferreira e Mendes, 1998).
From a total of 149 dissertations analyzed by the researchers cited above, the predominant theme (35 dissertations, representing 23% of the total) were related to teaching-learning, with emphasis on literacy and non-academic aspects such as sports, arts and daily life activities. Of these 35 studies, 13 were on training behaviors and skills; 14 on language; 3 on teacher and student interaction and only 5 which included ranging methods or educational programs which treated the topics of mental and hearing disabilities and gifted abilities.
Nunes and col. (1998, p. 43 - 44) also state: “the psychopedagogic interventions described in these dissertations are directed towards internal processes such as how to effect changes from a variety of aspects (...)”.
It is important to note that all the studies analyzed by Nunes & col. (1998), were directed towards pre-school and school age children. That is, none of the studies on learning treated the population of mentally disabled young people and adults and their learning process.
Costa (1984) designed a reading and writing program for moderately intellectually disabled students, composed of 215 steps. These steps consisted of reading and writing of groups of vowels, phonetic consonant training, reading and writing of syllables, words and phrase training. The author concluded that the program was successful in modifying the reading and writing behavior skill repetoires of the subjects.
Dall’Acqua (1987) reapplied this program, Costa (1984), with a mildly intellectually disabled population. Dall’Aquca concluded that the subjects made significant gains in relation to reading and writing behaviors and noted the importance of classroom teacher in exercising the function of researcher in conducting her own investigations as constituting a possible alternative for improving teaching quality.
Alves (1987), also following the constructivist line of thought of Ferreiro, investigated the strategies utilized by students with Down’s Syndrome in the initial acquisition of reading and writing; more specifically, the correspondance between the sound form and the written form of the word. The author studied three stages: discriminating the length of the stimuli (visual and sound), relating the length of the spoken and written word to each other and analyzing the sound units of syllables in words. She verified that the subjects did not understand the instructions given and their answers were tied to stimulus properties that were not specifically involved in the relations focused on.
Valle (1984) study objective was to analyze the reading and writing performance of regular class students repeating the school grade and children in special classes while doing tasks which revealed their in analysis-synthesis abilities from perspective of visual and auditory language and their difficulties in the reading and writing process. In the free writing task, while the children repeating the school grade exibited a frequency of one or more phrases, the children with intellectual disabilities more frequently wrote lists of words. In the visual pairing test, the repeating students were 76% successful while those with intellectual disabilities obtained 50%. In the transformation of a visually presented words task, a similar performance was verified in both groups, that is, a high incidence of switched letters and incorrect letter order.
After the analysis of these and other scientific research related to teaching and learning, Nunes & col. (1998, p. 53) reached the following conclusion:
Independent of theoretical basis, the studies favored an optimistic vision of Special Education as they are eloquent in the possibilites of the acquistion of skills, concepts and attitudes by disabled students, as long as the teaching-learning conditions are carefully considered. The conditions involved range from appropriate materials and planning to the improvement of teacher education and the instituions themselves
In relation to math education and special education, Pacheco and Shimazaki (2003) carried out a study with 9 students classified as intellectually disabled in a special class for one school year. The methodology consisted of the application of mathematical games which the students participated in making. They were offered situations where the students played in groups or alone, working in ludic situations with the concepts of numerals, addition and subtraction operations and positive and negative numbers. The authors concluded that by participating in the games, the students were capable of elaborating mathematical concepts such as color, size and shape and demonstrated more independence and higher self-esteem. The authors concluded that mathematical games favored the mental construction of number, which is fundamental for working with elementary mathematics.
The majority of the research described prove that intellectually disabled individuals are capable of learning, and learning even content related to schooling, and that although they present a delay in cognitive development which frequently interferes in school learning, the current proposals should maximize the potential of all the capacities of these individuals.
The Education of Young People and Adults in Brazil
The expression “Education for Young People and Adults” is recent in the country. For the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) , “the education of young people and adults is part of a global policy that sees universal basic education as a comittment to human development, and the social, political, economic, and cultural ethics of the Nation” (Poppovic, 1999, preface).
Haddad (1992) in the 90’s had already stated: “to speak about the education of Young People and Adults in Brazil is to speak of something little known. Moreover, when it is known, the knowledge is more about its defects than its than about its virtues” (Haddad, 1992, p. 4).
This statement alone makes a strong criticism of this type of education, yet it can be confirmed when a profound analysis of the history of Education for Young People and Adults in Brazil is made.
It can be stated that the primordial objective of the education of young people and adults in Brazil is to attend those individuals who, for some reason, were excluded from formal schooling. This characterizes it as a way to address the necessities of schooling for young people and adults that did not have access to schooling in during the conventional school years and seek, in some way, to survive in a society in which being able to read, write and calculate are more highly valued each passing day. They seek schooling because they find the informally acquired knowledge is already insufficient in becuase of society’s demand for a certificate proving the completion of studies.
The general panorama surveyed up to the present in relation to school learning by intellectually disabled individuals, young people and adults in Brazil, allows us to note the following considerations:
In consonance with this last aspect, the reviewed literature about the schooling of disabled person also does not contain even one specific study on the schooling of young people and adults with intellectual disabilities.
The objective of the present study is the analysis, evaluation and accompaniment of school performance in Portuguese Language and Mathematics in 7 young people and adults with moderate intellectual disabilities aged 16 to 23 years, 6 of whom are male and 1 female.
Participants
Seven moderately intellectually disabled young people and adults of both sexes participated in this study, who attended a 4 hour Professional Education program at a Special Education school. The participants were 6 males and 1 female between the ages of 16 years and 6 months and 23 years and 4 months. The participants additonally attended the 4 hour “Academic Program” twice a week at the same school. The principal objective of the academic program, was to work with the school content for Education of Young People and Adults: beginning literacy and literacy. This study was carried out within the “Academic Program”.
Location
The study was carried out in a special education school for moderate to severe intellectually disabled students located in a city in northern Paraná State.
The program in which the research study was inserted is one of the sectors of the school called Setor de Educação Profissional ( Professional Education Sector),which is for young adults and adults over 14 years of age.
The “Academic Program” was organized for students who, due to their age, were directed to the School Sector, where the principal objective was academic schooling, to the Professional Education Setor where the activities were related to schooling that was not part of the principal content. In this way, the “Academic Program” attended young people and adults who, although above the legal age to begin working (14 years of age), still had potential to develop related to academic schooling.
Instruments
To evaluate the academic repetoire of the students before the beginning of the interventions, a script for the areas of Portuguese Language and Mathematics was elaborated by the researcher based on the Curriculum Proposal for the 1st Segment of Elementry Education for Education For Young People and Adults, (Soares & col., 1997) and the National Curricular Parameters Proposal for Elementary Education (Proposta dos Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais (PCNs) para o Ensino Fundamental (Brasil, MEC, 1997a and 1997b)).
Material
Materials utilized were: a box of varied didactic materials such as copy paper, black pencils, erasers, ballpoint pens,newspapers, magazines, children’s books and workbooks with specific exercises in Portuguese Language and Mathematics.
Data Collection Procedure
The procedure utilized to collect data followed the following steps:
Step 1 :
a) Preparatory period
Before the data collection was begun, a meeting with the school administration was held to clarify the objective of the research and solicit their authorization to conduct the research in the school.
After the selection of the participants a meeting was held with the parents and or the parties responsible for the participants, and the school administration to explain the objective and dynamics of the research and solicit their authorization for the particpation of their children in the research project.
b) Research Ethics Commitee
The study was reviewed by the Research Ethics Committee of UFSCar, and registered with the National Council of Health, (CONEP), as per the Act of March 18, 1997, for review and approval and was approved.
c) Baseline – initial evaluation
The objective of this evaluation was to collect specific initial data on the school learning of each participant as designated by the legislation, (Act of March,1997 in the areas of Portuguese Language and Mathematics). The evaluations were done individually at the school with no fixed time, in order to respect the rhythm of each student. The attitudes of the students towards the evaluations were registered in the researcher’s fieldbook as valuable data in relation to their learning always arose during the evaluation.
d) Baseline Analysis
The data from this evaluation were systemized in a descriptive register for the areas of the Portuguese Language: Oral Language, Written Language, Reading Comprehension; and for Matematics: Series Classification and Series Ordering, Counting, Relation between Quantity, Reading and Writing Numbers, Registering Quantities and Operations with Natural Numbers.
During the activities proposed: written production, reading, problem solving, among others, the participants could recieve the following points:
Step 2:
Once these data were collected, the second phase of the project which consisted of the elaboration and application of a plan whose objective was to intervene in the difficulties found and apply evaluations of accompaniment, was begun.
a) Elaboration of Procedures and Intervention Plans
The interventions were carried out on the days and in the hours reserved by the teacher in her weekly chronogram for Portuguese Language and Mathematics, during the
1 st and 2 nd school semesters (7 months), a total of 16 hours per month. During the interventions, the researcher made evaluations of the accompaniment to analyze the academic evolution of the students.
The elaboration of the intervention plans was done by informing the teacher on the performance of each participant on the intital evaluation and the content to be worked on was selected by the researcher and teacher jointly, in accordance with the student’s potential and interest. Two levels of intervention plans were created: one for the students in a more advanced stage and one for the students who were in the beginning of literacy.
The present study sought, in accordance with recent specific curricular proposals, i.e: Curriculum Proposal for the 1st Segment of Elementry Education for Education For Young People and Adults (Ribeiro & col., 1997) and the National Curricular Parameters Proposal for Elementary Education (Brasil, MEC, 1997a and 1997b), to elaborate a concrete pedagogic proposal for intellectually disabled young people and adults focusing on a proposed common teaching base for young people and adults that was in no way based on the “limitations” of the disability in terms of learning ability. That is, a proposal characterized by its flexibility in the elaboration of programs which permitted a variety of combinations, emphasis, suppressions, complements and concrete forms for the content and educational objectives. As such, the proposal did not serve as a “recipe” for the interventions done in this study, but as a parameter for direction which considered young people and adults with intelectual disabilities like any other young person and adult who had not gone through literacy schooling at the convential age, and appropriate adaptations for this were taken into consideration.
Each of the areas worked on, Portuguese Language and Mathematics, was initially defined, defined in blocks of content, which were added to or suppressed along the study in accordance with the performance of the participants. The charateristics of the participants constituted two groups: the first with participants who were found to be in the beginning stage and the second, by those students found to be in a more advanced stage of learning, given that the students were found to have different levels of reading, writing and mathematics skills than were provided for in the 1st Segment of Elementry Education for Education For Young People and Adults (Ribeiro & col., 1997) in terms of teaching sequence.
b) Application of the evaluations of accompaniment
During and at the end of the intervention, evaluations were made of the accompaniment to collect data on the learning or lack of evolution of the participants in the two areas worked on. The same script and procedures utilized for the intital baseline evaluation were utilized for the accompaniment evaluations.
RESULTS
The results are represented by areas and subareas worked on in the study: Portuguese Language which included Oral Language, Written Language and Reading and Mathematics which involed the subareas of Series Classification and Series Ordering, Counting, Relation between Quantities, Reading and Writing of Numbers, Registering Quantity and Operations with Natural Numbers.
In Oral language, six of the seven participants already presented a good mastery of basic concepts related to Oral Language, before the beginning of the study. For this reason, the objectives of the intervention consisted of offering situations which involved the use of Oral Language in a more complex and coherent form. In general, the data confirmed that the intervention program significantly fostered the evolution of the particpants in use of Oral Language, permitting “the broadening of their forms of expression, allowing them to use appropriate forms of speech appropriate to different situations and communicative intentions” (Ribeiro & col. 1997, p.53), which had not been perceived or required of these students before. At the end of the study the students were observed to express themselves more clearly, utilizing more complex concepts and thinking than they had presented at the beginning of the study.
In relation to Written Language, the results showed that all the particpants evolved, each at their own rhythm, proving that young people and adults with mental disabilities have the capacity to become literate as long as they are offered intervention programs which are adapteed to their potential. The results further show that the difficulties of each participant in relation to the acquisition of the content in Written Language varied greatly, and in specific situations, some particpants needed some type of help.
The general results in Written Language, and the observations from the researcher’s fieldbook permitted the observation that the students attributed great importance to learning writing, allowing the conclusion that the study, in addition making possible the mastery of written language, also made possible their entrance into the category of “ the literate”, which constitutes, without a doubt, a decisive factor in the life of persons with mental disabilities.
In relation to Reading Comprehension, the results show that the participants performance varied greatly, including during the intervention. Two participants demonstrated that they had little contact with formal reading and had more difficulty than the other students. In general, all of the students evolved, albeit gradually. However, the results show the same difficulty in constructing the meaning of the reading for comprehension.
In the area of Mathematics, all the participants, before the intervention, were observed to have a great deal of difficulty in in the subarea of Classification of Series and Series Ordering although it appeared to be simple and easy to acquire, turned out to be very complex where concepts such as logical reasoning, attentiveness and visual perception were involved.
However, after a brief period of intervention, all the participants evolved significantly, achieving at least 80% in the final evaluation.
In the subarea of Counting, all the participants presented merely mechanical learning before the intervention, that is the mechanics without comprehension of meaning. The results at the end of the study showed that Mathematics learning for this group of students constistuted a natural/functional process as they discovered the usefulness of day to day mathematics, that is all participants demonstrated great interest in this subarea which fostered learning.
In the subarea of Relation between Quantities, the results showed that the majority of participants already demonstrated some mastery of the content and all achieved 100% in the final evaluation. However, the data and the observations permit us to note that, from the way the “treated” the activities related to this content, we perceived that this content had been worked with “exhaustively” in previous programs, though in a mechanical and non-functional form.
In relation to Reading and Writing Numbers, the results showed that the participants encountered difficulties principally in reading and writing numbers greater than 100. However, all participants made gradual yet significant improvement.
In the subarea of Registering Quantity, the results showed that none of the participants achieved more than 40% in the baseline evaluation before the intervention which demonstrated greater difficulty in this subarea than the others. All presented a slow and gradual evolution and needed some type of help in the ativities involved in this content.
In relation to the subarea Operations with Natural Numbers, the results showed that these operations were quite complex for the participants, however, all presented a significant improvement shortly after the start of the intervention.
In general, the results obtained in the area of Mathematics permitted us to afirm that the particpants were capable of integrating in a balanced way, the formative role of Mathematics. (Ribeiro & col., 1997).
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the results proved that the particpants in the study made a significant evolution in Portuguese Language and Mathematics content related to the first years of elementary schooling, which proves that intellectually disabled young people and adults present potential for the acquisition of complex concepts in reading, writing and mathematics, that is basic literacy and post- literacy, as long as they are offered intervention programs which respect and consider their individual characteristics, principally chronological age, their interests, potentials and need for assistance. The conclusions signal the scarcity of research in this area and the necessity to conduct studies which contemplate the school learning of intellectually disabled young people and adults and offer strategies to facilitate their learning.
REFERENCES
Alves, J. M. (1987). Estudo sobre a relação entre a extensão falada/escrita de palavras por crianças portadoras de Sindrome de Down. Dissertação de Mestrado não publicada, Universidade Federal de São Carlos. São Carlos, São Paulo.
APAE Educadora (2001). A escola que buscamos: proposta orientadora das ações educacionais. Brasilia: Federação Nacional das APAEs.
Brasil. (1988). Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil de 1988. Brasilia: Senado Federal.
Brasil. (1996). Lei nº 9394, de 23 de dezembro de 1996 – Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional. Diário Oficial da União. Brasilia
Brasil: Secretaria de Educação Fundamental (1997a). Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais: Introdução aos Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais. Brasilia: MEC/SEF.
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Costa, M. P. R. (1984). Um programa de alfabetização de deficientes mentais: primeiros resultados. Dissertação de Mestrado não publicada. Universidade Federal de São Carlos, São Carlos, São Paulo.
Dall’ Acqua, M. J. C. (1987). O Professor como Elemento Determinante e Condutor de Pesquisa em Sala de Aula: Um estudo sobre procedimentos de análise e avaliação em classe especial . Dissertação de Mestrado Universidade Federal de São Carlos, São Carlos, São Paulo.
Fonseca, V. (1987). Educação Especial. Porto Alegre: Artes Médicas.
Haddad, S. (1992). Tendências atuais na Educação de Jovens e Adultos. Em Aberto, ano 11 (nº 56), 3 - 12.
Ide, S. M. (1992). Alfabetização e a Deficiência Mental. Revista Brasileira de Educação Especial. 1 (1), 41 - 49.
Nunes, L. R. P.; Glat, R.; Ferreira, J. R.; Mendes, E. G. (1998). Pesquisa em Educação Especial na pós-graduação. Vol. 3, Rio de Janeiro: Sete Letras.
Pacheco, E. R.; Shimazaki, E. M. (2003). Matemática para Alunos com Necessidades Especiais . Texto mimeo.
Poppovic, P. P. (1999). Prefácio. In: Salto para o Futuro de Jovens e Adolescentes. Secretaria de Educação à Distância, p. 5. Brasilia: Ministério da Educação, SEED.
Ribeiro, V. M. M. (coord.); Vóvio, C. L.; Silva, D. da; Mendes, M. A. de A.; Mansutti, M. A.; Di Pierro, M. C.; Almeida, M. I. de; Joia, Orlando (1997). Educação de Jovens e Adultos – Proposta Curricular para o 1 º Segmento do Ensino Fundamental. São Paulo/ Brasilia: MEC/Ação Educativa.
Soares, M. (1998). Letramento: um tema em três gêneros. Belo Horizonte: Ceale/ Autêntica.
Valle, J. G. (1984). Análise da dificuldade de leitura e escrita em alunos repetentes da 1ª série do 1º grau . Dissertação de Mestrado não publicada, Universidade Federal de São Carlos, São Carlos, São Paulo.
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