Special Education Teachers Life Stories: Subjectivity and Education

Abstract

This article is about study of subjectivity and the teacher education process of students with special needs, intending to understand the movements and paths of the personal and professional formation process of the subject-teacher, as well as the productions of meaning that configure teaching with students who present a diagnosis of special needs, as intellectual deficiency and/or multiple deficiency, associated or not with psychic disorders. Considering that human subjectivity is characterized by the production of meanings, the present study points to the understanding of the subjective senses attributed to the different experiences lived in the context of teaching with students with disabilities. It was intended to produce, through the understanding, analysis and argumentation, effects of meaning that make it possible to advance the understanding of the complex field of teacher education in Inclusive Education. The research was based on the Narrative-Life Stories approach of two teachers of the State Public School System of Porto Alegre-RS city, with a long teaching experience in Special Education, whose biographic trajectories were interpreted in the light of the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. That is, we sought to understand the discursive horizons that constitute the teacher of students with disabilities and, thus, life stories were understood from four categories: dialogue, otherness, experience and the construction of oneself. They seek to discuss the horizons they demarcate and constitute the training path of the teachers. In this way, it becomes possible to think philosophically the teacher’s formation, seeking to give a singular look/sense to the concept of formation, because it is considered fundamental to understand how the subject-teacher is constructing and configuring his existence as a teacher of students with disabilities...