ABSTRACT
This paper presents an analysis of the opinion of leaders of Special Education Research Groups registered in the Directory of Research Groups of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). The research employed an online questionnaire that was applied to 265 leaders of research groups, which obtained 84 responses. The main results were as follows: a) most groups were related to Special Education and were created between 1985 and 2022 in connection with several institutions mainly located in the Southeastern and Southern Brazil; b) the groups have between four and 104 participants; c) their actions were mainly determined in mutual agreement between leaders and participants, in monthly or fortnightly hybrid meetings, carried out in hybrid mode, which prioritized discussions and readings on diverse topics, with a lot of attention given to the topic of inclusion; d) they present a diversity of theoretical-epistemological perspectives; e) the most referenced authors were Lev Semionovitch Vygotsky, Paulo Freire, Enicéia Gonçalves Mendes and Michael Foucault, while Marxism appeared as the main epistemological perspective; and f) they developed several partnerships, mainly with researchers from different groups and national networks, and also took part in scientific events and associations, mainly the National Association of Research and Graduate Studies on Education (ANPEd), the Brazilian Association of Special Education Researchers (ABPEE), and the Brazilian Congress of Special Education.
KEYWORDS
Research Groups; Special Education; Epistemology