The inclusion of people with special needs into regular schools is one of the most important challenges that teachers, predominantly, have to face and deal with. Studies about characteristics of interaction among students with and without special needs will make it possible to implement planned actions in order to promote affective relationships among people with and without special needs, enhancing the understanding of the social repercussions. The participants of this study were 103 classmates of Down syndrome students of a regular school in a city in the south of the country. The participants answered a questionnaire with structured questions and indicated the name of, at the most, 3 classmates in the following categories: friend; non-friend; will go to college and won't go to college. It was observed that the higher the academic development and degree of participation in the school activities, the greater the possibility of the students with Down syndrome being considered a friend by his classmates. Even though they participated in the same activities and might present an academic development level similar to that of their classmates, their peers revealed negative expectations about the Down syndrome colleagues' going to college. In none of the investigated categories (friend; non-friend; will go to college and won't go to college) did the students with the Syndrome receive the highest number of indications. This means that there are students in the researched classrooms who are recognized more by their classmates, whether positively or negatively, than the ones who have Down syndrome.
Down syndrome; social interaction; educational inclusion; regular teaching organization; special education
