Formação de Professores Especializados em Educação Especial: um estudo dos cursos de Pós Graduação Lato Sensu da região da Associação dos Municípios de Entre Rios (AMERIOS) no Estado do Paraná.

Abstract

This study is part of the research line Teacher Training and Teaching and Learning Processes of the Postgraduate Program in Education at the State University of Western Paraná (UNIOESTE). The training of teachers specialized in Special Education is a fundamental topic today, considering the growing inclusion of students with disabilities/Special Educational Needs (SEN) in Brazilian schools at all levels of education and the fragility in relation to the training of these teachers. The general objective of this research is to analyze the lato sensu postgraduate courses aimed at training teachers specialized in Special Education offered in the distance learning modality by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the region of the Association of Municipalities of Entre Rios (AMERIOS), in order to understand how this training process is occurring so that these teachers can provide Specialized Educational Services (SES) adequate to the real special educational needs (SEN) of students with disabilities/SEN. To this end, research was conducted on the information contained on the websites of higher education institutions (HEIs) in the AMERIOS region of the state of Paraná that offer postgraduate specialization courses in Special Education, Inclusive Education, or related topics. It is important to note that the information is public and was available on the HEIs' websites at the time of data collection. The study also sought to understand whether the flexibility in legislation could impact the quality of training for teachers specialized in Special Education. The methodology was exploratory, bibliographic, documentary, and qualitative in approach. The data were analyzed from the perspective of Historical-Cultural Psychology (HCP), which underpins this research – whose main authors are Vygotsky, Luria, and Leontiev – and through content analysis according to Bardin (1977). The results demonstrate the existence of a market that appears to be profiting from the deregulation of legislation in recent years—a shift that has impacted the expansion and quality of these programs, likely due to a lack of oversight. For instance, it was found that a lato sensu postgraduate course designed to train teachers for Special Education included a curriculum containing subjects unrelated to the field. The research reveals that the absence of a legislated minimum duration for completing these courses allows some Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to offer the possibility of obtaining a specialist title in just three months; this compromises the quality of teacher training for Special Education, as the focus shifts to rapid certification at the expense of actual learning. Thus, it is concluded that the current landscape of training specialized Special Education teachers through distance-learning lato sensu postgraduate courses in the AMERIOS-PR region reveals significant weaknesses.