Educação Infantil inclusiva: o Atendimento Educacional Especializado para crianças de 0 a 3 anos à luz da Teoria Histórico Cultural

Abstract

Special Education should represent the organization of alternative paths, and the production of differentiated conditions and resources to achieve maximum human development for children with or without disabilities/special educational needs, from infancy onwards. In this sense, this study aimed to analyze how pedagogical practice has been carried out with children with disabilities in Early Childhood Education, especially in the zero to three years stage, to identify whether this practice is based on the Historical-Cultural Theory, whether these children receive Specialized Educational Assistance and also how this is carried out. The specific objectives were: to understand human development in the Historical-Cultural Theory and the relationship between this development and intentional and planned teaching in early childhood, concerning Special Education; to identify and analyze the state of knowledge of research on Special Education in Early Childhood Education - nursery stage, in which the Historical-Cultural Theory appears as a theoretical reference, in the period from 2014 to 2022; and analyze some public policy documents on Special Education in Early Childhood Education and identify and publicize the legislation that deals with care in the Multifunctional Resource Room (SRM) in Early Childhood Education, such as Instruction No. 15/2018 issued by the Paraná State Department of Education. The research methodology has a qualitative approach and consists of a bibliographic and documentary review of the state of knowledge on the subject and field research, using semi-structured interviews with teachers from Municipal Early Childhood Education Centers (CMEIs) and coordinators from the Municipal Education Departments of seven municipalities covered by the Association of Municipalities of Western Paraná (AMOP). Data was collected on the Specialized Educational Assistance carried out in Early Childhood Education, in Multifunctional Resource Room or not, and how, in the selected municipalities, the Special Education modality is understood at this stage of education. The theoretical framework that guided the work was Historical-Cultural Theory, whose main authors are Elkonin, Vygotsky, Leontiev, Vygotsky and Luria and Martins. The data was analyzed from a dialectical perspective of human development, in which the teaching and learning process aims to develop and humanize the subjects, as well as using Bardin's (2011) content analysis methodology to extract the analytical units. The results of the field research show that the teachers and coordinators surveyed understand Early Childhood Education as a stage of education that is essential to the development of young children and recognize that school inclusion should start from an early age. The Historical-Cultural Theory is predominant in the curricular documents of the municipalities, however, the data shows that there are still difficulties in establishing a connection between the theory and the pedagogical practice of the teachers and coordinators. The data also indicates that, at the time of data collection, in 2022, only one municipality offered a Multifunctional Resource Room, including for children aged 0 to 3, and carried out Specialized Educational Assistance as a tool to enhance the development of these children. In the other six municipalities, children with disabilities/ special educational needs were cared for only in the ordinary classroom, and in two of them they were cared for by support teachers, whether specialized or not. As for how Specialized Educational Assistance was carried xii out, the results show that this specialized educational service was practically non existent. The conclusion is that it is necessary to give children with or without disabilities the opportunity to experience, participate in, identify, and get to know the culture produced in the social environment, so that they can learn and develop, an understanding the social, economic, cultural, political and historical bases of that society