A cartografia tátil para alunos com deficiência visual do 1o ano do ensino fundamental.

Abstract

The current research entitled ‘Tactile cartography for visually impaired students’’ develops from the following question: How can visually impaired children acquire knowledge related to spatial representation? In order to do so, it goals to assess how is the approaching and practicing of cartography in the first degrees of school, focusing the actions of the project called ’Geography Workshops for seers and visually impaired students’ developed in the sphere of the Geography Academic Unit of Federal University of Campina Grande/PB. In this sense, it aims to investigate the possibilities of acquiring cartographic knowledge by children with visual impairments (VI) in the first degrees of a public school in Campina Grande/PB, while they are inserted in the environment of inclusion created from their appropriation of real and represented space. Regarding to specific goals, we sought to analyze the ways of apprehension, understanding and appropriation of space by students, identifying how cartography teachinglearning relation is taken for visually impaired students and how the activities proposed to them support the development of spatial understanding and the learning of cartography. To achieve the goals, it was used a case study report, supported by qualitative approach. For empirical data gathering, we observed and assessed the activities of the abovementioned project. Lastly, these activities made possible the involvement and participation of children, but at the beginning, they had difficulties following the proposed activities, which expresses the absence of previous experiences of reflection about the construction and representation of spatial understanding. What became clear with this work is that is needed an effective effort along the students in order to make them better interpret these spatial understanding, both on the real and the representative plane. Therefore, it is concluded that the use of tactile cartography is fundamental to VI students to overcome the difficulties and enable the geographical learning.