Helena Mesquita

Os desafios da multideficiência: um olhar sobre uma unidade de apoio à multideficiência

The creation of Specialized Units for students with multiple disabilities and congenital deafness-blindness in schools has been one of the implemented measures during the last past years to promote inclusive education. To understand the problem of multiple disabilities and inclusive education for students with multiple disabilities which must ascertain the views of Regular Education teachers who have students with multiple disabilities included in their classes and Special Education teachers about the presence of a Supporting Unit in grouping multiple disabilities they are teaching. To achieve this goal the methodology that seemed most appropriate was the case study and the instruments that have been used to collect data were participant observation and questionnaire. During the investigation it was observed how the Special Unit for Students with Multiple Disabilities was working and it was analyzed the opinions of 24 teachers participating in the samples selected for this study. The results obtained in the empirical component of this study support the conclusion that the teachers surveyed for the Special Unit are the best educational response for children with multiple disabilities to perform both learning and their socialization. We conclude that Special Education teachers feel more prepared to work with this type of audience than teachers from Regular Teaching; and opinions on these issues do not differ substantially between teachers of Special Education and Regular Education teachers .

Perfil psicomotor da criança com perturbação específica da linguagem e Dislexia

Projecting beyond the ideia of the organic and expressive body and cementing a close relationship between motor skills, cognition and language, the current practices Psychomotricity reach a new conceptual field. In this paper of qualitative nature, it was intended to draw the psychomotor profile of a 8 years old child with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and Dyslexia, by using the Vitor da Fonseca ‘s Observation Psychomotor Battery (OPB) and correlate it with the linguistic and cognitive profiles. Through the triangulation of the results obtained in psychomotor, cognitive and language tests, the data in literature was corroborated, which clearly point to the existence of co-morbidity between PEL, Dyslexia and disturbances in the psychomotor’s profile, thereby demonstrating a strong correlation between psychomotricity, cognition and language. Therefore, it’s urgent, and possible, to sensitize the family, the health and education professionals for the need to a multidisciplinary approach in the areas of psychomotricity and language, both at a prophylactic or rehabilitative level.