Resumen de Promoting the sustentability: One experience of partnership between the school and the local community.
Margarida César, Conceiçao Courela
To promote the inclusion of adults facing academic underachievement, the Portuguese mainstream school developed alternative curricula, adapted to specific target-populations. The inclusion of Environmental Education aims to contribute to an increasing quality of life in the local community, facilitating students' social inclusion and their active participation in the life of the community. We followed an action-research approach. Starting from a reflective practice, we aimed at being able to implement an intervention that would allow for a quality education. We choose the project work associated to collaborative work, which is particularly well adapted to adult public. The participants were the students and the teachers of this class. We collected data through participant observation, interviews, tasks inspired in projective techniques, and works/materials produced by the students. Following a partnership established with the municipality, we tried to sensitise some community sectors for the dangers resulting from the presence of dogs' excrements in public places. The students evaluated positively their participation, which contributed to their inclusion in the educational community, improving their self-esteem and their academic achievement. The target-population evaluated positively the actions in which they participated, considering them as interesting and important in order to increase their quality of life.
