Duration: 2020 – 2023
Principal Researcher
Luís Tinoca
Team Members
Tiago Tempera
Research line:
Education, Citizenship and Inclusion
Educational inclusion is now recognized as the most effective way to realize the right of all children and young people to quality education. This approach is based on acknowledging and valuing diversity to propose changes in school organization, curricula, and the teaching-learning process. In Portugal, Decree-Law 4/2018 states that schools must provide tailored responses to the diverse characteristics of students, adapting teaching processes and leveraging various resources to enhance learning and participation. However, organizing schools, curricula, and the teaching-learning process to address the diversity of learning paces, styles, interests, motivations, expectations, and cultural, linguistic, and socio-economic backgrounds is not an easy task. This process requires, first, sensitivity and recognition of this reality, and second, a shift in beliefs and practices to find appropriate responses to this diversity.
Work-based training, incorporating practical, deliberative, and reflective components with ethical, ecological, and critical dimensions, and fostering collaborative processes among teachers, has been identified by our team as a facilitator of change. However, teacher collaboration often involves only superficial reflection, which does not challenge existing knowledge and beliefs or lead to meaningful practice changes. In this regard, some studies have highlighted the importance of developing school-university partnerships, where ideas and experiences can be exchanged, and practices can be assessed and reflected upon in light of new knowledge. Furthermore, research increasingly underscores the need to consider students' voices, encouraging their active participation in decision-making and promoting engagement in their school communities. Yet, few intervention processes effectively include these perspectives.
In light of this, systemic approaches to school intervention have been gaining traction, particularly the development of learning communities within schools that involve not only teachers but also students and other members of the educational community. Transformative Learning Communities (TLCs) emerge as a proposal to create collaborative contexts guided by socio-reconstructionist orientations and emancipatory purposes, addressing the needs identified in schools. TLCs foster collaborative research and critical reflection, promoting shifts in thinking and practices, strengthening relationships, and transforming school culture toward greater equity, with significant improvements in student behavior and learning. Achieving this requires establishing participation structures, including organizing meeting spaces and times, forming interdisciplinary teams, and developing effective collaborative processes.
Although numerous studies focus on learning communities, few explore how these communities can facilitate the development of inclusive schools—that is, schools capable of addressing diverse needs, paces, and expectations while engaging all students in enriching and stimulating learning experiences, fostering active participation and meaningful relationships.
This project aims to understand how the development of transformative learning communities centered on diversity facilitates the creation of inclusive schools. It will deepen partnerships between schools and higher education institutions (HEIs) to develop TLCs, examining the processes involved in building these communities and their impact on the development of inclusive schools.
Given the participatory nature of this project, we adopt a Design-Based Research (DBR) approach, emphasizing a concrete problem schools face today (educational inclusion) and developing an intervention proposal (TLCs to deepen collaboration between schools and HEIs) to transform and implement innovative educational processes. In this context, the iterative and cyclical design and reformulation process is essential to promote transformative learning, create usable knowledge, and develop teaching and learning theories contextualized in complex school environments.