Práticas Discursivas sobre a surdez e a educação infantil: diálogo com familiares

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze the discourses brought by parents of deaf students inserted in Kindergarten, based on their perspectives and experiences with deafness, pointing out the knowledge/power relations in the construction of truths about the learning of this stage of development, as well as the importance of using a gesture-visual language. The research refers to a case study with descriptive qualitative approach. Participant characterization forms and semi-structured interviews were used as a data colletion tool. Four mothers and one father of deaf children, enrolled in schools with bilingual proposals, participated in the interview in three municipalities in the interior of the state of São Paulo. The interviews were done individually with questions related to the diagnosis of the deafness of the children and, from this, the ways to choose certain types of instruction for their children in early childhood. All the interviews were recorded and transcribed for later analysis, to be developed based on the philosophies of difference, specifically in the studies of Michel Foucault. For purposes of analysis, two guiding axes of discussions were brought: 1) the family experience with deafness and deaf children in multiple perspectives, from pathology to cultural aspects and 2) the school institution as a space for the organization of new social discursive practices of deafness and Libras, observing from the discovery of the diagnosis of the deafness of the children to the possibilities for the future of deaf children, be they of a clinical or social aspect, and also the school instructions by which the deaf children are subject, because of the choice of those responsible. Sign language could be observed within the family and social environment, as well as its importance for the development of children in these discourses. The discourse of those responsible, based on a clinical bias, is still present, but based not on the simple normalization of the child, but on the social barriers that lead the family to seek medical solutions. Therefore, it can be affirmed that, despite the fact that the deafness discourse as a disability is still present, the sign language has gained social visibility and is familiar to the families. In this way, it is emphasized that there is a beginning of a change of truths instituted in the society and the school has been the locus of this displacement towards the social and linguistic conception of the deafness, at least in the initial contact with the family in a process of fight against the normalization of the deaf.