Teaching the portuguese language to the deaf in teacher training: a discussion in favor of an expanded language education

Abstract

This work aims to present a discussion on the results of a scientific initiation research aimed at surveying the provision of the teaching subject of written Portuguese for the deaf in teacher-training programs in Portuguese Language and, in Pedagogy courses, at Brazilian federal universities, to verify the design of these subjects and its implications for a teacher training aimed at developing an expanded linguistic education (Cavalcanti, 2013). Assuming configurations of qualitative research, of an interpretive (Moita Lopes, 1994) and exploratory nature, covering documentary and bibliographical studies (Gil, 2008), the work included: 1) collecting of subjects programs that include teaching of Portuguese for deafs, considering aforementioned courses; 2) interpretative study of the material collected in light of the theoretical framework of the research. From the analysis of the corpus, we found that language policies aimed at training teachers to teaching Portuguese to the deaf still present an unsatisfactory scenario, since, as the data showed, around 80% of federal public universities do not comply with what is determined by the Decree nº 5626 (Brasil, 2005) regarding the provision of this training. Furthermore, in terms of proposals sensitive to the linguistic and cultural specificities of deaf people, we defend the emergence of looking critically at the designs of disciplines and thinking about possible reformulations, anchoring, for example, the Portuguese teaching in studies about translanguaging and decoloniality. We believe that its assumptions can collaborate with teacher training that focuses on an expanded linguistic education, in order to guarantee, for deaf people, a more socially just education and break with the colonialities of being, knowledge, power and language.