1 Introduction

The expansion of access for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to regular professional education institutions was brought about by the change in educational conception to the inclusive education paradigm, starting in the second half of the 20th century, based on the defense of equal rights and opportunities.

Throughout history, professional education of people with disabilities⁵ has occurred in parallel with the regular education system, in specialized institutions or workshops (^{Silva & Dore, 2016}), with an assistance and normalizing character (Silva, 2011). From the 1990s onwards, Brazilian legislation and national public policies, ratifying the guidelines of international documents in favor of human rights, advocated universal education and equal learning opportunities for all. In Brazil, the expansion of access for people with disabilities to Basic Education was marked initially by the Federal Constitution (1988), which instituted the State’s duty to offer Specialized Educational Service (SES)⁶ to people with disabilities, and the National Education Guidelines and Framework Law (Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional - LDBEN - Law no. 9,394, of December 20, 1996), which defined Special Education⁷ as a teaching modality preferably offered in regular schools.

From 2008, with the formulation of the National Special Education Policy from the Perspective of Inclusive Education, there was a greater consolidation of the access of this population to regular education, as well as the definition that specialized support services would no longer replace this schooling, becoming complementary, in the case of people with disabilities, or supplementary, for gifted subjects. More recently, the Brazilian Law for the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities, Law no. 13,146, of July 6, 2015, guaranteed the right of these subjects to access, permanence, participation and learning at all levels and modes of education, with the availability of accessibility strategies in their various dimensions.

In this context of changing education policy, it was sought to understand, in the developed research, how the schooling of young people with ASD in Integrated Technical Education has taken place, a professional training modality that joins High School and Technical Education taught in the same educational institution⁸. Through an integrated curriculum, Integrated Technical Education presents particularities such as the extensive workload, specific school routines, in addition to differentiated objectives, content and methodology from regular High School. In view of these specificities, the question was raised about what educational practices have been adopted in the schooling of students with autism in the Integrated Technical Education. In this study, educational practices are understood as the educational work developed within the scope of the technical institution, which covers not only the teaching practice but also the educational actions promoted by the teaching support sectors.

Despite legal guarantees and education policy guidelines, the number of people with disabilities in integrated technical courses is very low, as indicated by data from the Statistics Synopsis of Basic Education between 2014 and 2018 (National Institute for Educational Studies and Research ‘Anísio Teixeira’ [INEP], 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019), described in Table 1. In this survey, the enrollments of young people with ASD are not discriminated against, and are included in the group of Special Education students. The low percentage of enrollments, over the analyzed period, explains the difficulty of access to Integrated Technical Education by people with autism and other students with disabilities. In 2018, despite the increased access of these students to the Integrated Technical Education, enrollment in Special Education corresponded to only 0.5% of the total in integrated technical courses in Belo Horizonte (BH), Minas Gerais, as shown in Table 1.

Regarding this limitation of access to professional education, Cordeiro (2013) observed that people with disabilities had predominantly non-linear trajectories in public schools. According to the author’s analysis, the precarious educational path of these students would cause a bottleneck in the transition to High School due to the failure to complete Elementary School, as well as difficulties in carrying out the knowledge tests that make up the selection processes of technical schools. As for the educational process of students with ASD, the study conducted by Lima and Laplane (2016) reinforces the findings of Goessler (2016) when they identified that most of them, about 92%, had a partial or incomplete school trajectory, which would indicate the existence of obstacles to staying in school, especially in the final grades of Elementary Education in the Municipal System. Thus, the authors found the high dropout rate of these students, since few reached High School (Lima & Laplane, 2016).

For the limited number of young people with ASD who managed to overcome the obstacles present in schooling, in Elementary School and in the process of entering technical courses, challenges may still be imposed along the course of technical education. In this sense, studies demonstrate the lack of policies and institutionalized actions in the perspective of inclusive education, the lack of adaptations that make educational practices accessible to these young people, in addition to weaknesses in the training of educators (Oliveira, 2014; Rodrigues, 2014). In this regard, Goessler (2016) observed that the course of interruptions in the education of people with disabilities was repeated in professional education, in a way that most of them did not complete the technical course. The author stressed, however, that this issue was not restricted to students with disabilities.

The results of these studies indicate the need for reflection on how school educational practices can be more accessible to students with autism, given the specificities that these young people have. To this end, it is important to understand that ASD refers to a continuum of neurodevelopmental disorders whose diagnostic criteria comprise two areas: difficulties in social communication and social interaction; and restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests or activities (^{American Psychological Association [APA], 2014}). The difficulties in these two domains have been present since childhood and can be manifested in different ways, with intensities ranging from mild to severe, which affects the type of support that the subject requires (^{APA, 2014}). However, it must be considered that the severity of the manifestations of autism can vary according to the context and the time in life (^{APA, 2014}).

Autism was described as a specific nosographic category in the 1940s by psychiatrists Leo Kanner (^{Kanner, 2012}) and Hans Asperger (Asperger, 2015), but only in 1980 was inserted as a new class of disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. As of the 5th edition of this manual, the term Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) started to be adopted in order to express the variety of manifestations related to socio-communicational and behavioral difficulties experienced by people with ASD. According to data made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the USA10, autism is found in all ethnic-racial and socioeconomic groups and occurs four times more in boys than in girls. The CDC estimates that one in 54 children has autism in that country. In Brazil, there is no official data on the prevalence of ASD, but it is estimated that approximately two million people have this condition, according to the diagnostic criteria (^{Fadda & Cury, 2016}). The causality of autism has not yet been fully defined, but, according to ^{Fadda and Cury (2016)}, the most accepted thesis today refers to the view that a combination of genetic and environmental factors alter the brain functioning of people with autism.

In view of the particularities presented by people with ASD, this work had the general objective of analyzing the educational practices adopted in the schooling process of a student with ASD in Integrated Technical Education, based on the perceptions of this young man, his parents and his teachers. The specific objectives of this research were to identify the perceptions of students with autism, their parents and their teachers regarding the educational practices adopted in the Integrated Technical Education and to analyze the contribution of these actions to the student’s schooling in Integrated Technical Professional Education.

2 Methodology

To achieve the presented objectives, a qualitative research was carried out, in the case study modality, based on the experience of a young man with ASD, enrolled in the technical course in the IT area of ​​a technical institution of the Federal Network of Professional, Scientific and Technological Education, located in the city of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The data were collected through documentary research and semi-structured interviews, carried out with the student with autism, his parents and with his teachers, throughout his trajectory in the integrated technical course of the school. The research proposal was evaluated by the Ethics Committee of the investigated institution that approved its realization, with the Certificate of Presentation for Ethical Appreciation. The study included ten volunteer participants, who did not receive remuneration for this participation: a student diagnosed with ASD, the father and mother of this young man and seven Integrated Technical Education teachers. The selection of participants occurred based on the identification of the only student who declared having autism in the investigated institution, during the period of development of this research. Consequently, the parents and the Integrated Technical Education teachers of that student with ASD were identified. Among these teachers, those who agreed to participate in this research were selected, which represented approximately 36% of the total teachers linked to the technical course in the area of ​​information technology, between the years 2016 and 2018 (period between the student’s entry into the school and realization of the research).

The interviews were conducted in a classroom of the technical institution, at five different times: with the student with ASD, individually; with parents, in pairs; and with the teachers it took place in three formats: in groups (with four teachers), in pairs and individually. A flexible script was used for the interviews, with open questions about the education of young people with autism in the integrated technical course, regarding the facilitating and hindering aspects of this experience, of the social interactions in the school environment and the educational practices adopted by the federal technical institution, including on the difficulties of implementation and contributions of these actions to the educational process of the student. These questions were presented to all participants and other topics were addressed in specific groups of respondents. Teachers were also asked questions regarding knowledge about ASD, previous experience with students with this condition, and family participation in the school life of young people with autism. Parents and students were asked questions about the school trajectory prior to Integrated Technical Education, the choice of the technical course, the preparation for the selection process of the federal technical institution and the implementation of adaptations in the selection tests for the integrated technical course. All interviews were recorded on audio, upon participants’ agreement, and were fully transcribed.

The material of the interviews was contextualized and complemented by the data collected in the documentary research that consisted of the analysis of the following institutional documents: political pedagogical project, proposal for administrative organization chart, resolution on class councils, notices of selection processes for integrated technical courses, explanatory note on the eligibility for places reserved for people with disabilities in the selection process, data from the Permanent Vestibular Commission on the number of candidates with disabilities and adaptation needs in the selection process, student report card with ASD of 2016, 2017 and 2018, teaching plan of a discipline of exact sciences and report of the psychosocial monitoring sector of students.

The contents obtained by data collection were analyzed by the content analysis method, looking for meanings based on the correspondence between the “semantic or linguistic structures and the psychological or sociological structures (for example, conduct, ideologies or attitudes) of the statements” (^{Bardin, 2011}, p. 43). The data analysis process consisted of three phases: (1) pre-analysis, in which the institutional documents were selected, the interviews were transcribed and the collected material was read; (2) exploration of the material and treatment of the data, which involved coding the texts obtained with the transcripts of the interviews and institutional documents, whose contents were organized into thematic categories; (3) inference and interpretation of the contents, with the identification of the meanings associated with the themes, based on the theoretical contribution related to inclusive education and ASD.

3 Results

The data on the schooling of students with autism in the Integrated Technical Education was organized into three main categories related to the objective of this study, as described in this topic: facilitating factors, hindering factors and educational practices adopted with the student with ASD, which covers the subcategories: support actions for students, collaborative work, curriculum flexibility, individualized monitoring, teaching proposal and didactic procedures.

4 Discussion

The analysis of the student’s schooling process with ASD in Integrated Technical Education cannot be generalized given, above all, the variety of manifestations of autism, but it points out possibilities of educational practices with these young people in the context of professional education. Throughout the student’s educational path, the researched technical institution did not have the resources and services of Special Education provided for in Brazilian legislation, but sought to promote accessibility through actions built collectively and implemented in different areas of the school. In this way, different sectors assumed the tasks of the SES, identifying the educational needs of young people with ASD and proposing actions in an articulated way, together with the student’s family, which resulted in favorable results for his schooling. Among the actions adopted by the technical institution, two strategies stand out, mainly because they make it possible to adapt the educational process of students with autism to their learning style: curricular flexibility and individualized monitoring. In the scientific literature, the flexibility of curricula is a controversial topic that involves different conceptions (^{Garcia, 2006}; ^{Glat & Blanco, 2007}; ^{Tavares Silva, 2015}). In the researched schooling experience, the flexibility of the temporality of the curriculum maintained the objectives and content taught in the subjects, not substantially affecting the basic elements of the curriculum, as pointed out by ^{Heredero (2007)}. The author clarifies that the adjustments regarding the curricular temporality and the evaluations modify the form of access to the curriculum, referring to how and when it is taught, and how it is evaluated.

As for the proposal of individualized academic monitoring, it can be understood as a mediation modality in the learning process in which mediators are in a different position in relation to the teachers of the discipline: less vertical and, probably, with a different language, depending on age as well as for the fact of taking on the role of students. This individualized academic support seems to have benefited not only the student with autism, through different time and didactics, but also the monitors, for the opportunity to expand their knowledge about ASD and to develop social, emotional and pedagogical skills. However, ^{Mendes, Silva and Pletsch (2011)} warn that, when implementing support services for students with disabilities in other school spaces and times, the school may not rethink its curricular practice and the pedagogical work developed within the classroom. The authors question that, despite the insertion of new subjects and services in the regular school, there is a rigidity of the curriculum that leads to the dissociation of the teaching and learning processes, and to the permanence of the concept that the student with disabilities should be “normalized”. Thus, a diversified and flexible educational work can oppose the tendency for normalization, still present in school practices, when considering human heterogeneity. In this sense, the non-traditional teaching proposals in the Integrated Technical Education proved to be more appropriate for the education of young people with autism (and perhaps of the other students) by providing the construction of knowledge through different paths and school times.

5 Conclusions

The reduced access of young people with autism to professional education indicates the urgent need to improve the educational practices of regular Basic Education schools, especially at the beginning of schooling for these subjects. This could be opposed to the reduction of training opportunities resulting from poor education, expanding the entry into professional education. Schools still need to move towards overcoming the normalizing tradition of education systems (^{Mendes, Silva, & Pletsch, 2011}). Considering that the change in educational systems towards an inclusive perspective is a process, the entry of young people with autism in the Integrated Technical Education and the adoption of educational practices more accessible to them represent an advance in the schooling of people with ASD, in the context of professional education. The presence of students with autism, in federal technical courses, may provide opportunities for improving educational concepts and practices in order to make them accessible to the diversity of young people who are part of the school community.

When analyzing the educational practices adopted with a student with ASD in the Integrated Technical Education, this research pointed to interventions that proved to be effective in the investigated case study. The work corroborates findings from the scientific literature on advances in the learning of people with autism through the implementation of non-traditional teaching methods, when they provide adequate conditions for the particularities of these subjects (^{Gomes & Souza, 2013}). The results of this study also indicate that adjustments in the temporality of curricula and teaching plans, the adoption of diverse didactic procedures, which articulate theory with practical situations and use an objective language can make the educational process more accessible to young people with autism. In addition, this research highlights the notes of ^{Rosin-Pinola and Del Prette (2014)} and ^{Silva and Mendes (2012)} on the importance of supporting social interactions and the educators’ handling skills for the students’ socio-emotional development and highlights the contribution of this support for the permanence, participation and learning of the young student with autism, as well as of other students, in the school environment.

Considering that the research in question was a case study, other investigations can be carried out on the schooling of young people with ASD in technical education institutions. The study of the youthful condition of people with autism is also a relevant topic since most research addresses autism in childhood, with little research on adolescents or adults with ASD (^{Guedes & Tada, 2015}). In this perspective, the experience of youth, on the part of young people with ASD, could be researched in the context of the Integrated Technical Education. Finally, with regard to graduates of integrated technical courses, there is also the possibility of investigating the entry of young people with autism into the world of work.