Formação continuada e necessidades formativas dos professores das salas de recursos multifuncionais de escolas municipais de uma cidade do interior paulista

Abstract

This research, linked to the “Training and acting of the teaching professional and educational practices” research line, originated from reflections on the perspective of the inclusion for Special Education Students (SES) in order to guarantee the access and permanence of these students in the regular teaching system. SES are students with disabilities, global developmental disorder and giftedness and Special Education provides Specialized Educational Assistance (SEA), whose function is to identify, develop and organize pedagogical and accessibility resources, based on specific needs of the students in order to eliminate barriers and enable their participation. According to the National Special Education Policy, from the perspective of Inclusive Education, 2008, the SEA is carried out primarily in Multifunctional Resource Classes (MRC) equipped with Assistive Technology (AT) and one of the tasks of the teacher who works in these rooms is to organize pedagogical strategies, identify and produce accessible resources to eliminate barriers, respecting the peculiarities of the students. Having that said, the objective of this research is to investigate whether and how the Continuous Training Work Hours (CTWH) offered by the Municipal Department of Education (MDE) of a city in the interior of São Paulo State have met the training needs of teachers who work in the MRC of the municipality, regarding to the use of resources in these classes. In order to achieve it we opted for the qualitative approach, with descriptive-explanatory design. We used for data collection: document analysis of CTWH; questionnaire applied to 17 teachers who work in MRC, in order to know what are their training needs and whether CTWH have contributed to their teaching practice; and semi-structured interviews with the city’s current special education core members to understand how the MDE has organized the CTWH. The answers of the questionnaires indicated that 76.5% of the teachers find it difficult to work in MRC and that the initial training for 52.39% of them did not include knowledge about the SEA. Regarding to the continuing education, 46.67% answered that the CTWH have not contributed to overcome the difficulties faced in school daily, revealing that the actions partially meet their training needs. A possible explanation for this, inferred from the documentary analysis, is the existence of actions with reduced training hours, addressing different themes, therefore not building up a formative process. The analysis of the interviews corroborates part of the answers given by the teachers. The results can contribute to the definition and organization of continuing education to be developed by the MDE, based on the training needs pointed out by the teachers.