O desenvolvimento da representação espacial na educação do estudante cego congênito

Abstract

This dissertation was developed with the aim of contributing to educational processes that seek to enable the perception of geographic space and its representation by students who were born blind or lost their vision before the age of five and are included in regular education schools - However, this does not preclude its use in special education schools. These individuals need reformulations both in the fixed structures of the school and in teaching, so that they can participate effectively in the teaching/learning process. In this sense, the need for pedagogical practices that also enable the construction of broad knowledge about the perception and representation of space stands out, so that they can interact with their environments, objects and occupants autonomously and independently. It is noteworthy that the school is a place full of culture, social and political interactions, and individuals who are blind often end up excluded from these processes due to the difficulty in navigating this environment due to their sensory condition. In this context, the school body must be prepared to promote understanding of the school space and its elements based on teaching practices that favor their perception and representation. To do this, the teacher can use the construction of an interactive tactile puzzle whose pieces are representations of environments such as classrooms, cafeteria, courtyard, library, corridors, bathrooms and administrative parts. When interacting with these pieces, these individuals make a mental composition of these places and feel confident in moving around them, as they acquire prior knowledge of what their formats are like. The theoretical framework of this study was based on the research of Arruda (2014) and Ventorini (2009). These works argue that in an educational context, especially an inclusive one, students with visual impairments must have the possibility of evolving academically and socially, supported by the acceptance and flexibility of the teacher, who needs to have a minimum of prior knowledge about their demands. The method used was conceptual theoretical and also has an applied part. Thus, it is understood that the presence of an individual with congenital blindness in a regular classroom requires adaptations in methodologies and teaching materials to enable them to perceive phenomena through the use of preserved senses, with touch as a starting point, but not as the only channel for acquiring knowledge. In this way, geography classes based on tactile cartography assume an important role with regard to the perspective of inclusive education, since the production of tactile maps, produced by specialized institutions or constructed by the teacher, allows this discipline and its abstract concepts to students who were born blind or lost their sight before the age of five.