Coping with ‘Medicalizing Knowledge’ and School Practices in Florianópolis

This article discusses the presence of the ‘medicalizing knowledge’ in public schools of Florianópolis (SC). The study questions the phenomenon of medicalization in formal education, reflecting on its consequences for the student’s school performance and its ideological function as medicalization tends to hide the school’s responsibility as an institution that reproduces social inequalities. This research is positioned in the field of education sociology, and adopts a quantitative-qualitative approach, reviewing the literature about medicalization and the educational and health policies on (non)medicalizing practices. The research then conducts a study of the unique contexts of action (SARMENTO, 2011), using empirical procedures, and reflects if the use of the concept of medicalization contributes to achieving the research goals when based on a Sartrean methodological theoretical conception in the field of education sociology. Finally, aspects of sociological research on the subject are analyzed, finding that there is a growing interest in medicalization in the field of school education, as well as there is a demarcation of the socio-historical approach related to the anti-psychiatry movement.