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The meaning of the visual impairment in daily life: analysis of the

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representations of the family, students and teachers

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Focus: School Years

Topic: Inclusive Education

Bruno Marilda M.Garcia  

Graduate Student in Education,

Unesp, Marília,

SP, Brazil 

067 351-51-06 

mgbruno@uol.com.br

Graduate Program in Education,  

Manzini, Eduardo José 

Education Graduate Program´s Professor 

14 4221387 

 

The purpose of this research is to reveal the contradictions surrounding the concepts of integration and inclusion through an analysis of the discourse of students with visual impairment, their families and teachers and the feelings, meanings and representations thereby expressed. A clear definition of those concepts and an understanding of the expectations and needs expressed by all those involved will contribute to the development of strategies for practical action leading to the construction of quality schools in a more humane society.

Key words: representation, integration, full inclusion.

The development of this study was driven, initially, for the desire to share feelings, meanings and sense that could help us understand better who the people with visual deficiency are, their expectations and needs, starting from the report of their daily lives. 

It was also the need to debate and reflect about the real situations experienced by those people, but in the level of their representations: the possibilities, the difficulties, the obstacles and the challenges that are imposed on the interaction in the family, classroom and in the community. 

The chosen theoretical foundation was the social representations, based in the cultural and psychosocial perspective, that conceives the representations as a group of dynamic and shared actions, in constant movement, capable to point out ways for the transformation of the daily life of people with deficiency and their relatives. For Moscovici(1984) and Jodelet,(1990), the images, opinions, and concepts commonly expressed are not thought only as they translate scales of an individual or community´s values.

  

Understanding the reality, the daily life of people with deficiency and what goes around them means to contemplate the implicit symbolic dimensions in the social action, to dive in the human existential conflicts in order to experience the internal reality, the imaginary and representations that guide the ideology assumed in the social context. 

The adopted meaning of daily life was inspired in Heller (l972), it is the life of the whole man that participates on the life with all the aspects of his individuality and personality, private being and generic being. The man of the daily life, the author says,  is actuating, spontaneous, active, receptive, he is a generic being because he is a product and expression of his social relationships, once he is represented by their community, where his individual and social conscience are formed. 

Methodology 

 

The chosen methodology is the analysis of the student-family-teacher's speech that manifests and communicates the essence, the existence, the experiences, the productions, the conflicts, the true essence and the contradictory of the individual and collective representations.  

Semi-structured interviews were done, with previous script, trying to maintain a dialogical and spontaneous relationship, with statements that could communicate the symbolic contents capable to reveal the contradictions of the individual and social reality.  

The interviews with the students, parents and teachers, tried to unmask the contents related to the social concept of the deficiency: the images, the feelings, the representations, the attributed meanings and how those different perceptions interfere in the relationship and guide the practical actions.  

The selection of the schools was guided by the successful proposals of integration and inclusion in different socio-cultural and economic contexts that allowed to understand how those concepts are elaborated and how they influence the school and social practice. 

 

Chart 1 - the students and schools'  Identification  

 

Student	Gender	Age	School Level	Condition	System	Type of School
01	Male	7	Literate	Blind	Inclusion	Municipal     E.l
02	Female	9	Literate	Dm+LV*	Inclusion	Private   E.2
03	Male	17	Junior High (8th.grade)	LV	Integration	Private    E.3
04	Male	22	High School	Blind	Integration	Community E.4
05	Female	20	Higher Education	Blind	Integration	Estate    E.5

*LV: Low Vision.

 

In that way, our research field is constituted by the first inclusion and literacy experience of a blind student in a common class, in a Municipal School, in Campo Grande, MS. And to contemplate the polemical issue of the students' inclusion with multiple deficiency, we selected the second, in the experience of a private school in Rio de Janeiro, recently presented in the Futura TV channel, that receives the support of Unesco for that project.

The third experience refers to the oldest proposal of students' social inclusion with visual deficiency that is known in Brazil, promoted by the Community School of Blind people from São Luís, Maranhão, that opened the doors of the institution for clairvoyant students in an inverse way.  At last, we´ve  heard the testimony of a  blind student with integration experience from the pre-school, studying Music in Unicamp University, São Paulo. 

 

Chart 2 - The interwied parents´  Identification 

Student	Father	Mother	School Level	Profession
01		M.1	Higher Education	Dentist
02		M.2	Higher Education	Architect
03	P.3		Higher Education	Engineer
04		M.4	Incomplete Elementary	Cleaner
05		M.5	Higher Education	Pedagogue

 

Chart 3 - The  interwied teachers'  Identification 

 

In the impossibility of interviewing all the teachers of the different teaching levels, we requested the students to indicate the teacher to be interviewed in agreement with the following model: larger contact, good interaction and communication level, zeal in the student's learning. 

The semi-structured interview, with a previous script, allowed the speakers to share and explain their feelings, desires, experiences and to deepen freely in subjects that they judged more important or pertinent.  After the recorded interviews,  listening and transcription of the recorded statements were done, adopting the reading process and flotation attention recommended by Thiollent (l985).  Categories were built, formulated the possible hypotheses, articulating relationships allowed by the triangulation of the speeches (Bardin, l977). 

 

Chart 4 - Themes and sub-themes identified in the parents' speeches, students and teachers                   

 

THEMES 

            SUBTHEMES 

 

THEMES	SUBTHEMES
Parents' representation	Reveling the meaning of the deficiency		Feelings generated from the deficiency
			Construction of affective links with the children
			Social relationships
	Expectations and desires of the family in relation to the son and his integration in school and society
Students' representation	Reveling the meaning of the deficiency
	Students´ desires and expectations
Teachers' representation	The built perception: the student's image
	The conception of the pedagogical practice: progresses and impasses
The interrelation of the speeches	The representation of the integration and inclusion: progresses, flaws and contradictions	The collective work
		Adaptations in the curriculum
		Reconstruction e organization of the school
	The social practice in the actors' vision
	Discussing the notes of the speeches

 

Discussions and conclusion:  

Going through this way, we can notice that the parents, students and teachers´ speeches announce change indications in the social representation of the visual deficiency. The speeches denote transformation in the images built concerning the people with visual deficiency. The concepts stopped being mythical and supernatural, pointing out to a human and psychological dimension of being natural, common and also fallible. 

Some reports point out to a society that already seeks to anchor its thoughts in the human dimension and in the scientific knowledge. Parents and teachers make efforts, are on the way to new attitudes and postures when living together with the diversity, with the acceptance of the other that is different. 

What is an evidence, in the plan of the feelings and in the interaction and communication forms among interviewed parents and children, teachers and students, is that, in spite of the initial difficulties in dealing with the new fact - the deficiency; they were able, with the family life, to build positive links, marked by affection, respect, cooperation and solidarity. 

We notice the beginning of a consistent dialogical relationship between teachers and students, destitute of paternalism and complaisance, even before the student's with multiple deficiency attitudes. Those teachers seek, in a general way, to focus more, the person with his personality characteristics, his potentialities, without however, denying the difficulties. 

The parents expressed, a strong desire and expectation in relation to postures and consistent pedagogical practices that promote the success in the teaching-learning process. That transformation process of the social representations happens in a long term and it still needs to arrive to the school system as a whole. 

Contradicting that delineated evolution, important ideological subjects that deserve to be debated emerge from speeches, such as: the validity and the effectiveness of the special education offered as in public schools as in specialized institutions. 

To whom are they destined and serve? Those are ideological issues, of political and social-economical interest, not sufficiently clarified and that still need to be discussed widely by those involved in the community. 

It is evident in this study that the integration concept developed socially and culturally, in agreement with the transformations of values, conceptions and representations that the deficiency acquired in different historical moments.  

However, the institutional culture of homogeneous, standardized school, merely reproductive, without space to live with the diversity, in terms of concepts, ideas or pedagogical practice for transformation, offers resistance and it is still strong in our environment. It was what we could verify through the parents and students´ representations in relation to the school.  

In this research, it was verified that: students cannot be alphabetized or move forward in the school level because of the lack of specific optical resources for low vision, even in great centers; there is an adaptation absence and complementation in the curriculum for the blind students' inclusion in school, even in the great universities of the country; a great part of the blind students doesn't arrive in the second degree for lack of the didactic book in braille, facts that contribute for the high illiteracy rates and school evasion.  

That responsibility of investments for acquisition of specific resources cannot be neglected nor moved from the public power; it´s necessary, for that, a consistent and continuous political action.   

However, investments only is not enough, there is a need  reviewing the dimensions of the pedagogical practice of the special and common teaching, that pass by elements such as: integrated training and orientation of teachers of the common and special teaching, exchanges of information and permanent experiences among teachers, parents and students, reconstruction and organization of the school atmosphere or environment?. Those are the needs stated in the students' speeches and teachers. 

The analysis of the social representations and their implications in the family and school daily life indicates two clear tendencies in relation to the concepts and the pedagogical practice of integration and inclusion. The first tendency, tending to integration, is demonstrated by the concept of physical and social integration, leaving a lot to be desired in relation to the instructional integration, mainly in the secondary and university level. 

 This is evidenced by the fact that, the school and the teachers of the regular teaching, still do not assume, the mediation responsibility between the school contents and the students' with visual deficiency specific needs. The responsibility is always imposed on the student, that should adapt himself to the normal conditions of the classroom or look for, in the special education or specialized institution, the parallel assistance, trying to provide the contents and the specific resources. 

It becomes not contestable, in a certain way, by the found data, that in the elementary teaching a tendency of full integration already emerges, similar to what happens in another countries, where the specialized teachers work in partnership with the regular teaching, without dichotomy or valuing some of these segments more. 

In that perspective, the expectations in relation to the school demonstrated by the parents, students and, even, by some interviewed teachers are that the specialized assistance develops from the character of compensatory education, from the centered reeducation in the deficit and private assistance for the concept of collective work, of production in group for exchanges of experiences and construction of the knowledge. 

That partnership, students with students, teacher-students, teachers of the special and regular teaching, parents with parents and teachers, is wanted by everyone and starts to have a wider function of cooperation and shared knowledge that can provide progress.      

However, in the background, an issue is evidenced sharply: the divergent speech and the empty polemic between integration and inclusion deviate and disguise the neo-liberal proposal deeper political-ideological and economic issues of the school for everybody, and also of the corporativism of the specialized institutions, that end up legitimating the exclusion. 

The students parents and teachers' speeches, raise other reflections and can delineate and point us some ways.  The interviewed students with visual deficiency, in its majority, don't want to be seen only by their sensorial limitations, but, first, as people, endowed individuals with feelings, desires, private needs, potentialities and varied abilities, with dreams and expectations as the others. 

From the parents' speeches emerge the need of the recognition of the differences and specific needs, inherent to the visual deficiency, that appear in the different moments of the development and learning process.  This recognition requests, in their opinion, looking in another perspective, more positive and including, in which the differences are natural of the human diversity, allowing to understand the education as a process of the human being promotion, of the development, of the potentialities and of the learning, and not as stigmatization form and those students' segregation. Those desires and expectations point to the full integration. 

The teachers' representations indicate that the students with visual deficiency, even the blind ones,  can be alphabetized and they want to learn the same contents in the exchanging  and partnership process with the other students, differentiating the education only in relation to the teaching procedures, methodological strategies and resources that allow  the student to elaborate his concepts and build knowledge in a significant way, through a singular, different way, that is his own. 

To provide those desires, needs and expectations, it is important to guarantee, in the elaboration of the pedagogical project, the integral development of the student through the complementation and adaptation in the curriculum, such as: orientation program and mobility, daily life activities, integration in activities of physical education, sport, leisure, what, in contradiction, was not confirmed in most of the speeches. 

It is delineated, then, the main challenge of the inclusive education:  to eliminate the inequalities of opportunities and promote the development of all the possibilities of the student. This task demands a new layout and recalculation of dimensions of the school that should propose, in its pedagogical project, methodological alternatives adapted for those students,  to be used by all the teachers, and to make use of interfaces with the health and social assistance departments for the acquisition of the specific resources of low vision and others. 

Contemplating the differences, the specific needs and to offer justness of opportunities depends, in fact, on a new political vision: on integrated and effective public actions in all the levels - federal, state and municipal -, as well as on actions that include the government's different departments as education, health and social action. 

In this research, this initiative was characterized, as a movement and an effort of parents and teachers that, in cooperation, looked for to supply those needs. It is, evident, the demand of a new dynamic, of the political commitment, of the organization and school structuring, being the government speech of the inclusion, without them, a rhetoric or an ideological superficiality. 

We believe that transferring the problem to school, without a clear definition of politics and actions to be executed, it is denying and hiding the responsibility of the public power, or also a way of maintaining the standard dominance and hegemony and occultation of the reality that reinforce the existent social exclusion in the school system. 

In that way, the democratic school should allow thoughts and plural concepts, providing diversified opportunities that contemplate the needs, desires and resolution of the people's problems, with visual deficiency, because, they present different demands. Those demands, yes, they are relevant, independently of the chosen way.  

It becomes indispensable a pedagogical and social practice more cooperative and shared in school, with the student's participation,  the family´s and the community´s in the strategies for elaboration of the educational plan. Space and more mutual new times are wanted, in which all the interested ones, including the person with visual deficiency and his/her family, can discuss, think, choose and build, in a collective form, the education and the better future. These are behaviors and more ethical attitudes, plural and human that all of us wish.