Patologização das dificuldades de aprendizagem: uma análise das práticas patologizantes e medicalizantes da educação na atualidade

Abstract

The process of pathologizing learning difficulties is still a frequent practice in the Brazilian educational system. That, in turn, teachers use this phenomenon to diagnose the student with some kind of disorder, in which this corroborates the non-learning of the individual. In this sense, the discourse of medicalization of education is responsible for referring the student to the health system, which is justified by the medical expression of the student's learning difficulties. Because most of the causes of non-learning of the subject occur due to questions of pedagogical methods used by teachers. Therefore, we carried out a bibliographical investigation with the aim of analyzing the process of pathologization of learning difficulties and its relations with the pedagogical trends that influence the process of pathologization and medicalization in Brazilian education, as well as defining the concepts of medicalization of education and pathologization of learning difficulties. After this step, we carried out an investigation into the pathologization process of learning difficulties today, through the analysis of research published between 2017 and 2022, in the database of Theses and Dissertations for the Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Persons (CAPES ) and on the Google Scholar website. The analysis of this study was developed in the critical perspective of School Psychology, especially the theories of Historical-Cultural Psychology and Historical-Critical Pedagogy. Subsidized by these discussions, the work presents the following research problem: Why are there pathologizing practices in the contemporary school context, even in the face of criticism about their use?. Thus, it can be concluded through the analysis of the research that it is necessary for the educational system to create strategies that induce professionals not to use these processes. Because, in education, teachers are the main users of practices of pathologization/medicalization of learning difficulties. That directs the blame for school failure to biological reductionism, that is, the problems that arise from numerous social, political and economic issues fall only on the child's individualism. This study is justified by its academic relevance, since pathologization is present in the contemporary context in which we are inserted.