O ensino de ciências na escola bilíngue para surdos: A aquisição de conceitos científicos

Abstract

Deaf education in Brazil is no longer something new. Such teaching is the result of a lot of struggle and actions that provide an effective learning that really makes a difference in the personal and professional life of deaf people. Brazilian sign language, as a legal mode of communication, is undoubtedly one of these greatest achievements. Therefore, one of the discussions around this topic is about the educational environment of deaf students, where there are those who defend the inclusive school and there are those who defend the bilingual school. Both have arguments that go beyond educational matters. Regardless of the space attended by the deaf student, the teaching of science is one of the challenges faced by them and by the teachers. It is an area of knowledge that is developed through techniques and also through abstractions. In this research, we intend to understand the actions that permeate the teaching and learning of science by deaf students in Elementary School II, in the context of a bilingual school in Paraná state. Four students and a science teacher participated in the research. This is an exploratory qualitative research and the data were collected through video-recorded interviews with students and a questionnaire with the teacher. The results show that the science teachers are fluent in Brazilian sign language and use it in their classes. Besides the sign language, images and other visual resources are used too due to the absence of specific signs for scientific concepts. Although the students show mastery of the mentioned concepts, we noticed that the scientific language remains impaired because there is no sign associated with that concept in the Brazilian sign language. We also identified different signs created by groups in institutions to represent the same concept. Signals, glossaries and dictionaries are created to supply specific definitions from the confluence of existing signals. In the light of this, we support the creation of a unified signaling system in the country with free access to everybody who is interested because we believe that the specifics of scientific language are of extremely importance for the deaf to increasingly enter the academic space. We understand that the absence of specific signs is a problem that is resolved in the deaf's daily life according to the needs of each group involved, however, scientific concepts are established within the area (despite the dynamism of science) and, therefore, a unified signaling system would facilitate the learning of deaf students and also the dissemination of science.