Effects of the Brazilian inclusion policy on the linguistic education of a deaf child in the preschool

• Autor(a) principal: Borges, Kátia Regina
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Teixeira, Keila Cardoso, Witchs, Pedro Henrique
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por; eng
• Título da fonte: Signo (Santa Cruz do Sul. Online)
• Texto Completo: https://online.unisc.br/seer/index.php/signo/article/view/18657
• topic: Deaf child; Linguistic education; Early childhood education; Linguistic environment; Inclusion policy; Criança surda; Educação linguística; Educação infantil; Ambiente linguístico; Política de inclusão

This article discusses the potential effects of Brazil's inclusion policy on the linguistic education of deaf children. To this end, based on the theoretical perspective of authors from the field of Deaf Studies and Language Policies, a case study was conducted, observing interactions of a deaf child enrolled in a public kindergarten school in southeastern Brazil. Through analysis of video-recorded classroom observations and field notes, the study highlights efforts and challenges in implementing bilingual education, where the roles of the Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) and Portuguese (spoken by the majority of the participants in the classroom) are still not well-defined. In addition, the study also revealed that the observed deaf child has limited access to both languages, crucial for his/her human development. In conclusion, in order inclusion to be viable, bilingual deaf education in Brazil requires more precise guidelines and linguistic-pedagogical training for for all stakeholders, including family members, to create a linguistically-rich environment that supports the holistic development of deaf children.