"SHE WAS ALWAYS BY OUR SIDE": PERCEPTIONS OF INCLUSION BY VISUALLY IMPAIRED STUDENTS IN ENGLISH CLASSES

ABSTRACT: Educational policies in Brazil, in the past few years, have recommended the inclusion of visually impaired students in mainstream schools. Considering Vygotsky’s (2000;2008) cultural historical theory of learning and development; Maturana’s (2002) and Tomasello’s (2003) studies on social cognition, this article aims at analyzing the way two students conceive the process of inclusion in an English language classroom. An interview with the students made it possible to observe the positive impact that didactic strategies and the teacher´s attitudes had on the way these students faced learning and the foreign language. KEY WORDS: foreign language learning – blind students - affectivity