Special Education, Inclusive Education and Pedagogy of Diversity: celebrating diversity! Exalting tolerance! Distinguishing respect! Preaching solidarity!

Abstract

In the articulation between Special Education and Inclusive Education, this paper aims to problematize the way in which the Pedagogy of Diversity has impregnated teacher continuing education and curriculum practices taken as inclusive in the contemporary school. By considering the Foucauldian Educational Studies and Cultural Studies, the analytical materials consisted of reports from “Special Educational Assistance in Brazil: Reports of Teacher Professional Experience and Education”, deriving from the refresher/extension course in Specialized Educational Assistance offered by a southern public university in the National Network of  Continuing Education for Special Education Teachers. In that analytical materiality, the right to education is regarded as a right to diversity education, and this right potentializes the operations of the Specialized Educational Assistance in the so-called inclusive school. In this context, the National Special Education Policy from the Inclusive Education Perspective triggers the preparation for both receiving and handling diversity in order to intensify teacher continuing education rather than their initial education and produce information, opinion, generalization, promptness and pragmatism of the current Special Education service in those refresher/extension courses. Celebrating diversity! Exalting tolerance! Distinguishing respect! Preaching solidarity! By means of the tolerance, respect and solidarity triad, continuing education and curriculum practices of the so-called inclusive school have produced plural, inclusive modes of sociability under the domain of the neoliberal governmentality.