Special education teacher and the difficulties at the beginning of the professional practice

Abstract

After a comprehensive study of what was nationally happening concerning the education and training of Special Education teachers, the need to reformulate the Specialization Course in Special Education at the Universidade Estadual de Londrina was verified. This study aimed to identify the difficulties faced by special education teachers at the beginning of their careers, with a view to future alterations in the teacher education course curriculum, so that the course reformulation could be based on scientific data and influenced by the teachers’ perceptions on the received education and also on the new necessities and requirements from the job market. As participants, 50 teachers from Londrina – PR who completed the Specialization Course in Special Education at UEL were interviewed. The instruments used were a semi-structured schedule for the interviews to collect data and a speech categorization evaluation form, whose objective was to calculate the reliability index of the elaborated categories and the speech distribution. After the data collection sessions, the interviews were transcribed and revised. The data collected were submitted to content analysis. It was found that the main difficulties faced were dealing with behavior, communication, lack of knowledge and pedagogical support. Thus, it could be realized that the necessity to work on such difficulties at the academy and to foster the scientific publications on inclusive pedagogical activities.