Program history
The faculty of the Master’s Program is assigned to the Department of Speech- Language Pathology and Audiology at UFSC. The undergraduate Speech- Language Pathology and Audiology program completed ten years in April 2019. The project for this undergraduate program has a modular characteristic, with Collective Health as its guiding axis. After ten years of the creation of the undergraduate program, the Department of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, now more mature and having carried out collaborative research, understands and approves the relevance of the creation of the Graduate Program specific to the field. The elaboration of the project arose from two situations:
a) the request for the implementation of the Graduate Program in Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology by the Health Sciences Center; b) the admission of professors with researcher profiles into the Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology Undergraduate Program, some of them even being members of other Graduate Studies Programs at UFSC. The proposal of the Academic Master’s Program in Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology sought to give continuity to a modular and integrative view of undergraduate education, with health care as its central axis. Thus, it has Speech- Language Pathology and Audiology in Health Care as its area of concentration and the following areas of research: Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology in Primary Health Care and Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology in Medium and High Complexity Health Care. The curriculum of the Program legitimizes the innovative nature of this proposal that seeks to understand not only the diseases but individuals in their singularity, as well as the integrated theoretical/scientific Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology deepening alongside the education and health systems. This proposal also moves away from a biomedical view and approaches a biopsychosocial view. In this direction, the health and Speech Language Pathology and Audiology concepts go beyond the view of "disease" to expand its practices aimed at people inserted in a sociocultural environment. This line of thought allows us to overcome a fragmented conception of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology to legitimize the concept of integrality. It is in this context that interpretative paths are sought so that one may understand and advance in the theoretical frameworks adopted, aimed at the applied knowledge of evidence-based health care and built from a conception of comprehensive and interdisciplinary health in speech therapy work. The proposed curriculum of basic courses, in addition to providing training in scientific research, promotes the development of theoretical/scientific reflections directly related to Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology practice, promoting an important "reflective knowledge" in the education, aiming at research that also trains students in their ethical and political character. It is also in this way that epistemological knowledge about Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology and
health practices, along with the other courses linked to the mandatory formative axis, offers students a solid foundation for their preparation for teaching and academic or clinical/institutional research. It should be noted that this Program presents a modular and integrative curricular axis among the areas of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, favoring collective health and health care in the different life cycles and levels of health care.
Hence, it allows students a theoretical-practical deepening that aligns with the curriculum of the Master’s Program in Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology. It is also added that, in recent years, there has been a gradual increase in the hiring of speech therapists and audiologists in health and education services; however, currently, there is no academic Master’s Program in Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology in Brazil that presents a curriculum of courses aimed at the theoretical deepening and epistemological bases of the field. In this sense, the Master’s Program in Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology at UFSC pioneers in presenting advances in the various fields of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology and also in correlating clinical and theoretical research from integrative thinking among the main health and education guidelines.