Do “des-existir” à “re-existência”: narrativa autobiográfica de uma pessoa disfêmica na Educação em Ciências

Abstract

This dissertation, conducted within the Science and Mathematics Education Research Line of the Graduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Uberlândia, examines the experience of people who stutter within educational contexts, with particular emphasis on its implications for formal schooling and Science Education. The study is grounded in the premise that stuttering, beyond being a condition associated with speech fluency, constitutes a social, cultural, educational, and subjective experience that is produced and mediated by discourses, practices, and power relations, which foster processes of stigmatization, invisibilization, and silencing, thereby shaping forms of participation, belonging, and subject formation within educational settings. Against this backdrop, the study was guided by the following research question: What meanings emerge when individuals who stutter reinscribe their own voices and life trajectories within the field of Science Education, challenging dominant ideals of fluency, rationality, and performance? Alternatively stated, how may reflection on the “stuttering universe” contribute to the construction of an inclusive, responsive, and emancipatory Science Education that recognizes difference as a formative and transformative potential? To address this question, the following objectives were established. The general objective was to explore, through autobiographical narrative, the processes of de-existing and re-existing, understood as the recovery of presence, voice, and agency within educational contexts and Science Education. The specific objectives were: (i) to describe, through autobiographical narrative, the process of “de-existing” experienced by a person who stutters in educational contexts in general and in Science Education in particular; (ii) to examine, through narrative, the presence or absence of scientific, pedagogical, and social discourses that neglect, reinforce, or challenge the invisibilization and stigmatization of people who stutter in schools and within Science Education; and (iii) to identify possibilities for fostering an inclusive school environment and an inclusive Science Education capable of recognizing difference while promoting the emancipation and inclusion of people who stutter. Methodologically, this qualitative study adopts an autobiographical approach in which the narrative of lived experience simultaneously constitutes the source of data, the methodological procedure, and the epistemological device through which knowledge is produced. The analysis is based on the critical interpretation of autobiographical narratives, articulated with discussions concerning normalization, difference, experience, education, and emancipation within the fields of Education and Science Education. The findings demonstrate that the process of “de-existing” experienced by people who stutter is rooted in historical, social, and educational processes that naturalize standards of normality and legitimize exclusionary practices, thereby undermining the recognition of their singularity and restricting their full participation within educational spaces. Conversely, autobiographical narrative emerges as a process of re-existing by enabling the resignification of the experience of stuttering, the critical problematization of mechanisms of invisibilization, and the affirmation of difference as a formative potential. It is concluded that Science Education, when grounded in democratic, emancipatory, and difference-oriented principles, may constitute a privileged space for recognizing the plurality of ways of speaking, learning, knowing, and existing, thereby contributing to the development of pedagogical practices committed to social justice and to the right to difference.