Education for the Deaf and Teacher Training: a Franco-Brazilian Analysis

ABSTRACT:

The bilingual perspective of education for the deaf poses a challenge for teacher training, especially in the Brazilian sociocultural context, where the predominance of the language inherited from the colonizing country has historically devalued Brazilian linguistic minority groups. Considering the French origin of education for the deaf in Brazil, this study aimed to analyze the organization of teacher training in Brazil and France, in order to contribute to further reflections on bilingual education for the deaf. Based on the Vygotskian analytical assumptions of the historical-cultural approach, data collected from digital teaching and learning platforms of Higher Education Institutions, both Brazilian and French, were analyzed, along with legal documents governing teacher training in both countries. The abstraction of data, carried out based on the analytical categories identified in the analyzed phenomenon and its historical development, points to contradictions established in the trajectory of education for the deaf, expressed in the need to transmit the knowledge historically accumulated by humanity to deaf individuals, recorded primarily in the written form of the majority language, using another language of a distinct modality. The importance of bilingual education in undergraduate programs and alternative forms of organizing school education for the deaf are discussed.

KEYWORDS:
Bilingual education; Education for the deaf; Teacher training; Socio-historical-cultural theory