A formação de professoras para a inclusão: uma pesquisa exploratória em um centro municipal de educação infantil

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the training of teachers at a Municipal Center for Early Childhood Education (Centro Municipal de Educação Infantil - CMEI) in Goiânia for the implementation of inclusive pedagogical practices. Grounded in the assumptions of Inclusive Education, the investigation seeks to understand how initial and continuing education can prepare professionals to overcome the segregational and merely integrative model that prevails in schools. The theoretical framework is Lev S. Vygotsky's Historical-Cultural Theory, with emphasis on the concepts of mediation, zone of proximal development, and defectology, which provide the lens for analyzing child development and the teacher's role. This is a qualitative and exploratory study, whose data were collected through semi-structured interviews with four pedagogues working in the municipal network. For the treatment of empirical material, the Content Analysis technique was used, as proposed by Bardin (1977). The results revealed a significant disconnect between the teacher training received and the real demands of inclusive practice in Early Childhood Education. Initial training was reported as insufficient, with serious gaps in preparation for inclusion. In turn, the continuing education offered by the municipal network was characterized as sporadic, generic, and excessively theoretical, resulting in a feeling of unpreparedness and helplessness among the teachers. Given the fragility of formative and institutional support, pedagogical practices were shown to be sustained predominantly by experiential knowledge built in daily life, through improvisation and individual effort. It is concluded, therefore, that the effectiveness of an Inclusive Education in early childhood is directly compromised by the absence of continuous, critical, and contextualized teacher training, aligned with a consistent support structure. Thus, the study reinforces the urgency of formative policies that, anchored in Vygotsky's assumptions, prepare the teacher to act as a mediator in the development of all children