Abstract:

The International Convention on the Rights of Disable People recognizes both education and opportunities equality as rights that this minority has in order to achieve social integration.

Nevertheless in countries like Mexico there is not access to proper training to teach handicap students, especially sciences. There are another groups who do not have access to the scientific culture like youth imprisonment by criminal acts.

Especial teaching requires a variety of pedagogical and communicative skills and tecnics. They enable teacher and student rapprochement. This most be a knowledge interchange that relates the teaching of concepts to meaningful learning. In our case it lays on the astronomical field.

Deafs’ needs focus on sign language (involving its gramatical structure and the structure of deafs’ though) as well as familiarity to deaf culture and community. Blinds instead require multisensorial material support and strong descriptive skills to describe concepts and phenomenons. Contents adaptation and an explanation according to capabilities are crucial to the understanding of intellectual disable students. The use of all these skills by the professor however does not imply automatically a meaningful and efective learning among students if the school environment is not motivating.

Therefore the museum should, can and most become a learning centre that helps science learning employing different educational tecnics in and out of museum.

At Universum Museo de las Ciencias which is part of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, we employ different tecnics to approach handicap youths and children and other social vulnerable groups to science based on the conjugation of different disciplines.

Astronomy is one of the sciences that allow this approach and gives rise to one of the most visited exhibitions of Universum. Around Astronomy different pedagogical strategies have been developed supported on disciplines related to arts and humanities as part of science in its widest conception:
Theatre plays that combine scenic arts, pantomime and sign language are performed;
Shadow theatre picks up Mexican legends in addition to the astronomic topics they are about.
Puppet theatre allows children’s interaction as well as the one from audience with mental disability; in order to let them know and understand topics on Astronomy such as constellations.
Painting expressed through visual composition helps guests who have a disability to learn issues on Solar system natural satellites.
The employment of new technologies as videoconferences from NASA centers in the United States opens possibilities of approaching the most recent spatial researches to deaf and blind youths thanks to sign language interpreters and audio and also the youths who are no more imprison can interact with scientist from the most recognized national and international research centers.

In this way, we promote ludic teaching of Astronomy through pedagogic tecnics at Universum Museo de las Ciencias. Our aim is to cause a meaningful experience among handicap youths and children to support the proffesor’s labor inside the classroom and to promove science culture. Doing this we are promoting these groups’ right to education in a efective and including way sourounded by an environment that is respectful towards diversity. Finally this all turns into a sustancial help to their social integration.