Rev. Educação e Fronteiras, Dourados, v. 13, n. 00, e023022, 2023. e-ISSN:2237-258X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.30612/eduf.v13i00.17629 6
specific. My knowledge of special education is based on my postgraduate
degree in special education (Manager of the Municipal School, our
translation).
Thus, it is evident that, although there is training for future managers, it is incapable of
meeting Special Education's demands. In an interview, the state school manager responded that
the only training she underwent regarding Special Education was a course on Pedagogical
Practices focused on Special Education. However, the course was not offered by the education
system; it was pursued by the manager's own interest and provided by a private education
company. When asked about her conception of the importance of Special Education from an
inclusive perspective, she responded that:
[...] Inclusive Education is a necessity, right? We are all subject to it... today,
we are capable, and tomorrow, we may experience an illness or an accident
and become people with special needs, right? And... we have children,
nephews who are also subject to this. So, it's a necessity, but... there's a lot to
advance in terms of inclusion, especially regarding teacher training, right... in
the issue of the reform of... of higher education courses in teaching, which I
still think is... I practically had nothing focused on this public in my training,
and I don't believe that over the years, there has been any progress in higher
Education and teaching courses. Training teachers because I see it like this: a
new group arrives, and when they receive, for example, a student with Down
Syndrome, they have no clue how to deal with this group, right... They become
totally dependent on having another person in the room, and they cannot
handle this diversity alone. They don't know how to adapt materials, adapt
their class, it's a reality, not only for public schools but for all, schools need to
improve a lot. Inclusion, in fact, doesn't happen (Manager of the State School,
our translation).
The training of school managers and even teachers regarding special Education is a
challenge and an evident need in the manager's response, who considers it the greatest obstacle
to the schooling process for students with disabilities. The issue of teaching courses raised by
the manager is confirmed in the research by Caetano et al. (2018), which found that the Special
Education discipline in the Pedagogy course at UFES seems to still be used to introduce other
knowledge, such as School Inclusion, differences, and diversity in the school and does not
address the necessary pedagogical practice for working with this target audience.
However, it is worth highlighting the effort of the managers to "educate themselves,"
thus understanding this need and the role of the school manager, who is not just an administrator
but an educator, committed to transforming the reality of students, as Paro (2015) suggests.
When we refer to Special Education, this transformation is even more urgent, as this audience