The main goal of this proposal is to highlight innovative practices in what concerns intercultural education in schools’ clusters from Porto Metropolitan Area (PMA), in Portugal. For the past decade, Portugal’s school network is organized under “clusters”. Each cluster contains schools that may offer all education levels: from pre-school to secondary education; schools inside a cluster have similar pedagogical pathways, are involved in the same projects and have the same administration bodies. Each cluster is developing its main activity under an “Educational Project”, a reference document in which are included contextualized educational priorities and working as a guide to inform all educational practices during four years.
“Inclusion and Exclusion, Resources for Educational Research?” Ecer 2018 Conference Theme, is an important subject to discuss giving the increase of mobilities and migration in European contemporary society. The educational field, one of the most challenged by these questions, asks for the strategic discussion of policies and practices that promote the integration of fragile communities characterized by multiple differences and diversities that can origin inequalities (Silva, 2016). At the same time we intend to contribute to the discussion in the network 20. Research in Innovative Intercultural Learning Environments, inside the research fields of “1. Intercultural Education and Issues of Inclusion” and “3. Cross Cultural Research and Intercultural learning”, by discussing the way that schools’ and its professionals promote “intercultural discourses and the role of inclusive intercultural education in promoting both the local identities of groups” (Network goals).
The organization of western schools is targeted to a mass culture and the discussion about multiculturalism arises however this discussion enters in the educational system by talking about the school performance of children with minority background (Dietz, 2003). Although school constitutes a multicultural context comprising a heterogeneous community in which recognizes a positive potential that can emerge by the interaction with different others (Ribeiro, 2014) it is, at the same time, recognized as a space where young people experience exclusion (Ribeiro, 2014) and a sense of strangeness (Silva, 2013). The interculturality is a less expressed reality that requires availability and inter-knowledge. There are ways of symbolic violence (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970) that are practiced through the curriculum or through the ways of school practices, with implicit rules that can’t be accessed and understandable for all the school population, namely to those in disadvantaged situations. However, all political guidelines concerning education in Portugal points out to the recognition and valorization of diversity as an opportunity and as an important source of learning (Education General Direction, 2016).
Do the schools have these concerns and follow these guidelines? Can we see concerns and attention to the question of intercultural and minority communities? What are schools doing to improve the integration of these communities? This is what we aim to discuss in this poster and explore the meaning of innovative practices. Professional practices besides the ones that are considered “traditional” have received attention, especially those that help transform the school into a professional learning community (Vieluf et al, 2012). The use of word Innovation in discussions about schools, curriculum, teaching practices and political discussions has become widespread (Williamson & Payton, 2009). We use the term innovative practices, so we can define and understand practices that are not only inclusive but that can promote the real integration of communities with minority background in schools.
Furthermore, the discussion is also framed by the geographic context where the study will take place: PMA, situated in north of Portugal, is constituted by 17 towns and 104 schools’ clusters, where only 15% of the population have higher studies and 1.3% have a foreign citizenship (Censos, 2011).