Atendimento educacional especializado na educação infantil para crianças com necessidades complexas de comunicação

Abstract

This work focuses on Specialized Educational Assistance (SEA) in Early Childhood Education, highlighting children with complex communication needs who need specific support in order to exercise their right to become full citizens and to acquire their linguistic skills to achieve autonomy and interact with society in general. Some barriers encountered by these children can be mitigated through the use of Assistive Technology, specifically, Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), which is used in different social environments. In this study, the use of AAC in the service of Specialized Educational Assistance available to these children in public schools throughout Brazil was emphasized. The research problem concerns: how does the offer of Specialized Educational Assistance occur in Early Childhood Education institutions for children with complex communication needs and what are the teaching practices that use AAC in the Multifunctional Resource Rooms? The general objective was to analyze the SEA service offered to children with complex communication needs in Early Childhood Education, having the following specific objectives: to investigate the SEA service and its articulations with the Reference Rooms of Early Childhood Education; and to know the teaching actions with the use of AAC in the Multifunctional Resource Rooms. The methodology of this work was based on field research, carried out in three Municipal Centers of Early Childhood Education (CMEIs), and observation was used as a data collection technique. Thus, for six months, the researcher of this study observed the work of the SEA specialist teachers from three CMEIs in João Pessoa-PB, analyzing their practices with ten children with complex communication needs. After the data collection, these were read and analyzed according to the criteria of Content Analysis through five categories of analysis: 1 - Planning of the actions of the SEA Teacher; 2 - Use of resources and pedagogical materials for the mediation of pedagogical work; 3 - Articulation of the school team with children with disabilities; 4 - Use of augmentative and alternative communication resources; and 5 - Development of the pedagogical practices of teachers in the school context. Among the main results, we highlight: a) regarding the planning of pedagogical actions, it was verified that the three specialist teachers participated in the planning together with the school management, the institution's employees, as well as with the teachers of the Reference Room and the caregivers; b) regarding the organization of resources, it was observed that teacher B planned in a more detailed way a diversity of resources and pedagogical materials; c) regarding the role of the school team and its articulation with children with complex communication needs, it was verified that it was important that teacher C invited the caregivers to help her in the SEA services; and d) regarding the use of augmentative and alternative communication resources, only teacher A resorted to the practice of resources from the AAC. It was concluded, finally, that this research unites Early Childhood Education, Assistive Technology and Teaching-learning of children with complex communication needs, this being a long way to go to promote quality of Special Education in public schools in our country.