Professor de apoio pedagógico educacional: enredo e encenações em uma arena política sul-mato-grossense

Abstract

Educational public policies are permeated by disputes and interests, taking on diverse trajectories. As in theatrical plays, different actors creatively interpret the same script. In the municipal education system of Dourados, Mato Grosso do Sul (MS), support for Special Education (SE) in mainstream classrooms has been operationalized through support teachers. After years of temporary hiring, in 2023 the municipality established the permanent position of Educational Pedagogical Support Teacher (PAPE), amid disputes over duties and the absence of planning time. Thus, this dissertation aims to problematize the creation and enactment of the PAPE role within the school inclusion policy of the municipality of Dourados-MS. The theoretical-methodological approach is guided by a post-critical perspective, articulating the Policy Cycle Approach (Richard Bowe, Stephen J. Ball, and Anne Gold), the Theory of Policy Enactment (Stephen J. Ball, Meg Maguire, and Annette Braun), and the “What’s the problem represented to be?” approach (Carol Bacchi), also drawing on aspects of Michel Foucault’s genealogy. The study involved both documentary and field research, including 158 questionnaires administered to tenured PAPE teachers and semi-structured interviews with two representatives of educational management, two union representatives, and 12 tenured PAPE teachers. Data analysis was organized into two categories: the creation of the position, examining the contexts of influence and policy text production; and the enactment of the position, focusing on developments within the context of practice. Findings indicate that the PAPE policy in Dourados was driven by legal and supervisory intervention, resulting in the creation of permanent positions more as a formal response to the regularization of employment ties than as a restructuring of Special Education policy. Consequently, a hybrid role was consolidated, marked by the overlap between pedagogical and caregiving duties, role ambiguity, and the absence of clear guidelines, fostering processes of deprofessionalization and work intensification. The centrality of the support teacher in school inclusion was observed, with priority given to individualized responses, while the school structure itself remained largely unchanged. In this context, disability diagnoses functioned as gateways to specialized support within mainstream classrooms. PAPE teachers displayed heterogeneous educational backgrounds, entered the role primarily seeking job stability, and faced precarious working conditions such as overload, lack of planning time, and unclear duties. Practices tended toward individualized support, behavioral control, and simplified adaptation of activities, reinforcing processes of medicalization and the maintenance of school order, rather than promoting pedagogical transformation. The policy proved to be shaped by institutional disputes, structural constraints, and the absence of a consistent guideline for school inclusion, producing effects both on service organization and on teacher subjectivity and working conditions. In this scenario, the civil service examination for PAPE in Dourados-MS represents a point of emergence where disputes, forms of knowledge, and normativities converged, producing a position that seeks to stabilize tensions among school inclusion, specific interests, and administrative legality. The PAPE role, therefore, does not respond to a pre-existing problem but rather materializes a particular reading of school inclusion and teaching work, while simultaneously silencing other possibilities for organizing pedagogical support.