Law and Special Education: A bibliometric analysis of scientific production

Abstract

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14244/19827199519

In the context of construction and guarantee of the rights of persons with disabilities, the present study focuses on two areas of knowledge: Law and Special Education, using methodological resources of bibliometric analysis to obtain indicators of scientific production in this interface. The search aimed to identify and characterize the scientific production of theses and dissertations that present Law and persons with disabilities as objects of study. The methodological procedures were performed in the following steps: literature review, identification of theses and dissertations, and construction and analysis of the bibliometric indicators of this scientific production. The main results obtained are as follows: a) 119 works were produced between 1991 and 2009, of which 111 are dissertations and only eight are theses; b) 84.8% of the works were produced between 2003 and 2009; c) 48.7% of the works were developed in graduate programs related to the area of Law; d) few studies (24.4% of the total) were financed by scientific research funding agencies, and among those, Capes (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) and CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) were the institutions that granted the largest amounts of resources; e) only one author has developed works both at master’s and doctoral levels; f) only one advisor has oriented four works; g) regarding gender, most of the authors are women, while most of the advisors are men. These results show the relevance of scientific production on the rights of persons with disabilities.

Keywords: Law, Special education, Bibliometric analysis, Bibliometrics.