Mapping needs and specificities in the teaching of Portuguese as second language for deaf students: towards an inclusive educational language policy

• Grant number: 25/10355-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: July 01, 2025
• End date: June 30, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Applied Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Ana Cecília Cossi Bizon
• Grantee: Tatiana Martins Gabas
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Médicas (FCM). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 24/01130-0 - Science Center for the Development of Assistive Technology for Bilingual Education for the Deaf - CCD-TAEBS, AP.CCD

Abstract

Despite the advances achieved through the legal formalization of LIBRAS, with the approval of Law 10.436 of 2002 and Decrete 5.626 of 2005, including the mandatory inclusion of LIBRAS in teacher training courses and the presence of translators/interpreters in classrooms with deaf students, the field of bi/multilingual education for the deaf still faces challenges regarding the implementation of the law in order to guarantee the meaningful inclusion of deaf students in the school environment. The myth of monolingualism imposes difficulties in recognizing the specificities of the linguistic and cultural practices of deaf students and the specificities of teaching Portuguese as a second/additional language. As Bizon and Silva (2023) argue, the lack of a national program focused on teacher training and a technical and didactic apparatus aligned with learning needs continues to make deaf students invisible in the context of Basic Education. This scenario is aggravated, as the authors argue, by the limited supply of teaching materials that include deaf students and understand them as bi/multilingual learners. Based on the need to fill the gap in teaching materials for Portuguese as a second/additional language for deaf learners, the project aims to investigate the needs and specificities of the bi/multilingual education context for deaf students. Aligned to a critical and translingual perspective and the notion of linguistic and communicative repertoire, the project's second objective is to develop multimodal teaching materials supported by the learning needs and demands that emerge in the Basic Education context. For this purpose, it is guided by an understanding of teaching materials as an instrument of linguistic and educational policy, and by the vision of expanded linguistic education (CAVALCANTI, 2013) based on the perspective of socially engaged and anthropologically informed teaching, with a focus on cultural and linguistic plurality and diversity. Thus, the production of teaching materials aims at a type of pedagogical investment in linguistic materiality that leads deaf learners to recognize the ideological functioning of languages (BIZON; DINIZ, 2019). It is thus expected to shorten the distance between the actions that consolidated the field of affirmative policies and the field of bi/multilingual education for the deaf, aiming at the social inclusion and political strengthening of deaf students.