Bilingual education for deaf students:

notes on the construction of argumentative language in science learning

Abstract

This report presents the experience of a deaf students group who participated in educational practices about Science, that were developed by their teachers and by members of Banca da Ciência, a training program at a public university. The objective of the experience was to provide deaf students the construction of an argumentative language through an investigative and collaborative posture in the appropriation of scientific knowledge. The study was based on the cultural-historical theory, specifically with regard to the construction of language and an approximation with the perspective of teaching by investigation. After that, practices that favored the definition of problem questions by deaf students and the search for answers are presented and discussed. This process of searching for answers counted on the mobilization and planning of experiments by students of the Pedagogy course and members of Banca da Ciência, which were materialized by the work of the two regent teachers of the class, with Libras (Brazilian Sign Language) as the language of pedagogical mediation. The experience showed that the appropriation of scientific knowledge through a work with collaborative investigation mobilized a more active participation of deaf students in situations of debate in the process of building knowledge and discovering answers.