SCIENCE WITH NO VOICE, NO IMAGES, NO CONCEPTS: PEDAGOGICAL TECNICS THAT HELP HANDICAP YOUTHS AND CHILDREN SCIENCE LEARNING AT MUSEUMS

The International Convention on the Rights of Disable People recognizes both education and oportunities' equality as rights that this minority needs in order to achieve social integration. Nevertheless in countries like Mexico there is not access to proper training to teach handicap students, especially sciences.

Special teaching requires a variety of pedagogical and communicative skills and technics. They enable teacher and student rapprochement. This must be a knowledge interchange that relates the teaching of concepts to meaningful learning. In our case it lays on the natural sciences 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 must become a learning centre that helps science learning employing different educational technics.

At Universum Museo de las Ciencias which is part of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, we employ different technics to approach handicap youths and children to science based on the conjugation of different disciplines. For example we offer sign language guided tours during which traditional legends about animals from different regions of Mexico or constellations are represented. In this way we set Astronomy, History, Biology and Literature together to teach science in a ludic way. We have also gathered traditional Mexican herbolary and Etnobotany in a multisensorial exhibition of medicinal plants. Plays and pantomime are also employed to explain physical phenomenons and chemical reactions that are present in our daily life.

In this way, we promote ludic teaching of science through pedagogic technics 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. Doing this we are promoting this group’s 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.