A Relação entre aprendizagem e desenvolvimento em pesquisas brasileiras sobre desenvolvimento da atenção e TDAH

Abstract

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the subject of discussions in the areas of health and education. In this scenario of contradictions, on the one hand it is argued that ADHD is a disorder of organic origin, located in the prefrontal cortex, which impairs the direction and sustentation of attention and in some cases related to hyperactivity. On the other hand, ADHD is considered a supposed disorder, since there is no evidence to prove the origin of this “dysfunction” in the organism, opposing a positioning that individualizes questions of different orders, leaving aside social and educational aspects. Historical-cultural Psychology seeks to overcome the dichotomy between individual/society, biological/cultural, proposing the incorporation of what is organic to historical and cultural development. Amidst the confrontation of theories in which the vision that gives ADHD the status of disorder to be treated by medication seems to overlap, an issue arises for us: the relation between learning and development is considered to understand the psychological function of attention? Thus, the general objective of this study was to analyze in brazilian studies on development of attention and ADHD if and how the relationship between development and learning is considered. We catalog 161 theses and dissertations from the areas of Education and Psychology, in a survey carried out between october 2017 and february 2018 in the following databases: Portal of Thesis and Dissertations of CAPES and in the sites of the Universities repositories. Only 15 researches, in fact, addressed the objective of the present study and were selected and analyzed in depth from three axes: 1) Relations between learning and development; 2) Concepts about development of attention and ADHD; 3) Actions / interventions for ADHD. In the first Axis, we systematized three general relations: a) Learning as a promoter of development; b) Learning as a way of interaction with the environment, not a guidance of development and development as biological maturation and c) Learning as school learning. In the second Axis the main conceptions about development of attention and ADHD were: a) Design of development according to the Historical-Cultural Theory, critical to ADHD as a biological disorder; b) Authors who are based on Vigotski to discuss the issue of development, but consider ADHD as a disorder of neurobiological origins; c) ADHD as a disorder of hereditary biological origin; d) Psychological function of attention as an Executive Function, which is deficient in the case of ADHD. In the third Axis, the listed proposals refer to: a) Educational actions that seek the development of attention; b) Medication treatment, stimulation and training of attention and cognitive-behavioral therapy; c) Intervention by games. Finally, we believe that changes in the school context, as presented in some of the research proposals, related to the pedagogical, didactic, curricular, material, etc. contexts. should be extended to all students, as a majority rule and not exception, for those who are supposedly suffering from a school-only disorder, paraphrasing Moysés (2001).