Bilingual deaf education in Brasil: narratives and materials

1. Contextualizing the topic

One of the questions that frequently comes up in discussions related to deaf education concerns the relevance of specific Deaf Schools in the contemporary scenario. What is the potential of this space? What does this space have to offer? Why is this space important for teaching deaf students? What are its limits and challenges?

Even though the deaf school has stayed with the marks of special and benevolent treatment, and its history evidences the colonial and the use of speech practices, our opinion about school nowadays is pretty simple: deaf schools are considered one of the most important places for building personal identity and collective imaginary of deaf individuals - it's considered - metaphorically - "the nest of deaf culture". But deaf schools are spaces that are frequently threatened, considered segregationists, and schooling spaces that may disappear. 

But other ways have been taken (or must be taken) and this means that this type of school has been being reinvented (or must be reinvented), and this is - precisely - what we consider to be the current challenge, what we understand as our responsibility.  Because of that, we propose a research with the school community, in order to analyze the capabilities and the current challenges in this schooling space. 

It's important to mention that we don't have a defensive or offensive posture, but a position of researchers and partners who are interested in explaining why and how we can undertake the school's reinvention, having the schooling narratives as a starting point, approaching some of the demands, positions, and confrontations that the deaf school deals with, nowadays. Besides that, we consider that, when taking care of the Billingual School Education for the deaf, the discourses are not separated from the possible conditions of space and time in which we live.  

When researching about the deaf school, we don't intend to position ourselves pro or against what is developed, even less to insist on an undebatable truth about bilingualism or teaching-learning. Based on Foucault, we look for searching what constitutes those schooling contexts, enabling a discussion in which we look for perceiving how the different solutions for a problem could be constructed; but also how these different solutions happen in a specific way of problematization. (FOUCAULT, 2004).

We consider bilingual education as an education that consists of different statements, above all, in academic, political, and schooling practices. This way, operating with the statements produced on interviews, or verifying the resources and materials used in school enables the construction of a significant web, situated in the discourse order (FOUCAULT, 2014).  

We understand bilingual education as a path constructed and pursued in contact with the school's daily life. The paths and the experiences that join the schooling process need registration and debate, in order for us to understand the cultural schooling practices. 

2. Presentation of GIPES' research 

This presentation is based on the results obtained in the research about deaf culture productions in the context of bilingual education[1], developed by researchers from the Interinstitutional Research Group on Deaf Education, known as GIPES[2], in Portuguese.  

The general objective was to analyze deaf culture in contexts of bilingual education for deaf students, in the spaces of basic/elementary education. 

The research happened in the schooling space, and, to do that, we chose specific deaf schools located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul because we consider that, inside these spaces, cultural artifacts have been produced, and they spread and generate effects on students and teachers. 

            On the research, thirteen schools were investigated, divided as the following: four schools in the capital; four schools in Porto Alegre's metropolitan area; and five schools in the countryside of the state, which come from different spheres: private schools (four), public state schools (four), and public local schools (five). On the chart below, you can see the names of the schools and their localization, as well as the sphere to which they're divided into.  

Chart 1: Escolas onde a pesquisa foi realizada

The data production consisted of questionary for the schools, interviews with students and teachers, observations of the school's daily practices, reading the schooling documents (Pedagogic Projects, School Regiment) - and official documents (laws, decrees, directions which guide the deaf education in our country). 

The research had the approval of the Ethics Committee of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul - UFRGS (number 3.136.016). This way, the observation of the school's daily practices prioritized the registration of the organization in schooling time and spaces, the communication dynamics, and the use of the languages in the bilingual context, inside the classroom. 

The interviews with students and teachers happened in each one of the thirteen schools and around ten students and two teachers were interviewed, summing up to a total of one hundred and thirty students and twenty-six teachers (around one hundred and fifty-six, in total). The participation of the professors and students considered the following aspects: being available to participate, and teaching (or studying) time in school. A basic question protocol was used in the interviews, with the appropriate linguistic mediation attempting to the differences in terms of acquisition in sign language. To do that, the participation of deaf researchers and translators was essential to the linguistic or cultural adaption of the questions. In the case of teachers, there was the option of the interview to be in Portuguese or LIBRAS. But, with the students, all the interviews were made in LIBRAS (Brazilian Sign Language) 

By crossing the produced data through the different levels of the research, we obtained a dense registration of the daily schooling practices. Through this registration, a set of discoursive recurrences was made about the elements of deaf culture, Sign Language, Portuguese language and its uses in the context of Bilingual Education. These elements served as a starting point to the development of the categories which subdued the deepening of the investigation's analysis: representations about deaf and deafness; bilingualism: the space of the languages in the education of deaf individuals and markers of deaf culture in the school context. 

3. Bilingual schooling education for the deaf: narratives from students and teachers

Now I present the most important results from the research:

About the general aspects of Deaf Schools: 

• The number of students enrolled in specific schools for the deaf in thirteen schools in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, from 2011 to 2016, showed that in 2011 there were 794 students enrolled, but this number kept decreasing and in 2016, fell to 674 students. 
• The small amount of students in the classes enables the communication in Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS);
• 'Deaf individuals with some disability' compose the classes in the bilingual scenarios. 
• The school has shown to be the place for sharing experiences and a place to dialogue about the 'things in the world'.
• Deaf schools are marked by the use of visuality and by the school community interaction in sign language; 
• The visual experience has shown to have great potential in the school space;

About the bilingualism topic, it was possible to notice the recurrent discourse that: 

• Defending bilingualism is the will of the educational community of these schools. 
• The education of deaf students is effective when it is based on bilingual education;
• Sign Language is considered the deaf's first language and joins the school's teaching in all fields of learning, while Portuguese written language operates as an additional language;
• Portuguese written language is seen as useful and necessary in school and society;
• The languages are taught at the same time in school, considering the students' linguistic conditions;
• Based on an additive perspective of bilingualism (one language enables learning the other), we understand that there isn't only one way of teaching deaf students;
• Bilingual pedagogical proposals still require further theoretical and methodological discussion;

Current challenges faced by bilingual education refer to the teacher's major's degree and the qualification of the educational proposals. 

• The political-pedagogical proposals are discursively tied to its' maintainers; and are also crossed by other official documents and theorizations in the Education field;
• The daily practices in these educational contexts still cannot achieve effectively the bilingual teaching proposals, because the teachers do not have time to study and discuss the projects together, and also because of the lack of didactic materials .
• There is the necessity of graduating bilingual teachers that would work in schooling contexts of deaf education. 
• Only a few teachers consider themselves fluent in Brazilian Sign Language (LIBRAS). 
• There is a need for deaf professionals (teachers and workers) in schools; 
•  The LIBRAS/ Portuguese translator's job is a task that is usually done by bilingual teachers, above all, in meetings, speeches, and conversations with the students' families, because none of the schools have a specific contract with sign language interpreters.
• There is a lack of bilingual didactic materials published in Portuguese-LIBRAS.

These topics constitute the recurrences found in the analyzed materials, but also require deep and further discussion. This way, it is possible to affirm that the research fulfilled the purpose of assisting the discussions of the proposals in the area of basic education for deaf students from the perspective of bilingual education. Finally, this presentation showed results that certainly open up to many other debates.