Aprendizagens na atividade de trabalho de uma professora de matemática ouvinte no Colégio de Aplicação do Instituto Nacional de Educação de Surdos - INES

Abstract

The research was conducted at the Application School of the National Institute for the Education of the Deaf (CAp/INES), located in the city of Rio de Janeiro, with the aim of understanding the learning processes that occur when hearing mathematics teachers begin working in a bilingual school specifically for deaf students. The research material was produced through individual interviews with eight teachers from the mathematics team at INES; classroom observations of one of these teachers with an eighth-grade class over a four-month period, following an ethnographic approach as an investigative logic in education; and notes from two meetings with this teacher, in which classroom records were discussed. From the analysis of the interviews, relevant aspects were identified to understand the transformations and learning processes experienced by teachers as a result of working with deaf students at INES. These aspects were taken as guiding threads for the subsequent stages of the investigation. For the analysis of the observed classes, the theoretical framework adopted was the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, considering its principles and the questions raised in the studies of Finnish researcher Yrjö Engeström, which are in turn based on the works of Vygotsky and Leontiev. To carry out the analysis, a set of lessons entitled “Reading Labels” was selected and structured through Activity Systems with a focus on the teacher. A microanalysis of these systems revealed tensions and the ways in which the teacher addresses these tensions in the classroom, describing potentially expansive microcycles of learning actions. Reflections emerging from the analytical processes of the research indicated that the hearing mathematics teachers at CAp/INES had neither prior experience with deaf students nor specific initial training when they began working at the institution. Upon entering a new cultural and linguistic context, these teachers encountered specificities, challenges, and demands that required them to rethink and reframe their teaching practices. It became evident that the mathematics teachers gradually became teachers of deaf students through learning experiences arising from dealing with the tensions and contradictions that emerge during teaching Activity. As such, throughout their work at INES, transformations in teaching practices occurred, particularly in classroom settings. There are specificities in the work Activity of these teachers related to their motives, objectives, methodologies, and strategies adopted to better teach deaf students. The teacher learning identified in the course of the research is related to: fluency in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras); knowledge of and respect for deaf culture and the identities and subjectivities of the students; the development of methodologies and teaching strategies centered on visuality, using various media and a multimodal perspective; the construction of pedagogical practices attentive to students’ difficulties, demands, and needs, and a willingness to develop knowledge from other fields; the development of teaching strategies and methodologies based on translanguaging and multiliteracies; the decapsulation of the mathematics curriculum; and an understanding of the social and political role of the hearing mathematics teacher in a bilingual school for the deaf.