Including students with special needs in regular education requires preparation by the school community in order to promotes participation of all students. The purpose of this study is to understand from the point of view of primary and secondary municipal public school teachers, the pedagogical strategies these teachers used to include children with special needs in regular classes. This required conducting semi-structured individual interviews and later semi-structured group interviews with 11 teachers of 5 schools, 1 representative of the Centro de Formação e Acompanhamento à Inclusão (Inclusion Training and Monitoring Center) and 1 Learning and Teaching Coordinator. The interviews were recorded and transcribed and after several readings it was possible to identify the key topics: the perceptions and mental images of the teacher on disability, the training of the teacher to promote actual inclusion, as well as the use of dedicated teaching strategies and the formation of a support network at school. The participants used general strategies such as lectures and debates, and specific strategies such as student assessments, adaptation of teaching materials, activities in pairs, and joint work with the assistant teacher and inclusion monitor. Part of the participants shared a positive idea about the special needs students, demonstrating they believed these students had potential for learning. The discourse of the other participants showed that they did not believe in these potentialities. The teachers identified the need for institutional support for their work, such as on-going teacher training based on daily demands. Part of the challenge of implementing an Inclusive Education program integrated to the Educação para Todos (Education for All) idea requires us to face demands such as these in order to effectively enforce the rights of children with special learning needs.
Inclusive Education; Special Education; Special Educational Needs; Children with Disability