Introduction

According to the School Census of Basic Education of the National Institute of Pedagogical Studies Anísio Teixeira (INEP, 2019), in Altamira, Pará, the number of enrollments of regular elementary school totaled 21,406, 12,249 of these from the initial years and 9,157 from the final years. The Education of Youth and Adults totaled 2,232 enrollments and in Special Education in common classes there were 956 students; these data reveal a considerable quantity in both modalities of education, both in the EJA and in Special Education, signaling the need for specific policies to achieve inclusion in the municipal education system.

Youth and Adult Education (EJA) is an opportunity to resume, learn or continue studies, condensing content and minimizing time in the classroom, in which students idealize the representation of the EJA as if it were the old supplementary teaching. However, the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education, no. 9,394 of 1996 (LDBEN 9394/96), and the National Curriculum Guidelines for Youth and Adult Education, under opinion no. 11/2000 (DCNEJA 11/00), characterize the EJA as the appropriate basic education modality for the reception of young people and adults who by some impediment were unable to attend or even complete basic education at the right age.

Such legal instruments bring modifications and amplifications of the concepts discussed and generated in the late 1980s, in which the term EJA differs from the term of the old Supplementary Teaching. As long as, in the same opinion (DCNEJA 11/00), it is reported that this type of teaching brings in its outline the understanding of the rescue of a historical social debt, inherited since the colonial period, in which an education of access, permanence and undemocratic success was constantly conserved, favoring a dominant elite, thus strengthening social inequality in the Brazilian context.

LDBEN 9394/96, Chapter II, Section V, Article 37, states that education is for all and should be free and compulsory, and in this sense the EJA “will be intended for those who have not had access or continuity in elementary and high school in their own age”; it also states in paragraph 1 of the same article that “Education systems will guarantee free of charge to young people and adults, who were unable to study at regular age, appropriate educational opportunities, considering the characteristics of the student” (BRASIL, 1996, our translation). ⁴

In this sense, for these subjects who have been denied their rights, the EJA represents a possibility to meet a need for professional qualification with the objective of individual growth.

Another relevant factor is the representations for students of the EJA who have hearing impairment and that emerge in the educational institution. The Federal Constitution of 1988, in its Art. 206, provides that “Teaching will be taught on the basis of the following principles: I - equal conditions for access and permanence in school [...].”; and in Art. 208 it is expressed that it is “The duty of the State with Education will be effected by ensuring: "[...] III - specialized educational care for people with disabilities, preferably in the regular school system; [...]” (BRASIL, 1988).⁵

Therefore, the rights of the disabled guaranteed in Articles 206 and 208, item III of the Federal Constitution of 1988, are reiterated in the Law of Guidelines and Bases of National Education - Law No. 9,394/96, which establishes in chapter V, Article 58, that the education of students with disabilities should preferably be performed in the regular school system, difficulties in adequate care of the disabled.

The National Policy of Special Education in the Perspective of Inclusive Education (PNEE), launched in 2008, proposes the concept of inclusive education, based on the conception of human rights, because it understands that it, in addition to cultural, social and pedagogical, brings in its essence the defense of a political action that ensures a quality education for all students, the inclusion of students with disabilities, global development disorders and high skills/giftedness, through access, participation and learning of these students, to practices that respond to their specialized educational needs (BRASIL, 2008).

There is a need for well-designed, systematized actions that contribute to the access and inclusion of people with disabilities, in such a way that their social and political rights are respected and guaranteed, as determined by the National Guidelines for Special Education in Basic Education - CNE/CEB Resolution No. 2/2001 (BRASIL, 2001), which assigns to states and municipalities the responsibility of organizing, in the Departments of Education, a sector that responds to special education issues within basic education schools, aiming at improving student care as special educational needs.

The Ministry of Education project to implement Multifunctional Resource Rooms in municipal and state schools aims to support education systems in the provision of specialized educational care in a complementary or supplementary way to the schooling process, as provided in article 8(V) of CNE/CEB Resolution no. 2/2001. This space has become the locus of this research because it understands that, by identifying it, the student with disabilities is the link that enhances communication between education, health and social policies in an inclusive perspective.

Despite the strategies of Resolution CNE/CEB No. 2/2001 (BRASIL, 2001) and pnee (BRASIL, 2008), which provide for guidance on the need to incorporate curricular adaptation, evaluation and planning according to the special educational needs of the students into the Pedagogical Political Project (PPP).

In particular for students who have hearing impairment, in accordance with Decree No. 5,626/2005, approving Law No. 10,436/2002, which makes Libras official in the Brazilian context as a mechanism for communication and expression for hearing impaired subjects, taking as a milestone a proposal for bilingual education, starting from Early Childhood Education to Higher Education, being the teaching of Libras as the first language for the hearing impaired and the Portuguese language being second language.

In this bias, the aforementioned Decree No. 5,626/2005 specifies primordial peculiarity for hearing impaired subjects, in which it makes the use of a distinct language, which has a very diverse characteristic of reading the world through visual knowledge. This decree and law are the result of political battles of the collectives of the hearing impaired in the Brazilian context, requiring the recognition of a specific language for educational inclusion, libras (BRASIL, 2005; 2002).

It was problematized what would be the social representations in the Municipal Education of Altamira, Pará, for the students of the EJA who have hearing impairment. To answer this problem, the objective was to scientifically disseminate the experience experienced by two hearing impaired students who attended the teaching modality of the EJA and the social representations in view of the exclusion process motivated by disability and age/grade in elementary school in the municipality of Altamira, Pará.

The study is relevant due to the presence of two hearing impaired students in the EJA, in the first stage, in the regular teaching room, at night (SEMED, 2017), accessing a right guaranteed in the Federal Constitution of 1988, which provides in article 205 that

Education, the right of all and the duty of the State and the family, will be promoted and encouraged with the collaboration of society, aiming at the full development of the individual, its preparation for the exercise of citizenship and its qualification for work (BRASIL, 1988). ⁶

Social rights guaranteed in the Brazilian magna carta, which are approved through LDBEN 9394/96 and supplemented in Resolution No. 3 of June 15, 2010, which establishes the Operational Guidelines for The Education of Youth and Adults. However, difficulties in adequate care for students are still perceived.

According to ^{Romão (2006}), our Constitution determines that education is a right of all, but we note that programs are fragmented, with difficulties in their pedagogical and methodological conception, in which diverse projects and programs are born as options and with care objectives in an attempt to minimize historical social exclusion, having in their context plans with universal guidelines and pedagogical actions , almost always disregarding the specificities and local ethical and cultural characteristics of each community of our country.

Thus, we believe that our study contributes academically and socially, transmaying and making visible our experiences experienced in our undergraduate course (2014-2018) in the daily school, in which the actions of educational public policies are present.

Our theoretical foundation was based on studies on the social representations of Moscovi (1978; 2005); piaget child world representation (1979; 1994) and defectology fundamentals of vygotsky abnormal child (1997). As methodology, we chose the qualitative research approach, which according to ^{Delandes, Gomes and Minayo (2009}, p. 21, our translation), consists of responding to specific subjects, working “[...] with universes of meanings, motives, aspirations, beliefs, values, and attitudes””⁷ and this

set of human phenomena is understood here as part of the social reality, because the human being is distinguished not only by acting, but by thinking about what it does and by interpreting its actions within and from the reality lived and shared with its peers (^{DELANDES; GOMES; MINAYO, 2009}, p. 21, our translation).⁸

As long as, for organicity and practicality, our research was divided into three stages: “(1) Exploratory phase”, with an action plan containing the necessary preparatory processes to go to the field; “(2) fieldwork”, leading our theoretical and methodological planning built in the previous phase, we instrumentalized ourselves with field diary for annotations of our observations of empirical dialogues with “communication and dialogue with those surveyed” and “(3) Analysis and treatment of empirical material”, which are “sets of procedures” that aim to “value, understand, interpret empirical data” in conjunction with the theoretical foundation constituted in the action plan (^{DELANDES; GOMES, GOHETS MINAYO, 2009}, p. 26-27).

The denial of access, permanence and school success in Brazilian education is historical, and has been going through from the colonial period to the present day, primarily for those who have more social difficulties, including for hearing impaired students in the EJA, which has been providing the exclusion of these, due to studying at night, where the structures do not favor them for complementation and supplementation of their specific needs in the face of barriers that hinder their learning , since for the disabled of the daytime periods (morning and afternoon) structures and resources are available.

This article is organized in five moments: (1) Introduction, which briefly presents the legal framework of the EJA, our problem issue, our objective and methodology of the research; (2) Social representations in education, with the theoretical foundations of the authors ^{Moscovici (1978}; 2005), Piaget (1979; 1994) and Vygotsky (1997); (3) Youth and Adult Education, bringing statistical data and contexts of this type of education in the city of Altamira, Pará; (4) Special Education and inclusion from social representations, with legal frameworks on the Special Education Policy in an inclusive perspective and the voices observed of students and teachers within the school unit and; (5) Some considerations, which concludes our research with our findings on the social representations of hearing impaired students on EJA.

Social representations in education

The authors' studies on the social representations of Moscovi (1978; 2005); representation of the world of the child of Piaget (1979; 1994) and defectology foundations of the abnormal child of Vygotsky (1997) in the school units are relevant to education, taking into account their contributions to society, both individual and collective, of all those involved in the social context in which the school institution is inserted, considering all the artifices represented and established.

In these studies of the authors mentioned above are two main aspects, one of which is highly important for the demonstration of affinities in the midst of objective information the performance of roles and functions in the school unit, the other considering the situations of system of ideas, policies and pedagogical in the educational sector. We have to take care not to make mistakes with our methods, so that they are not superficial studies, only with descriptions of their originality, perform a deeper, structured and contextual organicexamination, exploring the attributions and collective knowledge of society and cultural representations.

According to Piaget (1979; 1994), in childhood the child reprocesses the data of its context, starting with the favorable knowledge equipped by their psychological, affectionate and social knowledge, and are acting by convictions, fed by precisions, which are connected to their societal environment. In this sense, his studies have shown that primarily one of humanity's abilities is the building of representations.

According to Piaget (1994; 2005), there are two terminologies referring to representation. The first, which transpires the enlarged meaning that determines to conglomerate the knowledge of his intellectual drawings. The second, drawing limitedwhat points out the intellectual idea, with characteristic convocation of distant facts, thus, the universe of thoughts is followed by images.

The author mentions the important functions, in this case, the symbolic or semiotic, in which they allow the representation that suggests the distinction between intellectual design, language and definition, because it provides the plausible obtaining of the diction or meanings of the collectivity. However, in the sentient-motor moment, the child although does not imagine why he still cannot distinguish between drawing and language with the definition he has. For this, the knowledge of the sentient-motor action precedes the diction, giving organicity in the context of the activity in which it will later consist of interventions of the thought knowledge.

To this end, Piaget states that the physical-motor action precedes the representation, and the obtaining of the diction is still dependent on the exercise in charge of the symbolic function. As long as, the representation results in artifice of proper reproduction, thus, reproduction establishes some of the sources of representation, in which it essentially provided its imagined signifiers. Nevertheless, with the reproduction of the activity, the behaviors of childhood are expanded and little by little internalized.

The author continues to affirm that the representation begins at the time that there is, continuously, the distinction and the constitution of meaning and definition. For this, the initial meanings are supplied by reproduction, and the definitions are provisioned by the predominant absorption of the playful. Thus, the meaning and definition will gradually dissociate in the sentiry-motor program and develop, thus extrapolating the adjacent moment; for this, the absorption and arrangement are based on each other, in this conjuncture, in the midst of reproduction and the meanings supplied by the different absorption configurations that admits the composition of the symbolic function.

^{Moscovici (1978}), visibly evidences the societal attendance of the representation, which now presents a set of importances where these layers are placed in a characteristic style and end up reacting frankly to some fact. It also ensures that the subject is seen and understood through comfortable descriptions of the dominating typology, filled by occasions of some coerce of the collectivity to make the conduct of reality tuned with the commonly accepted layers.

Also for ^{Moscovici (1978}), social representation is a preparation for action, which directs conduct, reorganizes and rebuilds subsidies of the climate in which the conduct lacks to contain space. In this sense, the drawings and suggestions express the character and scale of values of a subject or a set.

This author illustrates that by linking social representation as an interface between the singular local context and the societal context, such links, when interconnected in an aspect of a collectivity under modification, alludes in no longer to the notion and a social history already realized, however a new societal history desired to still be realized.

Also according to ^{Moscovici (1978}), social representation is an arrangement of drawings and diction, it emphasizes and represents actions and circumstances established by social exchanges, thus, they are common to subjects and collective subjects; therefore, the representations architect what is an element of the aspect mediated by the affinity that these subjects and the collective subjects retain with the elements.

In line with ^{Moscovici (2005}), a certain amount of autonomy and dependence remains in each environment consecutively, and this environment speaks regarding our context, the environment in which we live, the collectivity of belonging, thus, the context is natural and social.

From the point of view of the history and culture of the disabled suggests a diversified method with regard to the studies of thetheories that exist about the development of students who present such characteristics. For Vygotsky (1997), such deficiencies are a fact architected within society and built by it, referring to the interpretations that seek the similarity, labeling and classification of the subject who has disabilities. For this author, the subject with disabilities does not present the obligation to follow the same speed of the other subjects, considering that they develop in another way, being specific to each subject and his disability.

Still for Vygotsky, when the disabled need actions with fewer activities, some professionals disregard the divergences that arise characterized as necessary for the development of subjects in a comprehensive way, even if there is a need to walk regularly, both subjects with disabilities and do not have disabilities need actions that serve as the basis for the development of higher psychic functions , such as thought, diction, knowledge, attention, among others, however, the experience with other subjects in the social context arises with feelings, with the playful, with the corporate norms and with the universe present for all the subjects who make up society.

In this bias, Vygotsky presented innovations for the collective actions of the subjects, warning that the student does not live in a bubble, in a unitary world, because in this world, actions are based on exchange between subjects, in which our actions are part of the spoken and intellectual conviviality, which is indispensable and peculiar for the development of the subjects living in the societal context.

With this, we agree with Vygotsky (1997) when he states that to study the fertile universe put in the context of school units we need to seek the specificities of each subject's walk, its singularity, so that we can reinvent them in pluralities for immersion in the world; therefore, it is not the abandonment of the peculiarities of the singular subject, but rather subjective insertion through interfaces of reciprocal dependencies, with the support of the faculty and professionals of supplementary support, who consider and agree with the challenge and that are characteristically organized for the diversity of the universe of the subjects.

Youth and adult education and special education in the municipality of Altamira - Pará

At this moment, in our two stage, fieldwork was developed, instrumentalized with field diary with notes of our observations with empirical dialogues and exchange with the subjects researched. Thesurvey of the structures of the pedagogical-curricular component, the resources and equipment of the school, with the intention of understanding how these environments, resources and equipment available contributed to the realization of pedagogical work and educational practice in Youth and Adult Education and in Special Education, in the school under study.

Regarding the structure of the usual pedagogical-curricular component EJA from which the educational practice in elementary school in Altamira is characterized by the example of the State Department of Education of Pará (SEDUC/PA), because there is no exclusive policy organized by the Municipal Department of Education of Altamira. However, the pedagogical coordination informed us that: both: both the pedagogical body and the teaching staff are instructed to perform analyses of the context in which the school unit is territorially part, appropriate to the real world condition of the students. ⁹

According to the Ministry of Education, to face the exclusionary processes that mark the education systems in the country, the Secretariat of Continuing Education, Literacy and Diversity (SECAD) is created, which among the objectives we highlight the respect and value of the diversity of the population, ensuring public policies as instruments of citizenship and contribution to the reduction of inequalities.

SECAD, through the Department of Youth and Adult Education, seeks to contribute to mitigating brazil's historical debt to all citizens 15 years and older who have not completed basic education. To this end, it is essential that teachers and teachers of public education systems know how to work with these students, using pedagogical methodologies and practices capable of respecting and valuing their specificities (BRASIL, 2006).

However, in Professor Lis's conception ¹⁰: There were improvements in youth and adult education policies, but teaching conditions are not ideal, nor are teachers' specific training to work with disabled people. Although undergraduate courses currently have in their curricular component disciplines focused on Youth and Adult Education and Special Education, this is still incipient, because after they are formed there is still a lack of specializations focused on the policy cited. In this speech, the need for continuing education is clearly evident, especially for EJA and Special Education.

With a specific singularity of the different age group, with their own characteristics, ^{Freire (1987}), signaled that for decades teachers have been looking for suitable methods and practices for more meaningful learning, but little progress has been made. To overcome this distance, the educator must become involved with the reality of the student, listen to their daily experiences and carry out their planning with dialogical principles; in addition, their educational practice must always be subsidized with the help of teaching materials that represent and make sense for the students' lives, thus providing reflective moments that contribute to a more motivated and liberating learning.

It was found that the school has ample physical spaces and accessibility (ramps and bars); it is airy, with excellent operating conditions, in excellent conditions of organization and conservation, thus signaling that it is adequate for the number of students it serves in the three shifts. Serving the exact number of 800 students, according to statistical data from the 2017 school census, informed by the school unit management. Regarding resources and equipment, the school provides computers, printers, data shows, textbooks and diversified educational games.

Professor Liz tells us: Night shift students do not have access to the computer lab and multifunctional resource room due to the lack of professionals available to meetdemand. In this statement, it is perceived that essential services are denied to the students of the EJA.

Regarding the teaching organization of the school, we noticed four situations: 1) that the planning dynamics usually happens at the beginning of the school year, with the participation of the entire school community, at the time of construction and reassessment of the School's Political Pedagogical Project - PPP; 2) the preparation of the PPP follows the guidelines of the curriculum proposal of the EJA of the state of Pará, because in Altamira there is no proposal formulated by the Municipal Department of Education; 3) from the PPP, teachers are instructed to elaborate their curricular planning (by area of knowledge) bimonthly, according to local diagnosis, commonly prepared by the school's pedagogical skimming, based on the enrollment forms and the socioeconomic questionnaire of the students; 4) focusing on PPP and curriculum planning, teachers organize teaching and learning projects that will be applied during the school year.

Regarding the treatment of educational practices, we verified in the Municipal Elementary School that classes for EJA are taught with the support of teaching and learning projects, defined based on the specificity of the clientele attended and in a dialogical way, resulting in more dynamic and active learning, because

To Paulo Freire, dialogue is part of human nature itself. Human beings are built in dialogues, because they are essentially communicative. There is no human progress without dialogue. For him, the moment of dialog is the moment to transform reality and progress. (^{GADOTTI, 1989}, p. 46, our translation). ¹¹

This dialogical dynamic was observed in the speeches of the teachers and students, who said: that they were continuously, before the beginning of classes, at the time of breaks and at the end of classes. This highlights the importance of dialogue for the teaching-learning process, besides providing freedom to students, who were not previously expressed in the classroom, did not have in the teacher a mediator of new knowledge, nor were they encouraged to participate in classes or any other school activities.

Among the students present in the first stage of the EJA were two twin hearing impaired; excluded by public education policies due to lack of access at the right age, they experienced another exclusive process, which permeates the lack of strategies expressed in the policies for special education, meeting their specific needs.

At school, in the classroom, they were guaranteed the support of an interpreter in Libras, who tells us that the hearing impaired were not literate at the right age in that language, so the interpreter and the teacher in charge of the class sought didactics and dynamics for the inclusion of these. However, in order to soften the rights injured, the professionals sought to improve their literacy.

An aggravating factor observed in the speech of the interpreter and the teacher was that, lack of shift in the Specialized Educational Care room,and according to the speech of the hearingimpaired, it was not feasible for them during the day because they had to work to survive and that they did not receive any kind of benefit. As for teaching in Libras, the interpreter sought to alphabetize them, although hearing impaired, due to the need for communication with other colleagues, and created arrangements of languages to communicate.

Observing the hearing impaired and the other classmates in the interval of the class, it was possible to notice that they could communicate with their colleagues through representations with signs created by themselves. When we talked to a fellow student asking if he understood them, we got the following answer: yes, through gestures we were able to understand them, but it would be interesting to learn Libras, both for them and for us.

With the support of the interpreter, we asked the hearing impaired students if they could communicate with their classmates, with the teacher and with other school staff. They answered that: we create our own ways to talk to people, but it's very difficult because people aren't prepared. We asked about Libras, what they thought. They answered that: from what the interpreter has been showing us, it would be the best, but it had to be for everyone, because we live everywhere.

Historically, EJA students have been experiencing exclusive processes due to the lack of local educational public policies, with attention to regional and municipal specificities, following state and federal models, and should be guidelines, not a recipe to be followed. In this bias, the disabled, in this case the deaf, experience the overlap of exclusion, one, the denial of literacy at the right age, the other, the lack of specific literacy in the EJA for the disabled.

Arroyo (2007, our translation), in his balance sheet on the EJA, explains that “in our hands are another nine or ten years to build an EJA that follows the right of young popular adults to a more human life”¹². In this sense, he goes on to affirm “that there is more dynamic in our society, the popular social movements that take up flags that were from the education of young people and adults: social transformation, liberation and emancipation” (ARROYO, 2007, p. 13, our translation)¹³. Despite the advances experienced in public education networks, in the EJA, primarily for students who have hearing impairment, ten more years later (2017), there is still much to advance, in the bias of an education from an inclusive perspective.

Social representations of students of the EJA with hearing impairment

The EJA and Special Education from an inclusive perspective from social representations are very rich themes, however, they conceive a huge challenge to our studies, considering that the themes, as well as their societal aspects, seek appreciation in the academic environment, being part of the usual element of school units in Brazilian public educational policies.

As this study aimed to scientifically disseminate the experience experienced by two hearing impaired students who attended the teaching modality of the EJA and the social representations in the process of exclusion motivated by disability in elementary school in the municipality of Altamira, Pará.

We observed that the fact of ensuring access to and permanence of disabled students in regular school classrooms is not a guarantee of school success, that education policies from an inclusive perspective cannot be reduced to the simple fact of ensuring the permanence of the student in a regular class, thus excluding the obligation of Specialized Educational Care. Contemporary education lacks transformations, consenting to qualify teaching and learning, characterizing mainly the school context to foster the formation of critical subjects and creators, being deficient or not, passing through the issues that go beyond access and permanence of classrooms in regular education.

This study showed challenges in the context of the EJA in an inclusive perspective, which are: school dropout, lack of didactic material and method with more specific rules for JaS, which includes hearing impaired students, very long and disconnection with the reality of the students, lack of attendance and stay in school, lack of specific continuing education for teaching staff and the lack of multiprofessional staff in the ESA in the night shift, which greatly hinders their work.

The Education of Youth and Adults for hearing impaired students in the Elementary School network in Altamira is still a challenge, because specific public policies are lacking, since municipal schools implement national and regional arrangements, which, although recognized in debates and studies, do not address our local specificities.

However, for hearing impaired students, despite the bottlenecks faced in the daily life of the EJA and the challenges in night teaching, this modality of teaching represents an opportunity for professional qualification, since they need to work to survive and that due to the need for inclusion they see in the Brazilian Sign Language as a necessary tool for their individual intellectual development and social school for the transformation of their autonomous reality.