Teaching Libras and in Libras: professional profiles for offering bilingual education in Brazil

Abstract

This article aims to draw the panorama of the team of professionals responsible for teaching Libras (Brazilian Sign Language) and in Libras to achieve bilingual education attentive to the linguistic rights of deaf people in Brazil. With a documentary character, this study involved the collection of the National, State and District Education Plans, available on the “PNE em Movimento” webpage. Subsequently, the documents were read in full, in order to select excerpts that characterized the profile of the professionals responsible for the educational assistance of deaf students and display them on maps respecting the occurrence and distribution by states. Thus, it was possible to compare the choices made in the local contexts, explain trends and exceptions and activate the dialogue with the statements contained in the Education Plans investigated and other official devices associated with them. Through the analyzes, multiple compositions of the staff were identified, and different denominations pointed to professional attributes that denote different conceptions of bilingual education, which give differentiated value to Libras and, therefore, to deaf students in the educational process. In descending order, the plans investigated indicated the provision of Libras’ interpreters, specialized educational services teachers, bilingual teachers, and primarily deaf teachers and/or instructors of Libras to meet the educational demands of deaf students. These findings allowed us to problematize proposals that conceive Libras as a resource for teaching in Portuguese, and to highlight provisions that have sign language as a constitutive language of deaf people in the Brazilian educational system.