Concepções sobre a química na comunidade surda: análise na Universidade Federal do Ceará e em escolas adjacentes

Abstract

Education is an universal right; thus, barriers encountered between individuals and knowledge must be understood and deconstructed because access to education needs to be effective. This belief is raised in a wide range of educational documents. For the Deaf Community, education comes through several historical struggles. In addition to the education claim itself, there was (until nowadays) a claim for the recognition of sign language in education (and in the society in general). In this context, this work aims to investigate conceptions within and outside the Deaf Community about Chemistry. The analysis occurs with Deaf students and hearing people who can have some relation with Deaf students at the educacional space. This work has a beginning wich tries to converge Deaf Studies and Chemistry through bibliographic research. Universidade Federal do Ceará (university in the brazilian city of Fortaleza) is the first place where this research happens. After, some schools with Deaf students (nearby the university) are observed. There is conceptions of five groups: Chemistry students (novice students and students who are close to graduation), Deaf students, a teacher who has Deaf Students in the class and a sign language interpreter. This investigation has graphics and its analysis, these data come from questionnaires and interviews. The main purpose of this study is to bring an overview about Chemistry Teaching (in bilingual spaces, where sign and oral languages are used with priority to sign language) to the Deaf Community. Hence, Chemistry teaching for the Deaf People is potentially explored. This situation brings two things: a study model for future research in different geographic areas and a view about main conceptions from the schoolar space wich contains the Deaf Community, in a specific region. In general, a communication difficulty was present in such community and this difficulty is motivating for future research with experimental actions that work with such a question through a visual pedagogy. This pedagogy was also a continuous result in this work through the collection of data with the aforementioned publics. Finally, in general, the counterpoint between incoming and outgoing students shows that many of the dogmatic stances that wound the identity of the Deaf are in the process of deconstruction through the journey of the academic journey. These scores fulfill the objectives of the work and reveal a picture about the perspectives of academic people about the Deaf Education.