Educação inclusiva: construção de um modelo para identificação e atendimento de alunos com necessidades educativas especiais de natureza intelectual-desenvolvimental em escolas regulares do ensino primário em Moçambique

Abstract

The Mozambique Act on the National System of Education reaffirms the duty of the State in organizing and promoting education for all, and considers inclusion, equity and equality as educational principles in all subsystems. The implementation of these principles, in the perspective of Inclusive Education, places the country under pressure to find adequate responses designed to identify and meet the variety of needs of the pupils with Special Educational Needs in regular schools. This research was aimed to contribute to that end by devising a model, adapted from the Response-to-Intervention model, for the identification, assessment and intervention of pupils with Intellectual and Developmental Difficulties. The study was run under the Action- Research methodology, technically built through a collaborative consultancy approach. It was developed in three phases: The 1 st one consisted of devising a new model, adapted from the original one, a process that involved the participating teachers; the 2 nd phase concerned testing the designed model; and the last phase was the actual intervention on the targeted pupils as well as the sharing of the study’s results with teachers and parents. Participants were 2 school managers; eleven primary school teachers and 556 2 nd grade pupils. Data yielded a model consisting of three levels of intervention: Structural Intervention, Universal Screening, and Group Intervention. The screening identified pupils “at risk”, once their responses were categorized as being below pre-school, pre-primary school, 1 st grade and 2 nd grade. The intervention produced evidence from 29 pupils whose responses revealed Intellectual and Developmental Difficulties. Teachers hailed the model as attainable, practical and viable for the Mozambican context.