Bilingual Education for the Deaf in Graduate Studies: reflecting on advances challenges and perspectives in the PPGE/UFPR

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the path taken toward establishing a bilingual education policy for the deaf in the graduate program in education at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), problematizing institutional advances and challenges over the last decade. Initially, we outline the political context that underpins the progressive expansion of the presence of deaf people in master's and doctoral programs and sparked the debate on bilingual education at the university. The text's theoretical and methodological framework draws on contributions from the field of Deaf Studies in Education and the propositions of Bakhtin and the Circle for an analytical, discursive-dialogical approach to research. Ensuring language accessibility policies, quotas for deaf people as a linguistic minority, compiling a collection of Libras video materials in different genres, and producing dissertations/theses in Libras with guaranteed translation are some of the ongoing initiatives at the PPGE/UFPR. Ensuring the expansion of higher-level TILS teams with language proficiency certification among the permanent staff and the nationwide implementation of an affirmative action protocol in universities that protects students' linguistic rights, based on listening to deaf movements, are challenges to the implementation of an emancipatory linguistic and educational policy committed to justice and social equality for the deaf community in postgraduate programs.