Experiences of children identified with autism in school and non-school spaces in Montes Claros/MG
Childhood and experiences. Autism and inclusion. School and nonschool spaces.
The general objective of this research is to investigate the experiences of children identified with autism in school and non-school spaces in Montes Claros/MG. The articulation between the concepts of childhood, autism and school and non-school spaces are relevant issues for the field of education, as they allow an ethical and political discussion about the social, cultural and subjective contexts of these subjects. Our foundation will be theoretically based on the epistemological fields of Education, Psychology, Geography and Sociology of Childhood supported by the Historical-Cultural approach by Lev Semionovich Vygotsky (2010, 2012, 2017). The methodology used is qualitative, which, according to Flick (2013) and André (2021), makes it possible to learn the proposed phenomenon and value the researcher's direct and prolonged contact with the environment and the situation being studied. The subjects participating in this research will be eight children identified with autism and their respective mothers and/or caregivers. The instruments for the investigation of the researched phenomena and the research data will be the participant observation, the visual method of photography and the semi-structured interview. The research field will consist of four schools in Montes Claros / MG and the Milton Prates Municipal Park, located in the urban area of this city. The analysis of the phenomena, experienced in the field, will be scrutinized by the bias of content analysis because it allows a critical investigation of the research corpus and its multiple contexts. This research is mainly justified by the fact that we identify gaps in the studies of the state of knowledge in relation to research that makes visible the rights, voices, languages and experiences of children identified with autism, in particular, in their school and non-school spaces. It is also justified by the search for a more critical and reflective awareness in the face of the current educational scenario, marked by constant setbacks and permeated by the abusive use of exclusions, medical reports and medicalizations of children's bodies and by the little or restricted appreciation of the social and cultural environment that permeates the daily lives and experiences of these children.