Criando novas possibilidades no ensino da Astronomia para a comunidade surda do Brasil

Students face specific difficulties in learning Astronomy.The lexical base of Libras, for example, does not yet provide this type of knowledge, incorporating only a small number of signs related to scientific and astronomical vocabulary.The same happens with regard to Portuguese words frequently used in Astronomy.Words like illuminated, surface and density, for example, do not have a corresponding sign in Libras.This fact results in great difficulty in transmitting information about the phenomena of the stars.On the one hand, there is a lack of signs in Libras and, on the other hand, the prospect of quickly reducing this lack of signs is distant.Libras is a historically quite new language and its evolutionary process also depends on its degree of use by deaf communities.Furthermore, its very visualspatial nature makes it difficult to connect with Portuguese, an oral-auditory language.However, observations in deaf bilingual schools show that the intensive use of didactic visual resources, specially adapted for deaf students, is a pedagogical practice with high potential for impact and results in the teaching and learning of astronomy.This master dissertation follows a journey that begins by investigating the presence of astronomy subjects in sign languages and then continues with interviews with deaf elementary and high school students, and their teachers (Elementary and Secondary Education) as well, so advances to the analysis of the main learning difficulties reported in the interviews, selects or develops a set of didactic visual resources aimed at solving these difficulties and, finally, organizes examples of their use in astronomy lesson plans.Because it studies the elements and phenomena of the universe, astronomy has a very strong visual expression, making it a very interesting field to develop teaching visual resources.This would improve astronomy learning, making it an important tool to stimulate deaf students' scientific thinking and interest in science.In ...