The objective of this paper is to discuss the preparation of teachers for special education, analyzing the curriculum organization as an expression of a determined conception of special education, deficiency and the educational practice destined to students who are considered deficient. The Federal University of Santa Catarina was elected to be the empirical field during the period of 1998-2001, when two modalities of Special Education qualification coexisted in the Pedagogical course - regular and of an emergency nature. Through documental analysis, principally of the course projects and from discipline notes, reflections were made about the curriculum and the historic constitution of Special Education in Brazil. It was gathered from the analysis that the preparation of teachers for Special Education is subsidized on the medical-psychological model and that this constitutes itself as an incorporated disposition (habitus). After having analyzed the disciplines and their respective notes, one can perceive the permanency of the understanding of this educational phenomenon related to a student with a biologically based deficiency diagnosis and in a more accentuated way, by psychology. The maintenance of such understanding bases for the area, removes from Education the understanding of the deficiency and the pedagogical action as a social factor.
formation of teachers; curriculum; special education
