The school inclusion of children with autistic spectrum disorder: family and teachers between challenges, expectations and possibilities

Abstract

This article aims to analyze, from the perspective of family and teachers of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the challenges, expectations and possibilities arising from the school inclusion of these children in two schools in the municipality of São Paulo. To do so, it exposes data that are configured as a result of the master’s research developed in the Professional Master’s Program in Management and Educa-tional Practices (PROGEPE) of the University Nove de Julho (UNINOVE), in the period 2015-2016. It is a research that has as theoretical reference the conception of emancipatory education of Paulo Freire, and in which, based on the assumptions of the qualitative methodology of an empirical-theoretical character, case studies were carried out from data collected though semi-structured interviews and focal group. Among the results obtained, in this article we highlight the advances in pedagogical work, between con-tradictions in the reality of these schools, that are driven, by the demand, to meet the legal determination of inclusion. And at the same time, we point out the expectations of mothers, who experience a daily life marked by difficulties, and their concerns related to the conditions of the school to fulfill this right and overcome prejudice and discrimination.