Mosaico da escola de surdos: fragmentos da educação bilíngue

Abstract

This thesis aimed to investigate the bilingual education in early grades of Basic Education in three public deaf schools in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The investigation focused on contexts of linguistic minority in bilingual, bicultural and bimodal settings of deaf education. In this scenario, we articulated studies in the fields of Applied Linguistics (CAVALCANTI, 2006; FABRÍCIO, 2006; MOITA LOPES, 2006) and Education, with an emphasis on the field of Deaf Studies in Education (KARNOPP, 2010; LOPES, 2010; STROBEL, 2009). Data were generated along the research through the interaction between the researcher and the schools, considering teachers’ reports, observations, videos and images of the students’ productions available in the schools. Among the main conclusions of this study, we can highlight that those schools still evidence traces of the special school, but with a different design, since the rates of enrollment are still low, with small, multi-grade groups, in which there are not only deaf students, but also deaf students with other disabilities associated or not to deafness, students with and without cochlear implants, and few deaf professionals. The use of sign language is a means to guarantee significant pedagogical practices that are fundamental to make deaf education meaningful. Although there is a bilingual proposal in the institutions here addressed, it is necessary to (re)construct a bilingual educational project that values, prioritizes and considers the bilingual life condition of the deaf, which is based on both the deaf difference and the deaf way of life. In other words, this bilingual school needs the deaf tools. Sign language is undoubtedly an important link in the deaf school, as it enables social experiences by favoring the interaction between the deaf. By means of the Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), the school should also reconsider the way it sees the deaf writing by acknowledging it as something that translates their world view, their language knowledge, their way of being, and has its particularities. The objective of teaching Portuguese language writing to the deaf, as several researchers have stated (KARNOPP, 2015; PEREIRA, 2011), should favor the comprehension and production of texts that are spread in society. There are weaknesses and strengths in the context of bilingual deaf schools considered. It is necessary to carry out other researches and favor the dialogue with the deaf schools by means of a productive articulation between Applied Linguistics and Education aiming at (re)signifying bilingual pedagogical proposals that are able to give access to Portuguese reading and writing both inside and outside the schools by taking into account the deaf ways of life, the deaf culture and Libras. Then, it is possible to value, recover and foster potentialities and, at the same time, seek for ways to overcome the weaknesses in this mosaic in which we see the bilingual schools of this research.