Educational inclusion at the higher level. Looks and polyphonic perspectives[1].
Natalia Antuña[2]
Universidad Nacional de San Juan, Argentina
E-mail: nataliaantuna3@gmail.com
Teresita Cerdera[3]
Universidad Nacional de San Juan, Argentina
E-mail: terecerdera@gmail.com
Rocío Sánchez[4]
Universidad Nacional de San Juan, Argentina
E-mail: sanchezrocio07@gmail.com
Translation review: Vanina Daniela Mercado. vaninamercado09@gmail.com
Antuña, N., Cerdera, T. & Sánchez, R. (2020). Reseña de libro: la inclusión educativa en el nivel superior. Miradas y perspectivas polifónicas. Revista Electrónica en Educación y Pedagogía, 4(7), 128-135. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15658/rev.electron.educ.pedagog20.11040710
This book covers and analyzes the feelings, thoughts and research of nine professional women, who are higher education teachers in the province of San Juan. It highlights a polyphonic analysis in an interdiscursive sense, which the authors relate through the reconstruction of an ample journey of research that addresses the access to knowledge, socio-educational trajectories and the stay in higher education of students from popular sectors.
This production is the result of the following research projects: Public higher education in San Juan: university and higher institutes. Characterization of the training circuits and socio-educational trajectories of the students of higher state level: a trigenerational analysis.
It is important to highlight the concept of educational inclusion to which they refer, it goes far from highlighting the anachronism that exclusion implies, recovering the multiplicity of forms that this term encompasses, leading us to the idea that educational inclusion goes far beyond the policies that tend to eradicate exclusion in vast social spheres, and rather it refers to practices aimed at enhancing diversity.
Based on the recognition of social heterogeneity and diversity as a fundamental component to be revalued, educational inclusion is understood as the democratization and universalization of education. However, in higher education systems there are dynamics of “inclusive exclusion” (Gentili, 2009) and “exclusive inclusion” (Ezcurra, 2011). Faced with this reality, the line of research shows that although the university system has increased its enrollments, there are other social groups that cannot be made invisible in a higher education that boasts itself of being inclusive.
In this sense, the book presents the wide journey of the concept mentioned here, and it invites us to think about its real use. That is, educational inclusion made flesh in concrete practices in the province of San Juan that promote from an emancipatory perspective, the realization of educational rights of people who have historically been excluded on the social, political, cultural and educational levels. We are talking about popular sectors, people with disabilities, interculturality and sexual diversity.
We find four chapters that put into perspective historical and legal issues such as: Higher education, Chapter I: "Higher education in San Juan and its student population". Disability, Chapter II: "Inclusion of people with disabilities: Trajectories and stories". Interculturality, Chapter III: "Interculturality: Views from the educational system". Sexuality and gender relations, Chapter IV: “Educational inclusion, sexualities and gender relations”.
“Unchanneled” Trajectories:
Throughout the chapters the book invites us to think about the present diversities in higher education, in San Juan specifically. In these institutions, there is evidence of a diverse socio-educational trajectories, which question the alleged homogeneity that gave rise to the argentinian educational system. The journey goes hand in hand with the categories of the “theoretical school trajectories” and “real school trajectories” (Terigi, 2010), thinking that it is the unchanged, real trajectories that pose new challenges, and it is precisely these trajectories that retrieve the book.
According to Terigi (2010), the theoretical trajectories are the continuous and complete ones on which the educational system is organized at its different levels and the pedagogical work: entering on time, staying, advancing year by year, learning and promoting in the expected times; but what actually happens after analyzing the trajectories of the subjects, are a series of vicissitudes that separate them from that theoretical design envisaged by the educational system. Coincidentally with what the author raises, it is observed that some trajectories follow the model of the theoretical ones, but others, go beyond that. They are the unchanneled trajectories.
In these real trajectories, we can see how the dynamics of exclusion-inclusive and inclusion-exclusive mentioned above operate, concepts that problematize in the same node, that is, there is the possibility of unrestricted entry into education, but at the same time there are structural and cultural limitations that prevent the maintenance of effective training trajectories in the training system, concluding in exclusion practices that in most cases are attributed to individual factors of the subjects.
The book narrates that these processes were evidenced both in the National University of San Juan (UNSJ), and in the higher teacher training institutes of the province of San Juan. It invites us to know how through a territorialization work, students who interrupted their studies, due to various objective and subjective, material and symbolic reasons, were located, and an institutional policy of reintegration in the career of Education Sciences of the Faculty of Philosophy, Humanities and Arts, was launched, particularly in the UNSJ in order to recover those real trajectories that the system excluded, either due to personal or institutional conditions. Recovering some histories and trajectories, allowed many students to return to the university. Thus, not only were the non-channeled trajectories identified, but they were also thought about prosecuting them to respond to the problem of desertion.
Socio-educational trajectories of students belonging to higher education institutes in the province of San Juan were also analyzed, in which student populations with mostly discontinuous journeys are evidenced, which depart from the channels foreseen by the theoretical trajectories projected by the system. These populations, investigated through surveys and interviews carried out systematically, are characterized mainly by having carried out previous tours in other higher-level institutions, moving in hierarchical spaces because they are the first generation to access higher education within their families, and being a population that is largely adult, enrolled in public schools, with primarily female enrollment. Trajectories that leave, return and transit a binary system in a different way to resist the effects of social relegation and so stay in the educational system.
Disability:
The authors invite us to think about the real and diverse trajectories, without forgetting a group that has historically been excluded from higher education, people with disabilities, who experience vicissitudes, obstacles and barriers in their trajectories. Such barriers -which for many years were assigned to the subject from the medical model of disability- today are thought from a social model which understands that the barriers are those of the society that limits, compels and labels. Whereas the “normal” subject, subject of rights, has access to health, accessibility, work, and of course, education.
An inclusive education model must position us in the social model of disability. Disability is not the result of a physical pathology, but of social organization; it is a product generated by systematic patterns of exclusion woven into the social fabric (Vallejos, 2010). It is one more quality of the person.
The book invites us to explore the legal direction that has been giving a framework to guarantee the right to higher education of people with disabilities, to think of the State as a guarantor of this right, and the primary agent in charge of enabling access to the higher education field of to this group that has been suffering from social vulnerability and exclusion. In recent years, as a result of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2008) and its adoption by the party States, a path has been developed where policies and guidelines are creating a framework to an inclusive and quality education for all, a path that must continue to be built, but which has enabled some higher education institutions, such as the National University of San Juan, to have had experiences of inclusion and made progress in this regard.
In 2011, the Disability Commission was created in this university, with the aim of developing actions that promote academic accessibility and the educational and labor inclusion of young people and adults with disabilities, and also to monitor their trajectories. Such commission is the result of a number of antecedents that had been addressing the issue through research, extension projects, theses, workshops, courses, and conferences, in the different faculties to work on education and disability.
What is challenging about the book are the voices that resonate in it, the multiple stories of UNSJ students with disabilities, which the authors take up and reflect in the text. The force of these stories narrates the trajectories of the students who themselves, manifest the physical and attitudinal barriers, the discursive and nominal violence, which labels them, for example, as the guy in the wheelchair, the blind, tags that they encounter in college life, which denotes the aftertaste of the medical and hegemonic model. This is how they also name the school facilities for technological and curricular support that have been generated to facilitate academic accessibility, however, this type of support is the result of a struggle carried out by the same students who expose these barriers to which they attempt to respond in isolation.
The scarcity of institutional policies to address the issue of disability is pointed out and shows the lack of congruence between discourses and practices. In other words, in the discursive, legal and institutional processes of inclusion and disability, progress has been made and the paradigm has changed; however, actual practices have not yet caught up with this discourse. Since, as the students put it, there are still barriers that hinder full access to higher education.
The authors pose new challenges, the path of inclusion is long but it is opening, however, we have a long way to go as a society. Therefore, assuming this perspective of disability to think about a truly inclusive education, opens the doors and invites us to continue problematizing, working and struggling to advance on the path towards inclusion.
Interculturality:
Regarding chapter III "Interculturality: Looks from the educational system", the authors assume a political and pedagogical position by emphasizing the epistemological and Latin American view that the term INTERCULTURALITY encompasses.
They also understand that it implies a pedagogical category when locating ourselves on the routes or school journeys of people belonging to indigenous populations in San Juan. The analysis that they carry out on the subject, covers the regulations on the rights and access to education in the jurisdiction and in the nation.
Since the historical struggles done in order to establish the rights that have been expropriated for years, indigenous peoples have started different participations in international parliaments since the 1960s so that their voice is heard. It is not until later in the 1990s and in 2000s when the Latin American countries recognize these rights in their constitutions as a result of the treaty on the rights of indigenous peoples belonging to the United Nations (UN).
Different critical readings derived from the anthropology field appear in this new context to understand the position and situation of the Latin American peoples.
In Argentina, during the reform of the constitution in 1994, ethnic and cultural pre-existence was recognized along with a series of public rights and guarantees. Regarding the Federal Law on Education 24,195, it warns of respect for the preservation of their culture and teaching in educational institutions from their own language. From the National Education Law 26,206, sanctioned in 2006, a particular method of the educational system is foreseen, “intercultural bilingual education” which contemplates the preservation of culture, language, customs and dignified access to the knowledge taught in all levels of the educational system, considering the teacher training and relevant curricular guidelines contained in the quoted Law.
In the province of San Juan this aspect is mentioned in its provincial constitution, which includes the right to preserve cultural and historical guidelines of native peoples. In turn, the Provincial Education Law 1327-H recognizes the discussed rights previously established.
Native peoples belonging to the Faculty of Philosophy, Humanities and Arts, the Indigenous Affairs Program (PUAI) are in charge of managing the means so that three higher education students in the province know the different careers of the institution. The story highlights the processes of identity construction, stigma, discrimination, access and conditions of inequality that they go through throughout their career.
Finally, they analyze the curricular guidelines and the Priority Learning Nuclei (NAP), as political and pedagogical positions at the national level, particularly in the Federal Council of Education (CFE). They are Resolution 119-10 of the CFE that contemplates the Intercultural Bilingual Education Modality and Resolution 181-12 related to the NAP. Both resolutions are part of a broad set of legislation that covers from 2003 to 2007.
Regarding Resolution 119-10, the authors mention their relationship with the Autonomous Educational Council of Indigenous Peoples and therefore, the responsibility of the State to enforce not only political, but also educational agreements.
Thus, it opens the way to a new concept such as Interculturality and this is proposed in the following terms: Interculturality and bilingualism are understood from the complexity presented by the current changing world in relation to the linguistic and cultural heterogeneity of our populations. In this way, the epistemological, and therefore political confusions that the Argentinian State has on the subject, are put aside.
In turn, Resolution 181-12 mentions the priority learning nuclei for each modality. From a critical perspective, they recover dialogue, cultural and historical preservation, recognize the processes of historical oppression that our indigenous populations have experienced, both at the governmental and educational levels.
It is noteworthy
of this section, the meticulous analysis of the selected elements
and the possibility of giving voice to the students belonging to the indigenous
peoples of San Juan. Hence proving, how the education system has tended to bury
our anthropological roots.
Educational inclusion, sexualities and gender relations
Chapter IV of the book "Educational Inclusion" is dedicated to thinking and reflecting on the implications of gender in the production and construction of subjectivities, and how these cross the different levels and modalities of the educational system of the province of San Juan, in particular. Following the polyphonic sense that the narrative of these investigations acquires, the chapter to which we refer here records the sound of sexual diversity in the classrooms.
The implication of the sex-gender system within educational institutions is then described, taking into account the production and reproduction of an unequal culture that configures sexed bodies. At the same time, it reflects on the symbolic and explicit institutional practices that establish certain roles, bodies and spaces as natural or normal, that is, the articulations between institutional practices and their socio-political space of containment.
In this regard, it is argued that “the practices and strategies that have formed part of the founding origin of the Argentinian Educational System have been taken as instruments for the transmission of a regulatory and normative discourse that responds to the hegemonic patterns of how it should feel, think and act as man and woman from a binary logic.
From the theoretical currents that make up feminism, gender theories and critical pedagogy, and with an eye on educational inclusion, the different school trajectories and the forms they acquire in a context that produce sexual identities are presented and analyzed from objective and subjective aspects.
Three research papers make up this chapter. The first one called “Sexuality and Gender in Educational Institutions, taboo or right?” it covers both the conceptual aspects related to sexuality such as gender and identities that have their beginnings in studies within the field of biology, medicine and psychology, but which with the progress of social research have been gaining relevance in relation to the social configuration of bodies, roles, and subjectivities, without neglecting the implication of educational practices in such matters.
The idea of being a man and a woman is present in all the work. From there, it is proposed to think about how this being has become an ideal of culture in terms of normality, but it also reflects on what does not fall within the parameters of that normality, and then goes through the investigations of psychology, and the regulations in force that support these conceptions until very recently.
Continuously, Argentina's own legislation is revealed, which generated a paradigm shift in relation to the understanding of being a man and a woman. We refer to the Equal Marriage Law enacted in 2010 (Law No. 26,618, 2010), and the Gender Identity Law enacted in 2012 (Law No. 26,743, 2012). Both, although they have been established as models in Latin America, in concrete practice they encounter various restrictions.
To analyze the implications this has on the educational system, the voices of students and alumni of the middle schools of San Juan are recovered, as well as members of LGTBIQ+ organizations. Among the diversity of speeches presented, there are coincidences in relation to the importance of implementing Law 26,150 on Comprehensive Sexual Education (Law No. 26,150, 2006) to broaden the ideas of being a man and a woman, and so that educational institutions become true spaces of democratization and egalitarian training.
Comprehensive Sexual Education proposes to transform the reality of the student towards equal rights among all, critically analyzing the messages of the media and beauty models that transmit and look at boys as subjects of rights, a fundamental issue to prevent child abuse, sexual abuse and resist the pressures of the environment (Law No. 26,150, 2006)
Finally, a series of conclusions are presented that seek to show the importance of the implementation of the laws in force in our country, while recognizing and enforcing real public educational policies, the right to education for historically marginalized social sectors, as is the case of the LGBTIQ + population.
The second research work that is presented in this chapter is called “Choice, Access and Permanence in the University, a question of gender? Through a comparative study between two academic units of the National University of San Juan, this research accounts for the relationship that exists between the sex-gender system and the choice of university careers, that is, how educational trajectories are marked by the gender.
To address this relationship, the postulates of feminism are used, especially the most current lines, which not only denounce gender inequality, but also manifest and conceptualize the visibility and valuation of the singular historical experience of women as social and political group, maintaining that the emancipation of women cannot consist in assimilating themselves to the male model, but must genealogically reconstruct their knowledge and the forms of power of the everyday world.
Based on this, it is possible to reflect on the need to overcome the standing of the university as an inclusive institution, and move towards the real guarantee of the entry, permanence and graduation of its students. "Saying that the university formally promotes equal access to different genders is not enough to face the educational disadvantages imposed by the restriction of choices according to gender that is predominant among careers, training proposals and academic units."
The conclusions of this research revolve around the understanding that there is “a heteropatriarchal system that imposes gender stereotypes and legitimate fields of action only for men and women, which not only fixes binary roles, but also keeps the LGBT community that lives in university spaces hidden” (xxx).
Finally, we find the third research work called "Sexual Division of Work and School Trajectories in Rural Areas". The author of this research analyzes the meanings that the sexual division of labour of young people acquires within the family logic, and the way in which these meanings generate a differential configuration of students' school careers in rural areas.
To do this, he first gives an account of the work possibilities of the San Juan area where he focuses his research, and then analyzes the implications of the sexual division.
Keeping in mind the different interviews, the author concludes that the work is the result of long processes of structuring and raising awareness of family values that place it in a privileged place. The favorable attitude towards work corresponds to the need to join the social structure, to feel part of it and, at the same time to avoid being outside of it. However, this consideration crossed by the sex - gender system implies a double burden for bodies read as female, and their little or no remuneration for the work done.
References:
Ezcurra, A. M. (2011). Igualdad en educación superior. Un desafío mundial. Colección Educación - Serie Universidad. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Universidad de General Sarmiento.
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Ley de Educación Nacional 26.206. Sancionada en el año 2006. Recuperado de http:// portal.educacion.gov.ar/consejo/files/2009/12/ley de educ nac 1.pdf
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Terigi, F. (2010). Las Cronologías de Aprendizaje: un concepto para pensar las trayectorias escolares. Conferencia dictada en la ciudad de Santa Rosa, provincia de La Pampa, Argentina
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[1] Peralta, S., Benítez, B., Miguel, M., Zuliani. P., Carelli, S., Millani, A., Lucero, S. y Díaz, M. (2020). La inclusión educativa en el nivel superior. Miradas y perspectivas polifónicas. Editorial UNSJ, 420 páginas, ISBN 978-987-46834-0-3.
[2] Professor of Education Sciences, National University of San Juan. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003- 0033-1558. E-mail: nataliaantuna3@gmail.com. San Juan, Argentina.
[3] Professor of Education Sciences, National University of San Juan. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002- 2268-8964. E-mail: terecerdera@gmail.com. San Juan, Argentina.
[4] Professor of Education Sciences, National University of San Juan. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003- 3641-5710. E-mail: sanchezrocio07@gmail.com. San Juan, Argentina.