Efetividade de uma intervenção educativa no conhecimento de profissionais da educação infantil sobre Transtorno do Espectro do Autismo

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder is considered a disorder of neurodevelopment, whose cure is still unknown, but which is likely to receive multiprofessional interventions that promote permanent results, regardless of the level of damage presented. Many children still receive diagnosis late, and this delay can be explained, in part, by the lack of knowledge of education professionals about this disorder. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational intervention for early childhood education professionals about their knowledge about the Autistic Spectrum Disorder. A total of 674 teachers and supervisors of early childhood education from the public network of the city of Montes Claros, Minas Gerais, Brazil, participated in the intervention. The educational intervention consisted of a training in five modules: (1) What is Autism Spectrum Disorder? (2) Presentation and discussion on the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT); (3) How to identify a child with signs of Autistic Disorder in the school context; (4) Observing the school context and (5) How to conduct referrals of children with possible signs of Autism Spectrum Disorder? At the beginning of module 1 (pre-Educational Intervention) and at the end of module 5 (post Educational Intervention), a questionnaire was applied to evaluate the knowledge, composed of 29 assertives about the characteristics related to Autism Spectrum Disorder. Relative frequencies of hits, errors and "don't know" of the 29 assertives were calculated and the McNemar Chi-square test was used to compare these frequencies between pre and post Educational Intervention. Descriptive measures of the number of hits, errors and "don't know" were also calculated, and the pre and post IE quantitatives were compared using the Wilcoxon test. The results showed that the educational intervention performed was effective and contributed to the improvement or acquisition of knowledge by the participants. It was verified that there was an increase in the number of hits and a reduction in the number of questions answered as "I don't know". The findings suggest that Educational Intervention on Autism Spectrum Disorder should occur continuously among educational professionals, since this disorder is increasingly prevalent, there is a turnover of professionals each year and the greater the educators' knowledge about the Autism Spectrum Disorder, the greater the chances of early referrals for diagnosis and inclusive practices will be more effective.