A construção da identidade profissional do professor da educação especial em tempos de educação inclusiva

Abstract

Teacher’s training is put forward as a fundamental element in the aim of building an inclusive educational system that considers the differences amongst pupils, in an educational context where assessment data of the educational system reveals a highly excluding practice. At present time when discussions focus at Inclusive Education this paper aims to understand how the process of identity constitution came about for female teachers who have turned into references of knowledge regarding the education of disabled people, the so called Special Education Teachers. It identified factors that contributed to the histories of lives that have been established throughout their teaching professional skills so that the establishment of an educational system that considers the diversity issues could be achieved throughout the commitment of practicing an inclusive viewpoint. Starting from the point that the teaching professional skills process gets underway from the moment one faces its first contact as a student and stretches out through the whole period of its teaching performance. In addition this performance is exercised in a socio-historic context; the concept that humans beings are formed in their social relations and in a specific cultural context where they are dialetically shaped as their reality changes, therefore I will assume theoretical-methodology reflecting historic-cultural perspective. The main pillar for this research was found in the ideas of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin such as his Statement of Speech Theory and in the Russian psychologist Lev Semenovich Vygotsky and his Social Construction of Knowledge Theory. Having these theories as foundation orientates not only the research procedures but also the analysis of the results found in them. The presence of an active researcher not only facilitates to establish a certain practical understanding of the teachers reality but also alters it. At the same time it allows space for reflection, and evidences the elements that directs the practices in that specific social context. Took part in this research elementary level Special Education teachers from state schools located in the capital city of Boa Vista, State of Roraima. In the analysis, the processes of identity constitution from a group of seven teachers are pointed out considering their historic of personal, academic and professional lives, emphasizing how the composition of their professional identity is affected by the way teaching work is organized at present. Discussions about the way these teachers interact with the diversity factor, since different approaches such as Correcting the “defect”; Understanding it as an element to be socially and culturally merged and the one of Awareness, that takes the multiple element as a positive extra factor that enriches the collective. Least but not last, I point out different reflections with regards to the space Special Education occupies in the contemporary world, that even though being treated as a specific subject in the actual Educational system finds itself excluded from discussions being carried out in Regular Education.