Ser e fazer docente de professores da educação básica com deficiência visual

Abstract

This research, developed within the field of Special Education, investigates the being and doing of teaching among teachers with visual impairment, seeking to understand which adaptations in pedagogical practice, didactics, classroom materials, and the use of technological resources are necessary for teaching in different school contexts. The study aimed to analyze the being and doing of teachers with visual impairment in basic education, considering who these individuals are in their life trajectories, what professional roles they perform, and under what conditions these roles take place, especially with regard to accessibility and adaptations in teaching strategies, materials, and assistive technology used in the classroom. Specifically, the study sought to map the participants’ sociodemographic, economic, educational, and professional insertion profiles; describe their school trajectories; characterize the materials, resources, and assistive technologies used in everyday classroom practice; and describe adaptations in pedagogical practice and didactics. This is a qualitative, descriptive study, with participants selected through snowball sampling, involving eight teachers with blindness or low vision working in different educational networks and professional roles. Data were produced through a characterization questionnaire and online interviews and were examined using content analysis. The results indicate that these teachers’ work relies on advance planning, didactic reorganization beyond the centrality of the board and print writing, mediations grounded in orality and listening, and the articulated use of tactile resources, Braille, screen readers, mobile accessibility features, magnification and description tools, and digital platforms. Coexisting with these strategies are attitudinal barriers, infrastructure limitations, fragile institutional support, and the recurring displacement of responsibility for accessibility onto the teachers themselves, thus challenging the ideal of inclusion proclaimed in educational policies. The study concludes that the teaching work of teachers with visual impairment cannot be understood through the lens of individual overcoming, since teaching under such conditions requires broad reorganizations of pedagogical work and makes visible the structural contradictions of public schooling. At the same time that the findings reveal the pedagogical strength, inventiveness, and professional authority of these teachers, they also show that inclusion remains partial and unstable when not accompanied by accessibility, assistive technology, human support, training, and materially guaranteed working conditions.