Realidade e fantasia: contribuições do role-playing game (RPG) para a convivência e a inclusão na escola

Abstract

The way inclusive education is conceived today is strongly related to legislation. However, only the legal sphere does not seem to be enough and at times, formulas, classifications, and diagnoses overshadow the human being, going in the opposite direction and creating exclusion. In this research, I discuss inclusion from an ethical point of view, questioning whether it is possible to rethink it through references such as coexistence, hospitality, and welcoming. This thesis argument is constructed in three stages. In the first, I discuss how the school has been a space for (dis)union, in which differences cause conflicts, which sometimes trigger violence. To reverse this logic, I consider conflicts as a starting point for welcoming. In the second stage, I propose a way to approach the issue beyond legal formalism. I seek to understand how spaces of inclusion have been constructed and what their implications have been, in addition to investigating how the discourse of tolerance can embody exclusion. Rejecting the idea that the educational environment is homogeneous, I discuss being together based on ethics, in consonance with Emmanuel Levinas, and hospitality, according to Jacques Derrida. In the last stage, I suggest an approach to promote coexistence at school through Role-playing Games (RPG). These are games in which players create and play a role as their characters during the construction of a collective story. I argue that RPGs, due to their collective-oriented design, can provide ludic spaces for living together. To understand the possible consequences of using these games at school, I undertook an empirical stage in which the data were obtained from the audiovisual record of RPG workshops and the conduction of semi-structured interviews with the players. Twelve high school students were part of the study, divided into two groups that participated in weekly meetings, over two months. The collected material was analyzed from a qualitative perspective, through the Content Analysis proposed by Bardin, and organized into three categories: hostipitality, conflict, and decision-making. The analysis suggests that RPGs can promote welcoming spaces, even if there is an alternation between moments of hospitality and hostility. The game worked as a "conflict engine", putting players in dilemma situations, in which it was necessary to discuss, adjust expectations, establish consensus, and coordinate actions towards common goals. By experiencing and taking on their characters' sufferings, players were able to rethink their relationships and develop new perspectives on being together. When defending the idea of a coexistence pedagogy, I suggest that the game, within the school, can constitute a space of welcome and hospitality.