Inclusion of children and adolescents with mild disabilities in the scientific area through a novel workshop as didactic strategy

Abstract

Despite the effort to provide equal scenarios and a higher inclusion for students with mild disabilities, few experimental activities intended to improve their science performance were reported during the last decades. This work presents different ludic-experimental activities and their impact on children and adolescents with special educational needs and/or disabilities related to the chemistry in the human body. The workshop was specifically designed considering contents included in the curriculum design of different schools with special modality. The constructivism strategy proposed in this workshop enhances the inclusion of children and adolescents with mild disabilities in the scientific area. The idea of educational inclusion transcends the concept of integration-physical inclusion and implies the use of the same scenarios for everybody. The workshop showed that students participated in the different activities observing, reproducing, and understating phenomena of daily life. This contribution improved their self-esteem and socialization with their peers and tutors. Finally, this workshop is a novel didactic strategy in the natural science for special education modality.