ASPERGER SYNDROME: A CASE STUDY IN A PUBLIC MEXICAN UNIVERSITY

The purpose of this paper is to present how the multiple entities that integrate our institution: Universidad Autónoma del Carmen (UNACAR) in Ciudad del Carmen Campeche, México, experience different stages on the understanding of the concept “Inclusive Education”, evident in a variety of actions as an attempt to comprehend and react to this complex and its implications.
In our endeavor to obtain visibility and recognition as an institution, the recommendations of the national evaluating organisms that constantly scrutinize our achievements and opportunity areas are followed. As a result of this continuous appraisal and in compliance of the suggestions, our institutional authorities -through its Department of Academic Improvement or Superación Académica- offered a Certification Course on Inclusive Higher Education. Opened to the interested Academic Community, the certification started last October of 2016. Two specialists on this area where selected to conduct the academic reflection on this topic: Prof. Ronald Soto Calderón from the Universidad de Costa Rica and Prof. Lily Lara Romero, from the Universidad Autónoma de Tabasco, México. Addressed to the Faculty Members of our institution, the program focused on the analysis of Mexican initiatives compared to the ones led in other countries.

This program converged with a previous action on this matter originated in the School of Education or Facultad de Ciencias Educativas where, since the restructuring of the BA Degree on Education in the year 2010, a course focused on Educational Inclusiveness was taken into consideration among its optional subjects. This course aimed to supply our students with the different tools to explore the socio-historical development of the concept, the current Mexican regulatory framework on this issue, the different factors that influence the setting of an individual with special needs and abilities to learn, and the design for inclusive academic curriculum in México.

Two of our Faculty Members involved in these academic exercises, faced the need to put into practice the theory that they had just reflected on with a student of the first generation of the Academic Program on Communication and Cultural Management or Comunicación y Gestión Cultural that manifested himself as an individual with Asperger Syndrome.

This paper explores the processes experienced by all the entities involved in this dynamic: the school’s authorities, the student’s mentor, his classmates, and the individual himself, that went from developing the sensitivity and awareness on the Asperger Syndrome and its manifestations, to the modification of specific aspects that proposed alternative ways of communication in this particular case and setting a precedent for future cases.