School management: the pedagogical practice in the administrative policy of inclusive education

Abstract

The paper presents the results of a doctoral dissertation that covered the analysis of knowledge involving the everyday teaching and administrative practices of school managers who worked with the proposed construction of a citywide system of inclusive e ducation, while an educational policy. The aim was to follow the school management towards the proposed inclusive educationin three elementary schools in a medium-sized city in the state of São Paulo. The data were collected at the earlier school, a middle-aged one and another recently opened. The stages of the study were: 1) review of literature on: a) qualitative ethnographic research applied to education, b) principles of autonomy, planning, decentralization, c) the education of the school manager and d) relationship between school management and inclusive school; 2) data collection in schools, 3) description and categorization of data and 4) analysis and interpretation of results. To develop the methodology were used observations of the participants, semi-structured interviews, analysis of official documents of the school (internal and external). It was concluded that there is a lack of political-pedagogical project collectively built, a difficulty in developing coordinated actions aimed at the realitiy, problems in interpersonal relationships; a gap gulf between the proposed policy, the discourse about it and the daily practice. The school management is responsible for the construction of an inclusive school, but in the reality studied it was directed at administrative issues at the expense of the pedagogic ones.