A formação inicial de professores no curso de Pedagogia da UFPB: desafios da atuação na educação especial

Abstract

The number of students with disabilities attending regular education has increased significantly in recent years. As a result, teacher training has become an essential factor for teachers to receive the necessary training to work in special education and promote inclusion in the school environment. This reality encourages educational institutions to offer in their curricula subjects aimed at training teachers in the field of Special Education, which include knowledge about the types of disabilities and their particularities, as well as the theoretical and methodological aspects necessary to overcome the challenges of working with the inclusion of students with disabilities in the classroom. Given this reality, this study has the general objective of analyzing the initial training of students in the pedagogy course at UFPB, considering the challenges of teaching in Special Education. We also define the following specific objectives: To investigate how the curriculum of the pedagogy course at UFPB addresses the theme of special education; To identify the gaps in the initial training of future teachers coming from the pedagogy course at UFPB from the perspective of special education; To describe the challenges faced by students in the Pedagogy course in relation to their future teaching role in the area of special education. As a methodological approach, the study used a qualitative-quantitative, exploratory and field approach. As a data collection instrument, an online questionnaire with open and closed questions was used, via Google Forms. In the next stage, a detailed analysis of the results obtained was carried out and the discussion was articulated through bibliographical databases. Thus, the results of this research indicate that the initial training offered by the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB) to students in the Pedagogy course, in-person, campus I, is insufficient with regard to the performance in Special Education, since the Pedagogy course barely addresses Special Education in its curriculum, with few disciplines focused on this field, in addition to a limited workload and a superficial approach to theoretical-practical content, evidencing the fragility of the education offered by this institution.