Brazilian Sign Language teaching in Dentistry undergraduate courses at Southeastern Brazil: a cross-sectional study

• Autor(a) principal: Medeiros, Yuri de Lima
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Lopes, Danielle Fernandes, Faria, Luan Viana, Soares, Mônica Regina Pereira Senra, Silvério, Carla Couto de Paula
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por; eng
• Título da fonte: Revista da ABENO (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://revabeno.emnuvens.com.br/revabeno/article/view/933
• topic: Education; Dental. Sign Language. Curriculum.; Educação em Odontologia. Línguas de Sinais. Currículo.

Dental care for deaf patients is considered a challenge. The lack of students’ contact with the Brazilian Sign Language (BSL) during graduation can be an aggravating factor of the oral health condition of this population. Thus, the objective of the study was to offer an overview of the inclusion of the BSL subject in the pedagogical projects of undergraduate courses of Dentistry in the southeastern region of Brazil. It consists of an exploratory, quantitative and cross-sectional study. The curricular matrices of the courses were analyzed, searching for information regarding the following variables: administrative category of the Higher Education Institution (HEI), offer and nature of the curricular component, and workload.  The study population consisted of 176 HEIs, of which 32 did not provide their respective curricular matrices. It was observed that 125 courses (86.8%) were from private HEIs and 19 (13.19%) from public ones, with 83 (57.63%) offering the BSL curriculum component in its matrix, with 71 (91, 02%) of the 78 HEIs that provided the information offer the content as optional or elective. The workload varied from 30 to 80 hours, with an average of 49.7 hours. It is concluded that the implementation of BSL is still discreet in public universities and more concentrated in private HEIs, being, and in its majority, non-mandatory.