PRIOR KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SCIENCE FROM DRAWINGS BY A GROUP OF DEAF STUDENTS

The construction of a concept can be developed from the students' prior knowledge. Regarding deaf students, it is considered their conceptions conceived through vision. Given this, the present research was conducted with a group of deaf students in the 7th year of elementary school with the aim of verifying what ideas these students had about science. The research was carried out with a qualitative approach, using action research. For data collection, an activity was proposed with the elaboration of drawings, carried out in three stages: (1) initial conversation and elaboration of the drawings; (2) explanation of the drawings (in Libras); (3) closure of the activity. Drawings were prepared, speeches (in Libras) transcribed and notes from the logbook were used for analysis. The analyzed data revealed three categories in which students conceived decontextualized views, also demonstrating a distance from science and applications in everyday life. In relation to the visuality of the deaf student, the difficulty was evidenced in selecting and interpreting the various information that was conveyed around them. Keywords: deaf student, qualitative research, prior knowledge, science education