Inclusão na educação infantil: a contribuição das interações sociais entre crianças com Síndrome de Down e seus colegas de sala de aula

Abstract

The Federal Constitution of 1988 provides besides to the right of education, the attendance to the specificities of students with disabilities in regular education. So, this research aims to identify and describe in which moments and playful situations children with Down syndrome interact with the classmates and they expand these interactions with the child with DS which favors the inclusion and the development of this child. Therefore, the overall aim was to check and analyze the contribution of the social interactions, for inclusion and educational development of children with Down syndrome in a public preschool of Belo Horizonte. In terms of methodology, it was used in this research the qualitative scientific approach that works with qualitative data. The instruments for data collection were the observation registered in a field diary book and filming. The research subjects were, a child diagnosed with Down syndrome and its fifteen classmates, all the students in a class on average of three years old. The collected data were analyzed by the qualitative method using thirteen categories that have been adapted to fit better in our research. In order to reach the overall aim, it was done playful activities that enabled the child's interactions with DS and the classmates; and it allowed a better evaluation of social interactions of this classmates group. Therefore, the playful activities also had favored the social relations, the physical, visual and gestural contact of the DS child with the classmates; and the classmates to the DS child. The results show that the process of interactions between the Down syndrome student and the classmates happened in a very similar way of a child in the same age undiagnosed disability. The differences of the interactions are on the pace and the way of how the students with DS seek and maintain this relationship. It should be noted that the school inclusion and the development of the child with disabilities is not teacher’s role, but of all of the school. We believe that social interactions caused by playful interventions, should permeate the educational project of the school, because it contributes so much to the development of children with DS and their school inclusion.