Post-Graduation Professors and Coordinators with Special Needs: Perceptions about Teaching, and Working during COVID-19 Pandemic

Roberta Pires Corrêa,Tania Araujo-Jorge,Paulo Roberto Soares Stephens,Helena Carla Castro,Roberto Rodrigues Ferreira

doi:10.4236/ce.2021.1211194

Abstract

The challenge of implementing new teaching strategies as well as innovating in the academic environment is a task demanded during this global humanitarian health problem named COVID-19 pandemic. It demanded that most countries adjust their education systems to meet the needs of all students isolated in their houses, requiring even more from professors and coordinators. In this article, we collected and evaluated the perceptions of professors and coordinators of Brazilian postgraduate courses, self-declared with special needs on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the period 2020/2021. For that purpose, after being approved by the ethical committee, we applied a questionnaire answered by 87 participants with special needs, including professors (n = 14) and coordinators (n = 73) of post-graduation programs from all five Brazilian regions. Among the 87 participants, there were people with blindness/visual impairment (n = 35), deafness/hearing impairment (n = 15), as well as TDHA/Dyslexia/Autism (n = 11), or physical disability (n = 8), among others. Our work revealed that COVID-19 not only impacted the academic level but also the personal and psychological levels of these professionals with the development of anxiety and depression similar to other professional classes (e.g., health area). Thus, strategies of attending this group from these Brazilian Lato Sensu and Stricto Sensu graduate programs should be planned to help their psychological and mental health and consequently assure their good performance as professors and researchers in the near future.

Highlights

Coronaviruses (CoVs), belonging to the subfamily Coronavirinae, family Coronaviridae and order Nidovirales are capable of infecting vertebrates and humans
The Coronavirus disease 19 is an infective disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2, a virus that led to millions of deaths from aggravated pneumonia and named by the Coronaviridae Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV, 2020, McNamara, 2020)
Our result agrees with the demographic data about people with special needs in the Brazilian population currently available in which blind and deaf are among the largest groups with special needs in Brazil (IBGE, 2010)

Summary

Introduction

Coronaviruses (CoVs), belonging to the subfamily Coronavirinae, family Coronaviridae and order Nidovirales are capable of infecting vertebrates and humans. The Coronavirus disease 19 is an infective disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, a virus that led to millions of deaths from aggravated pneumonia and named by the Coronaviridae Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV, 2020, McNamara, 2020). This pathogen, which mainly causes enzootic infections in mammals and birds, is capable of infecting cells of the respiratory, gastrointestinal, hepatic, and central nervous systems of humans, reported in recent decades (Chen et al, 2020, Le Chang et al, 2020; Peeri et al, 2021; Telenti et al, 2021). It presents dilemmas similar to other infectious diseases of global perspective, which need to be explained whereas its complexity still has to be understood (Cheng & Shan, 2020; Wu et al, 2020)

Methods

Results

Conclusion