Welcoming what escapes us, for a pedagogy of affection

bibliotherapy and token economy in a research-intervention with an autistic student

Abstract

Background: This work is born from the intersection between life and research, in a movement of listening and invention within the school. It is derived not from hypotheses, but from encounters, between a teacher-researcher and a student with autism, between bibliotherapy and token economy, between language and its deviations.

Purpose: We propose a mediated reading experience, in which the book “O que cabe nesse livro?” (What fits in this book?) opens up gaps that allow other ways of saying (bodily, visual, affective ways) to emerge. The aim is to map these communicative potencies, without capturing them in the logic of conditioning.

Methodology: We used cartography as a research-intervention method, which does not observe from the outside, but walks alongside, affecting each other. In seven short meetings, devices for active listening and presence were created: reading aloud, pauses, images, tokens as marks of approach rather than control.

Results: What you collect is not data, but vibrations: the act of not sitting that is also listening, a walk that reads, a gesture that narrates.

Conclusion: We conclude that an inclusive school is not achieved through standardization, but through the courage to sustain the unpredictable. Difference is not something to be corrected, but the very ground on which education can reinvent itself.