Adoptive children and teenagers: how they are perceived by the school?

While studies of adoption are numerous, very little is found about how adoption is perceived by the school community. The objective of this research is to analyze how adopted children are perceived by the school. The central hypothesis is that the school attributes to adoption the learning disabilities and behavioral difficulties of students who are foster children. We interviewed seven professionals working in elementary and secondary education in private schools in Niteroi-RJ. The interviews were seminstructered, fully transcribed and the resulting texts were subjected to discourse analysis. Among the findings it can be said that the professionals do not attribute solely to adoption the behavioral and learning difficulties of students who are foster children, despite the fact that their speech were full of prejudiced ideas about the topic.