Medicalizing discoures in early childhood education problematizations around special education

Abstract

This article is the result of a master’s dissertation study that brings medicalizing discourses
into the daily lives of early childhood education as a central issue, and how special education is
captured by such discourses. By medicalization we mean the process of artificially transforming social,
historical and political issues into medical issues. The text addresses the notion of discourse for
Foucault as an essential concept, bringing questions about normalization, subjectivation and knowledge/
/power relations. In order to discuss the notion of medicalization, we brought authors who defend
different theories, such as Moysés and Collares, who are Brazilian references. This paper consists of
a case study that uses the principles of cartography as a tool, and its research plan was a Municipal
Center for Early Childhood Education of the Municipality of Vitória, ES, Brazil. The theoretical
investigative path resulted in two problematization movements: the first one on the medicalization of
supposed disorders/disabilities, and the second one on the medicalization of the disability condition.
The analysis of these movements demonstrates how the medicalization of childhood occurs despite
the consumption of medicines, both through the creation of labels, as well as through the medical
representation present in the referrals for special education of children who deviate from the standards.