Educação especial e livros didáticos de matemática: processos de normatização e a constituição da pessoa com deficiência

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze and describe how, from public education policies materialized in official documents, standardization processes emerge that reflect on the construction of the Mathematics Textbook and on people with disabilities. Specifically, the study initially analyzes notices from the federal government's National Textbook Program, in order to describe prescriptions/indications relating to the inclusion processes of people with disabilities. In addition, we also investigated the representations of people with disabilities in the five volumes of a collection of Mathematics Textbooks, in order to understand how such representation in this material contributes to the processes of in/exclusion, especially of children with dyscalculia. Inspired by Michel Foucault's studies, particularly on power relations, governance and standardization processes, and supported by the cartographic research proposed by Kastrup, we follow a dry path around a moving target, in order to highlight the way in which curricula of mathematics act, reinforce and perpetuate power relations and the mechanisms of constitution of subjects. From the construction/analysis of the data, we organize the text in an order in which, after explaining the structure of the research and the trajectory of this researcher, we present the initial considerations, in which we anticipate to the reader some concepts/theorizations mobilized as conceptual tools in our analyses. Subsequently, we present three articles that can be read independently, but which, as a whole, cover the central issue we are focusing on. In the first article, we highlighted the way in which official prescriptions act directly in the constitution of the “normal” of each era. Currently, such an understanding implies the definition of what will be inside or outside the Mathematics textbook, as well as the mechanisms and strategies mobilized by public and private institutions in order to avoid the “monstrosities” present in the mismatch between pedagogical discourses and the Brazilian legislation focused on the subject. In the second article, when analyzing activities and images of people with disabilities in Mathematics textbooks, we also highlight an adjustment to normality curves through an editorial practice that opts for the figurative representation of more aesthetically “acceptable” disabilities – so as not to impact on the sale of the work – to the detriment of promoting actual inclusion. In this context, the images containing people with disabilities are sometimes “cool” in the work, sometimes without articulation with the proposed activities, sometimes they contribute to the normalization of people with disabilities as incapable, dependent, unfit for carrying out daily tasks or for the job market, in short, a deviant. In this aspect, the work contributes to the construction of a stereotypical image of people with disabilities, as it establishes/defines the aspects from which the public for whom the textbooks are intended should conceive people with disabilities. In the third article, when extending our effort of understanding, articulating textbooks and pedagogical projects of initial training courses for teachers who teach Mathematics, we were surprised by the fact that dyscalculia – a condition that directly affects the student's difficulty in learning Mathematics – be completely absent from these environments. In other words, what is observed is a total erasure of the topic, whether in official documents, including decrees, laws, notices, or in Pedagogical Course Projects (PCP), due to the absence of proposals or actions that guide the formation of future teacher for this issue, or even in Mathematics textbooks, since not even one activity aimed at students is identified, nor are there any guidelines for teachers involving dyscalculia. This absence neglects the preparation of the teacher who works/will work in mediating the teaching and learning processes of students with dyscalculia. When considering the set of elements we describe, it becomes clear how the work, whether through erasure – in the case of the person with dyscalculia – or through under-representation – in the case of the person with disability – leads to a way of looking, of conceiving a person with a disability/dyscalculia as someone who distances themselves from the established standard/norm, as an abnormal person, characterizing processes of in/exclusion, in which, supposedly included groups, are not offered the same conditions as the group(s) (s) that integrate.