José Morgado (*)

José Silva (*)

RESUMO

O presente estudo teve por objectivo estudar os factores que os professores que desempenham funções nos apoios educativos (n=76) consideram determinantes para o sucesso educativo de alunos com necessidades educativas especiais. Afim de estudar as crenças dos professores, solicitou-se para responderem a um conjunto de itens que visavam analisar as suas atitudes face às variáveis ‘Desenho Curricular’, ‘Estilos de Ensino’, ‘Implementação do Programa’ e ‘Interacções Professor-Aluno’.

O tratamento estatístico dos dados quantitativos do questionário utilizado evidencia algumas diferenças ao nível das variáveis demográficas. Relativamente à «Idade», verificou-se que os professores com idades compreendidas entre os 40 e os 50 anos centram-se em variáveis explicativas do sucesso escolar que remetem para o ‘Desenho Curricular’.

Esta análise veio pôr ainda em evidência que os professores que possuem «Tempo de Serviço Docente» entre os 15 e os 25 anos atribuem uma maior importância à variável identificada atrás. Constatou-se, igualmente, que os professores que possuem menos Tempo de Serviço Docente valorizam mais as variáveis ligadas à cooperação entre os vários técnicos envolvidos no processo de ensino.

Os resultados da prova de Kruskall-Wallis mostraram que os professores que têm tempo de experiência docente na área da educação especial entre os 10 e os 20 anos atribuem uma maior relevância à categoria identificada por ‘Implementação do Programa Educativo’. O estudo de diferenças entre os grupos constituídos para a variável «Habilitações Profissionais» revelou que os professores com formação específica no ensino especial valorizam mais os aspectos ligados ao ‘Desenho Curricular’, contrariamente aos professores que não têm formação que dão maior importância à ‘Implementação do Programa Educativo’ e à qualidade das ‘Interacções entre Professor e Aluno’.

ABSTRACT

To investigate the nature of beliefs about educational outcomes of children with special needs we asked 76 special educational teachers (71 women and 5 men) to complete a questionnaire concerning their attitudes toward the following variables – ‘Curriculum Development’, ‘Teaching Practices’, ‘Program Implementation’ and ‘Teacher-Student Interactions’.

Also investigated were teacher background variables associated with beliefs concerning schooling outcomes. Statistically significant variations in teacher responses were found for the variables of age, teaching experience and experience with special needs students.

ANOVA’s comparing teachers’ beliefs indicated that subjects aged between 40-50 differ significantly from others. Comparison of means showed that those teachers had higher scores on the variable ‘Curriculum Development’.

The overall F-test on the variable Teaching Experience revealed that teachers in the group aged 15-25 had higher scores than teachers who had few or many years of experience on the variable identified above.

Kruskal-Wallis test highlighted differences between groups. The post hoc analysis showed that teachers who received Training in Special Education focused on the variable ‘Curriculum Design’, while teachers with no training emphasized the variables ‘Program Implementation’ and ‘Teacher-Student Interactions’.

Key words: Educational achievement, school learning variables, special educator’s role.

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