Visões
The Project
Accessibility, permanence and continuity of schooling at undergraduate and graduate levels for people with disabilities: Inclusive Environments.
The present trend for an inclusive configuration of social and school environments as well as the need for adjustments of the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) to the present Brazilian legislation to attend disabled students fostered in 2002 the creation of a room for assessing information and a laboratory for didactic support (Accessibility Laboratory) inside the Central Library at that Superior Teaching Institution (IES). The activities developed at that place are focused on the stimulation of the users’ autonomy and academic independence, on the production of adapted material and also on the development and utilization of software meant for physical and sensorial impaired people.
The chance offered by the Supporting Program for Special Education (PROESP/2003/CAPES) joined several current proposals that were dissociated to form a partnership with the LAB (Accessibility Laboratory) and with others in the future which will involve research teams at Unicamp, post graduation projects and training courses, developed in this multifaced and collaborative initiative. The project is interdisciplinarybased and its extensiveness and complexity demand the integration of different areas of knowledge such as Education, Computer Science, Specialized Educational care for the planning and implementation of actions whose wider objective is to ensure the disabled students the right to accomplish their postsecondary studies in inclusive teaching and learning environments.
It is important and necessary to evaluate the specialized educational care at IES (Superior Teaching Institution) aiming at the development of knowledge to overcome social and school barriers for the inclusion in postsecondary courses. There is also a need to amplify, to update, to improve and to extend internal and external services and resources at LAB so that it becomes an academic environment that divulges inclusive actions. Furthermore this project is meant to create and to divulge the use of new supporting tools for learning and teaching and which can work as a complement for disabled students who apply for postsecondary education.
Our target public is regular and prospective students as well as professors at Unicamp and of other IES. By means of this project we are making Unicamp to be a reference in inclusive policies for the impaired people at postsecondary courses.
PROESP is a program that aims at the development, capability and qualification of teachers all over the country to care for students’ differences who have been enrolled in ordinary classes of primary schools, high schools, teenager and young adult educational courses, technical schools and also in postsecondary education. It also aims at teachers who give educational specialized help in complementary and supplementary services so that they can develop teaching and learning processes in a critical and reflexive way. The qualification of these professionals no matter if they work or not with Special Teaching must be thought over according to the country’s regional differences, taking each region’s potentialities and limitations into consideration In 2004, CAPES in a technical partnership with SEESP/MEC, gave financial support to projects aiming at researches, studies and courses, at strictu sensu level and latu sensu graduation. PROESP program supports 10 projects on Special Education.
CAPES It is a Brazilian Federal Government Organ linked to the Education Ministry.
CAPES has been playing a fundamental role in the expansion and consolidation of postgraduation courses (stricto sensu, that is, Masters and PHD degrees) in all states of the country and it is one of the biggest achievements in the fields of Brazilian Education as well as Science and Technology.