Exclusion via "Inclusion": Remote Teaching for Deaf Students in Brazilian Rural Public Schools

• In Event: Cultivating Equitable and Racially Just Teaching in Brazilian Public Schools Amid COVID-19, Racism, and Entangled Pandemics

Abstract

The World Health Organization declared a Public Health Emergency of International Importance in the beginning of 2020, with the contagions and deaths caused by the new coronavirus, the COVID-19 disease. After this, several measures to distance and prevent contagion were established in the world, which caused the closing of schools and universities due to sanitary requirements for social distance. In Brazil, this measure occurred on March 18, 2020, when the federal government established that face-to-face classes should be replaced by classes to be held using digital media during the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact of closing schools and the temporary replacement of face-to-face with remote education presented challenges and obstacles in different levels of education. Educational administrators, teachers, students and family members had to rearrange their private spaces to teach and learn. The suitability for this new reality exacerbated—or at least shed light on—the great inequality in terms of resources available to public school children. Brazilian public schools already marked by social inequalities were thrust into a context of monumental digital inequalities. Given the preponderance of Brazilian public school students living in low and no-income families and communities, there was great difficulty accessing the internet; and technologies such as computers, tablets and cell phones were largely absent. Amidst these obstacles were the (largely unmet) needs for education access as a basic learning need of students with identified disabilities writ large and Deaf students in particular. That is, universal access regardless of condition, albeit a right secured by law, was severely threatened and largely ignored. It is within this context that in this research study we attend to the “inclusion” of Deaf students in Brazilian public schools. Seeking to focus on the schools with least resources—those in rural settings—we attended to issues of accessibility, educational and linguistic rights, and teacher preparation to effectively meet the needs of Deaf students. We asked: How are schools organized—and how have they reorganized—to include Deaf students remotely? To address this question, we collected and analyzed educational/pedagogical artefacts on websites available to Deaf students enrolled in Brazilian public schools as well as materials shared by teachers and teacher interviews. Constructed as a case study, findings portray a deaf public school teacher’s narratives coauthored with Deaf students, thereby attending to the situated representation of the exclusionary nature of “inclusion” for Deaf students in Brazilian public schools amidst the pandemic.

Authors

• Ana Gediel, Universidade Federal de Vicosa

• Ana Carolina Carmo Leonor, Secretaria de Educação do Estado de Minas Gerais - Brasil

• ANDRÉ LUIS SANTOS DE SOUZA, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

• Isabelle Lima e Souza, Universidade Federal Fluminense