Curso de formação docente para a educação on-line da Secretaria Geral de Educação a Distância : saberes sobre a deficiência visual

Abstract

The teacher is always in a process of learning. It’s not possible to delimit the beginning or the end of his/her education. Thus, training processes subsequent to the initial education are essential so that the teacher (from childhood education to higher education) can be involved in a network of new knowledge. Through personal experiences, we realized the importance of the process of accessible materials’ adaptation, in other words, we were involved with the accessibility area in Education, specifically in Distance Education. Therefore, this work was developed based on three axes: teacher Education, Accessibility and Distance Education. The methodology we had chosen for this research is the qualitative case study; so, we chose to apply a questionnaire in the Formação Docente para Educação On-line course from Universidade Federal de São Carlos Distance Education Secretary (SEaD-UFSCar) with the purpose to investigate how the knowledge about accessibility is constructed in a Continued Teacher Education course. Furthermore, 1) to know the profile of the teachers who attended the course; 2) to evaluate how was the teachers’ participation in the module related to accessibility in the Formação Docente para Educação Online course (SEaD-UFSCar); 3) to point out which initial knowledge the teachers need to have in order to work in the inclusion of visually impaired students in Distance Learning courses; 4) to contribute to the next editions of the Teacher Training Course. As a result, we identified some predominant issues concerning teacher education focused on the teaching of visually impaired individuals in Distance Education: 1) we have observed the importance of Continued Education courses which deal with the inclusion of people with disability; 2) we have identified the necessity of having public policies which stimulate and ensure that people with disabilities have access to Education; and 3) through the course we have analyzed, we could verify a lack related to the accessibility area in the schedules of initial education and post-graduate courses, which shows that many times these deficits reflect in the teaching-learning process of visually impaired people. Therefore, it emphasizes the necessity of continued education courses that cover the topic; 4) Finally, we have detected the lack of researches that investigate the topics discussed here, which reinforces the exclusion of the theme and, consequently, the visually impaired people exclusion.