Formação e atitudes sociais sobre inclusão escolar em Licenciandos de Ciências Exatas
Resumen
The number of enrollments of students with disabilities has increased over the years as a result of
struggles and enforcement, which has ensured that these students have access to schooling in regular
education. However, national legislation may provide for such access, but it can not guarantee that
teachers who will receive such students will manifest attitudes favorable to the permanence of that
student in their classroom. Studies have pointed out that teachers' attitudes can be a determining factor
for the success of school inclusion, and part of the construction of favorable attitudes occurs through
an adequate teacher training. However, the teachers' complaint highlighting the lack of preparation to
meet this student audience has been recurrent, largely because adequate training is not provided during
initial training. The curricular degrees of undergraduate courses, for the most part, have not included
disciplines related to inclusive education. The present study aimed to develop and implement a teacher
training program to test the effect of special education thematic on the social attitudes of exact science
graduates. The training program was elaborated in three units addressing the contents of Pedagogical
History, Policies and Practices. A total of 88 trainees composed the sample, and were distributed in
three rooms of the moodle in which the course was developed. The course environment was composed
of three main tabs concentrating the three themes to be tested, and three separate virtual rooms were
created. Each room began the course by a thematic, the three were approached simultaneously and
interspersed. Before and after the participation of the trainees in the first unit of the course, their social
attitudes were measured through the Likert Scale of Social Attitudes in relation to inclusion (ELASI).
By means of statistical tests we verified that there was no statistically significant difference in the
attitudes of the students for each one of the subjects tested between the rooms, as well as intra-rooms.
However, it is to be considered that most of the students have already started the course with attitudes
close to the extreme maximum of ELASI. During the analyzes, there were cases of decrease of scores
in the post-test when compared to the pre-test, cases of the same measure of attitudes in both tests.
Although the quantitative results show that the change in attitudes was not significant, there were
some positive fluctuations of attitudes leading to the hypothesis that in some way the course
contributed positively to the attitudes of the trainees. Outstanding cases were also analyzed
qualitatively according to the respective productions during the activities. The results put us to reflect
that the topics addressed in undergraduate courses present some potential to promote changes of
attitudes in the graduates, but perhaps it is the moment to rethink the approach and significance given
to these disciplines.