Escola de educação básica na modalidade educação especial: análise da proposta de escolarização

Abstract

The special-needs program in basic education schools, as proposed and executed in the state of Paraná, is documented by the offer and certification of education to its students. The proposal includes the adjustment of the regular basic education-early years program, known as fundamental education-early years in Brazil, in the form of a 10-year continued cycle which corresponds to the syllabus of the first and second regular grades. This study aims to examine the role of the special-needs program in basic education schools with regards to the education of intellectually disabled students, as well as those with multiple disabilities and pervasive developmental disorders. This is an exploratory-descriptive research which employed document analyses and interviews as data-collection instruments. Among the objects of analyses were state official documents regarding the educational proposal, as well as the researched school’s documents, such as its political pedagogical project, curricular pedagogical proposal, teacher work plans and bi-annual student progress reports. Moreover, quantitative data were gathered from the Anísio Teixeira National Educational Study and Research Institute and the Paraná State Department of Education to contextualize the study objectives. Two fundamental education-early years schoolteachers and the principal from the researched school participated in the interviews, which were analyzed using core meaning analysis, with the Historical-Culture Theory as reference. The analyzed data ascertained that the researched school is inserted in a state deeply characterized by the substitution of mainstream school systems for alternative education, which account for approximately a quarter of enrollments in the country’s exclusive classes. Both the guiding documents and the speech of the interviewees characterize this education as conducted through the realization of the person’s disability, limited to their biological condition, and low expectations about learning. The adjustment of basic education to a 10-year cycle is perceived as positive and relevant in the collected data, however, its success is attributed to the systematized teaching of reading and writing content. The reported assessments occur daily, but what prevails in the bi-annual reports are the recurrent records of a student’s aptitudes and/or difficulties over consecutive semesters and years. Data analyses from this study suggest that the special needs program in basic education, with regards to the teaching of intellectually disabled students, as well as of those with multiple disabilities and pervasive developmental disorders, plays a role in the mischaracterization of the social function of schools and does not guarantee an education into more advanced levels as proposed effectively by a basic education school committed to the access and ownership of historically constructed human production.