Deficiência intelectual: políticas educacionais de formação continuada de professores em Santa Catarina

Abstract

This research aims to analyze continuing education policies for teachers in Santa Catarina, Brazil, who work with people with intellectual disabilities. The research aimed to answer the following question: How is intellectual disability described in continuing education policies for teachers in Santa Catarina? This research is characterized by a post-critical epistemological approach, with a qualitative approach, using bibliographical and documentary research as research support. The analyses undertaken are based on Foucaultian studies in education, highlighting discourse and standardization as theoretical and methodological tools. The documentary corpus consists of national educational policies from the state of Santa Catarina and continuing education courses for Basic Education teachers working in the regular school system, with an emphasis on intellectual disability. The analytical exercise undertaken on the materials enabled the understanding that continuing education policies for teachers continue to be supported by the clinical/medical model of disability. The work consists of two central focuses of analysis: 1) the influence of the clinical/medical model on continuing teacher education. This focus unfolds into three complementary emphases: a) clinical practice in the management of training pathways, which references the findings of training proposals, which approximate a clinical/medical perspective on intellectual disability; b) clinical and social models of disabilities, which addresses the two models of understanding disability in relation to educational inclusion; and c) clinical practice and early childhood, which analyzes proposals specifically directed at early stimulation work. The second focus addresses 2) Support Professionals and Training and Control: bodies with intellectual disabilities problematizing the prescription of practices to be, in some way, worked with people with intellectual disabilities, in order to minimize what is perceived as their intellectual impairment. It is concluded that contemporary educational policies for continuing teacher education barely recognize people with intellectual disabilities based on their difference as potential and seek to normalize these bodies. The educational policies analyzed act as power strategies that produce not only what can be said about disability, but also who can speak and from what place.