Educação matemática na perspectiva da educação inclusiva: vivências de professores do ensino fundamental

Abstract

This research intended to investigate the experience of teachers, seven female and one male, about Mathematics Education teaching practices built in an inclusive perspective to Special Education students. This work pursued specifically to identify inclusive education perspectives towards Mathematics Education teaching proposals in the school’s political-pedagogical plan; to know better the teachers’ understanding of inclusive education and schooling process of Special Education aimed students in regular schools, besides the process’ challenges and possibilities; as well as the educators’ view of their own knowledge of the pedagogical practice building regarding inclusive education; through interviews with the research participants, it was possible to get in touch with the dimensions of pedagogical activity in Mathematics Education, including actions pointed by the educators as positive to the inclusion process. This study was based on the Historic-Cultural Theory, adopting as an analysis unit Vygotsky’s concept of living (perezhivanie). The methodological strategy was semi-structured interviews. Results indicated: a) in the school’s political-pedagogical plan, the existence of some broad proposals reckoning the inclusion of Special Education aim students, adding to this group students with learning issues; b) the study participants’ positive posture towards the inclusion of Special Education aimed students in the regular school system, which dialogues with official guidelines; however, teachers underlined difficulties faced in making educational inclusion come true, revealing challenges related to family presence in the inclusion process, initial and continuing education frailties, and technical support in the work with these pupils; c) the accomplishment of favourable practices to inclusion in Mathematics teaching involving games, concrete, playful and manipulable materials, considering in this process interaction among all regular school system enrolled students. Furthermore, the educators highlighted the importance of taking into account each student’s features to elaborate teaching activities, prioritising meaning constructions to the detriment of memorisation procedures; the assessment of educators’ individual experiences, expressed in their speech, allowed theorising the meaning of the pedagogical action and its implications in the individual educational experience, composing a collective dimension. The dialectical movement built by this piece of work joined aspects that interact with the history of Special and Inclusive Educations in Brazil, as much as with the evolution of formation processes to educational inclusion and Mathematics Education practices. It is discussed that, although there are challenges in the inclusive process, a plethora of forms of resistance are thought and undertaken at the extent of educators’ strategy building and persistence in creating proposals from school reality demands and hardships, in an attempt to make policies effective, even though it may be a difficult, gradual and sometimes lonely movement.