Meirieu’s contributions to continuing teacher-training and the adoption of inclusive pedagogical practices

Abstract

This article presents a critical-collaborative action research, developed in a Brazilian municipal school of basic education at Vitória, Espírito Santo. The investigation derives from a project named “National Observatory of Special Education: a national network study of the performance of multifunctional resources rooms”, aiming to promote the continuing education of teachers with emphasis on the inclusion of those students target-audience of special education in schools through inclusive pedagogical practices. It is based on Meirieu’s conceptions (2002, 2005), which advocates for an education for all and the investment in teacher formation. Theorical-methodological procedures adopted where the observation of the pedagogical work in the daily school life, training situations, collaboration in classroom activities, and semi-structured interviews. Data raised between March and October of 2015 led to the conclusion that moments of continuing education are temporal-spaces suitable to problematize pedagogical-practices and the use of medical reports as stigmatizers of learners as unfit for learning, ultimately leading to the withholding of their rights to education. The formation challenged teachers to research, study, and de-construct ingrained beliefs about the students and to search for new ways to teach all.