Representações sociais sobre a deficiência evidenciadas em livros de ciências do ensino fundamental aprovados pelo PNLD

Abstract

This research aimed to analyze how disability is represented in the expository texts of the Natural Sciences Textbooks of Elementary School. We conducted a qualitative research of documentary type, taking as theoretical orientations strands of Social Representations. The empirical corpus was composed of seven teaching collections, or twenty-eight books that undertook the 2nd to 5th Elementary School year. The fact that the books are the version of the Teacher's Manual, approved by the National Textbook Program (PNLD) of 2013 and belong to the best classified publishing in the program ranking were also sample bounding elements. This implies that, in addition to assessed, these materials are the most requested by teachers from all over Brazil. The methodological guidance was undertaken as prescribed by content analysis conducted by collecting and analyzing data. Data collection was undertaken through the following phases: initial reading for identification of "deficiency appearances"; creation of a database with the preliminary information; development and validation of the categories. The analysis procedure was performed based on the frequency and interpretation of the elements that showed the Social Representations. As a result we identified two Social Representations of disability in Textbook of Natural Sciences that are anchored in: Disability as favoring element of an inclusive culture and disability as the thematic content contribution element. These findings show that the Textbooks demonstrate the approach to the ideas of inclusive paradigm for which disability is presented from the perspective of human diversity. The books also present the crossing of paradigms through the rooting of ideas that also drive the category to the abnormality idea. Thus, the duality of social thought, expressed through Social Representations on disability in these materials, demonstrate the contradictory and controversial way that modern society has to conceive, particularly in practical terms, this category.