Inclusion in higher education: appointments on affiliation of universities with disabilities

Abstract

This article is linked to a research whose objective was to understand the trajectory of affiliation of students with disabilities in HigherEducation. The investigation involved five university students from a federal higher education institution with a self-declared disability in the enrollment form. The empirical material generated through a semi-structured interview was examined in the light of Symbolic Interactionism, a theoretical perspective that assumes that social actors attribute meaning to their acts and to interactions based on a symbolic code. The methodology used was the case study and for this text fragments of student narrativeswere chosen that reflect the challenges that circumscribe their trajectories. The research has resulted in the understanding that the university trajectory of students with disabilities is marked by challenges similar to those of other students in terms of strangeness and learning of the complex codes of the academic universe. For the former, the demands of an academic nature must coexist with those of a symbolic order, such as the confrontation of discrimination, prejudice and aesthetic judgment in function of difference / deficiency.