The inclusion of autistic people in normal classrooms: challenges and possible ways to overcome them

Abstract

A fundamental theme in today's society is inclusion. And in the school context this has been discussed in a very intense way. In this context, among students who can be considered to have “special educational needs”, there are people with autism. Autism and all disorders, including autistic disorder, childhood disintegrative disorder, unspecified generalized developmental disorder (PDD-NOS) and Asperger's Syndrome, have merged into a single diagnosis called Autistic Spectrum Disorders - ASD. Considering the problem involving strategies for the inclusion of students with ASD in common classrooms, the objective of this work was to understand the challenges for inclusion of autistic people in common classrooms, and possible ways to overcome these challenges. In order to achieve this objective, a qualitative research was developed. Data were collected from a questionnaire applied to six elementary school teachers named in this study as P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6. From the analysis of the questionnaire applied to these teachers, we found that schools as well as teachers have faced some barriers to the inclusion of students with ASD, namely: limited knowledge about strategies and lack of continuing education; lack of institution structure; difficulty in dialogue between family and school; and in addition, in some cases we have verified the erroneous view of some education professionals, who understand the difficulties of children with ASD only as socialization, disregarding their learning capacity. Therefore, we can conclude that continuing education, the structuring of schools with specialized educational assistance, a more consistent and conscious dialogue between family and school, are strategies that can help overcome the barriers that are hindering the learning and inclusion of students with ASD .