The rights of children and adolescents
The 1988 Federal Constitution guarantees the rights of children and adolescents, according to Art. 227 “the right to life, health, food, education, leisure, professionalization, culture, dignity, respect, freedom and family and community life, as well as protecting them from all forms of neglect, discrimination, exploitation, violence, cruelty and oppression”. In addition, it directs the creation of public policies for maximum protection and differentiated care to support rights relating to childhood and youth, since these phases are extremely important for the development of the individual (BRASIL, 1988).
Another important document with regard to children’s rights is the Statute of the Child and Adolescent – ECA (1990), which sets out specific rules for protecting the rights of children and adolescents, covering and detailing the provisions of Art. 227 of the federal constitution and directing socio-educational care for conflicts with the law. Among the general rights already mentioned to all without distinction, the ECA guarantees disabled children, as a duty of the state, specialized educational care preferably in the regular school system, according to Art. 54. In order for this service to take place satisfactorily, it is necessary to establish public policies that direct this service according to the curriculum and individualized needs (BRASIL, 1990).
The 1996 National Education Guidelines and Bases Law (LDB) (BRASIL, 1996) is another landmark achievement for inclusive and equitable education when it comes to basic education since, according to Article 3, it establishes several principles for access and permanence in school for all, without any distinction. Article 4, item III, guarantees “free specialized educational care for students with disabilities, global development disorders and high abilities or giftedness, across all levels, stages and modalities, preferably in the regular education network”.
And in Art. 59, it presents specificities to be met in order to guarantee the right of this public: Education systems will ensure that students with disabilities,
global development disorders and high abilities or giftedness: I – specific curricula, methods, techniques, educational resources and organization, to meet their needs; II – specific terminality for those who cannot reach the level required for the completion of elementary school, due to their disabilities, and acceleration to complete the school program in less time for the gifted; III – teachers with adequate specialization at the secondary or higher level, for specialized care, as well as regular education teachers trained for the integration of these students in common classes; IV – special education for work, with a view to their effective integration into life in society, including suitable conditions for those who do not show the capacity to enter competitive work, through coordination with related official bodies, as well as for those who show superior ability in artistic, intellectual or psychomotor areas (BRASIL, 1996, p. 42). 42).
The legal provision and school
This legal provision creates the need for the school and the professionals involved to understand disability and its needs, including curriculum adaptation and its objectives, in order to develop practices that ensure quality and specialized care aimed at inclusion, autonomy, motor and intellectual development. In this context, it is necessary for the professionals involved in the inclusion process to be aware that they need to make a methodological proposal that fits the needs of the class and the individuality of the students, whether they are disabled or not, as well as adapted care for the disabled student. To do this, they need to make use of diversified methodologies that enhance learning and meet the needs of students through curricular adaptations that can be large-scale, which are in the political and structural sphere, or small-scale, which take place in the classroom and are within the teacher’s reach.
Minor Curricular Adaptations (Non-Significant Adaptations) are changes made to the curriculum by the teacher in order to allow and promote the productive participation of students with special needs in the teaching and learning process at the mainstream school, together with their peers. They are called Small (Non-Significant) because their implementation lies within the exclusive responsibility and action of the teacher, and does not require authorization, nor does it depend on action by any other higher authority, in the political, administrative and/or technical areas. (BRASIL, MEC, 2000, p. 8).
It is worth noting that adapting the curriculum does not mean reducing content or failing to offer challenges to the student, but it is about offering diversified possibilities for needs so that everyone has access to the curriculum and can develop according to their needs and learning, making the environment plural and inclusive, in which peers can help each other and mutually develop skills, making learning meaningful (LIMA and MARTINS, 2022). These adaptations can be made to the school curriculum, the learning objectives, the content, the method applied, the assessment process and tend to be altered based on the student’s growth.
Role of the school and teacher in care
In view of the legislation already presented and the characteristics of neurodivergent children, the school plays a key role in the child’s development, since the school environment brings learning that goes beyond the content and objectives of the law. It enables social interaction between peers, the rules of the environment, the development of skills by observing others, reinforcing autonomy and independence. With cognitive pedagogical development in mind, the school must take into account the prior knowledge already acquired and develop a practice geared towards new learning. (AMARAL and NISTA-PICCOLO, 2023)
Pedagogical practice for the care of neurodivergent children must take into account the need to adapt the curriculum, activities with concrete and visual materials, division of content with repetition, use of simple and direct commands with concrete examples, due to the intellectual slowness that may be present. In this sense, the school needs to be prepared to work cohesively with the family and the day-to-day practice of the teacher in the classroom. (NEUROSABER, 2023)
First of all, the school needs to be aware of its role in making quality, meaningful education accessible to children without distinction. In addition, the school must provide a welcoming, inclusive environment and actively listen to students’ needs. When we highlight this type of environment, we consider it to be the work of many hands and knowledge, especially when it comes to the inclusion of children with special educational needs. It requires specialized support for the teacher so that together they can draw up a care project, the support of parents, external support professionals with therapies.
As far as teaching is concerned, it is necessary to carry out an anamnesis to get to know the student, check their needs, their previous learning in order to define at what level adaptations will be necessary, whether in the curriculum, in the learning objectives, in the content, in the method applied, in the assessment process or in the whole process. In addition, affectivity is an important resource for the teaching process as it creates a bond of trust between the student and the teacher.
Gonçalves and Silva (2023) brought up the Wallonian perspective related to the influence of affectivity on the teaching-learning process, with regard to dealing with the student, the social relationship established, the proposals made, ways of correcting and evaluating. These aspects are of great importance in terms of the need to know the audience, the availability of attention to demands, the degree of voice to address the children, among other aspects that generate greater possibilities for work and, consequently, greater results in the teaching and learning process.
Educating for diversity: welcoming neurodivergent people
Often, when a neurodivergent child does something that is considered to be a problem, this action has much greater repercussions than it should. Unlike when the same act is carried out by typical children, small conflicts or indiscipline are taken disproportionately seriously, parents are summoned and a climate of terror is established.
The biggest problem when the school takes this stance is that the children perceive it. The neurotypical children immediately legitimize this behaviour and adopt a persecutory and vigilant stance towards the neurodivergent children who, in turn, perceive that they are treated differently and therefore feel wronged, which leads to inappropriate behaviour or even social isolation in response to what they believe to be inappropriate treatment. In both cases, there is obvious damage to the group as a whole.
Neurodivergent children and adolescents are more likely to be bullied, especially when they perceive that the school does not give them a voice, space or credibility. Likewise, this neurodivergent group tends to bully as a way of defending themselves in a space that seems hostile to them. These behaviors could be avoided if the adults (managers, teachers and other staff) at the school acted appropriately when solving the problems that arise. Here again, we stress the need for continuing training for education professionals.
However, this doesn’t mean that the teacher should be blamed for the entire educational process. We know how complex this pedagogical process is in a context of so much diversity. Let’s remember Vygotski who presented the following as presuppositions for learning: identifying the knowledge to be learned (what to learn); choosing strategies to process this knowledge (how to learn) and getting involved in the learning process (what you want to learn). We need to start this training with ourselves, parents and teachers, so that we can understand how to learn, including for peaceful social coexistence and solidarity.
In this sense, we recognize the importance of considering the cognizing subject as a subject of meanings, affectivities and subjectivities. And it is through interaction with others (whether teachers or classmates) and with the environment around us that we develop the skills of learning to learn, learning to be, learning to do and learning to live together. In other words, learning at school doesn’t just involve academic training, but also the socio-emotional training of each of us, parents, teachers and students. For this reason, many educators today are proposing the adoption of Universal Learning Design.
This design is based on the understanding that we are all neurodiverse and learn in different ways. It is not just for neurodivergent children and adolescents, but for everyone at school, since we are all unique, including in the way we learn. This proposal works from three premises for the teacher’s performance: the use of different teaching materials (including digital ones); the diversity of teaching strategies and contextualization, which makes it possible to establish interrelationships between the content and the student’s real life.
The integral formation of the person at school presupposes that we are open to seeing the differences that each person brings with them. Differences are peculiarities, specificities and should not be seen as an a priori problem. In this way, we need to understand that education for inclusion must promote joint work between family and school with the effective participation of those who know the children best and who can make very positive contributions to the whole process, both by indicating the best way to deal with the child and by reverberating the work done at school at home.