Does the inclusive teacher exist?

Abstract

This article aims to address the inclusive teacher as a figure that emerged with the establishment of inclusive education in Brazil. Since 1999, Brazilian schools have been receiving students with disabilities, following the guidelines of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, the Salamanca Statement of 1994, and the Law of Guidelines and Bases of 1996. Consequently, educators have had to seek training to accommodate students who were not so common in their classrooms. In this text, as the title suggests, we intend to question the nature of the existence of the inclusive teacher. Assuming that this figure exists, we seek to understand how this existence is constituted. To this end, a theoretical study was conducted with authors from the fields of education and psychoanalysis to address the characteristics that pedagogical discourse emphasizes an educator should possess; how ethical and technical issues may define these characteristics; and which challenges and impasses may complicate the task of including a not-so-common student. Additionally, we present a proposal based on psychoanalytic discourse to reflect on the possibility of the existence of such an educator. Thus, as a result, we move away from certain impositions produced by pedagogical discourse, such as a priori characteristics that this educator should have to exist as inclusive, toward the idea that the educational act enables any teacher to include their student. Drawing on Freud's well-known statement about the impossibility of education, alongside the ideas of other authors such as Lacan and Voltolini, we consider the paradoxes of school inclusion and exclusion as a continuity represented by the Möbius strip. School inclusion is Möbian, and the existence of the inclusive teacher is realized in the act, considering this figure as not-wholly inclusive.