ADOLESCENCE, EDUCATION AND INCLUSION: STUDENTS’ SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF ADOLESCENTS WITH DOWN´S SYNDROME IN THEIR CLASSROOM

Abstract

One's first social contacts beyond his family happens at school. How children and adolescents settle themselves at school influences their social relations during adulthood. Through a social inclusion perspective, this qualitative and interdisciplinary study aimed to get to know social representations developed by students regarding Down's Syndrome adolescents. Its basic referential theory was the Social Representation Theory. Data was collected through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with students who shared their classroom with adolescents with Down´s Syndrome. Data collected was submitted to methodological procedures of Speech Analysis, dialectically with Social Representation Theory. It was observed that relation between students with and without Down's Syndrome is positive and that the latter worries about how the former is treated by other people. Therefore, they stand for equity in adolescents with Down's Syndrome´s social relations. Nevertheless, the idea of capacitism was unveiled in representations, which is a great obstacle for inclusion.