Children and their diagnosis in the inclusive education scenario: the perspective of mothers and teachers

Abstract

This article focuses on a research whose objective was to understand the meanings of diagnosis of students for their families and teachers, starting from the existential phenomenological perspective. The guiding question of the investigation was: how do mothers and teachers understand the diagnoses attributed to their children / students? There was also the interest in the in-depth study of a case in which, despite certain people’s expectations, the students’ diagnosis was absent. The research was developed in a Municipal Elementary School (EMEF) in the city of São Paulo, where participatory observations and systematic meetings of the researcher and school team occurred, characterizing the research as participatory, interventional and dialogical. Its focus was to understand the narratives of these teachers and mothers, created from reflective interviews and the notion of constellations. It was revealed that the diagnosis plays an important role in that it gives security to teachers and mothers in their interventions and daily actions with children with special educational needs; on the other hand, the research has brought to the fore that in the face of the diagnosis - understood as the scientific nomination of an existence - the narrative about this child inevitably goes through its nosological picture, whereas those children who have not received a diagnosis are presented in a complex way based on many of their characteristics and on their potential.