THE IMPORTANCE OF INFORMATION MANAGEMENT AS SUPPORT FOR SURVEYS ABOUT DEAF STUDENTS PERMANENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The university environment can be challenging for any student. In order to assimilate new information and knowledge, first they need to overcome some trajectory failures from previous learning, such as logical skills and text comprehension. These challenges are also faced by deaf students as expectations, standards and teaching operating mode which are different from those faced in their previous school experience. The inclusion and permanence of deaf students in higher education institutions are part of recent discussions in Brazil. Data from INEP (National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anisio Teixeira) of 2017 indicates that enrolment rates, specifically referring to deaf students were 1.739 in 2016 to 2.138 in 2017, showing an increase of 18.66% on the entry of deaf students into graduation courses. The trajectory of these students is given by multiple factors as school history, social and family environment, teaching encouragement and what kind of school they attended. Laws have encouraged institutions to create methods that allow these students to continue and complete their studies. However, there are difficulties in obtaining data and information that indicate the effectiveness in the inclusion of these students in order to find elements to understand the mishaps and the teaching conditions for them. The documents referring to the selective processes for the entry of deaf students in public education institutions are not clear, in addition there is a lack of information regarding the actions for accessing and staying in universities. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate how information retrieval and management can contribute to dissemination of the studies about the trajectory of deaf students from the Letters-Libras graduation course, of UFPR (Federal University of Parana), through a more accurate data. The collection and usage of such data from students (which have their origins from different sources and from specific analyses) may serve as fundamental subsidies for teachers and education managers so they can monitor the development of deaf students in the course of Letters-Libras as a way of identifying possible patterns of behaviour. With these tools it may be possible to intervene or establish measures of predictive actions on the eventual risk of course abandonment.