Inclusive Schools: the power in our hands

Comunicação apresentada no Congresso Internacional Special Education - ISEC "Including the excluded",na Universidade de Manchester, em Julho de 2000.Representing the great challenge of the educational systems, the inclusive school must be our aim for the next millennium. Is this a consensual goal? If so, how do we conceptualise an inclusive school and how can we work for it with the resources we have and manage to develop? The present work is a result of an action-research study that started by the enquiry (from June/99 to September/99) to the people responsible for management of all the schools ( more precisely 526, from the preschool level to the third cycle - end of compulsory education in Portugal) of the region of Alentejo, (Baixo Alentejo e Alentejo Litoral) and the intervention (planned for February/2000) with a group of teachers based upon the creative resolution of their school problems, towards the building of a school for all, where children, teachers, parents and other agents of the community find a place to grow personally and professionally