Inclusive Education in Mexico
The pandemic made more visible the inequalities that exist within the educational system in Mexico. This highlighted the importance of having basic scientific education for the general population so that basic notions such as how the virus infected people and the reasons behind the importance of having good hygiene habits. Since virus are non-visible to the human eye due to their size, the illustrations and graphics made to explain Covid-19 proved to be an important asset in providing important information to this public, however, one question that arose from this is how to teach this same information to people that may have some form of visual impairment. Inspired by previous work done by our team in 2019, we focused on developing further the educational material.
According to the national survey on demographic dynamics (ENADID), in 2018 only 6.2% of adults 25 and over with a disability were able to reach College. This number is alarming considering that 19.7% of adults that did not have any form of disability were able to reach this same education level. This gap is even more evident when we look at the percentage of the population without any form of education, where it makes up 20.4% of people with disabilities while it is a mere 5% for people without special needs. Furthermore, according to the same survey in 2014, around 84% of kids between 6 and 11 years old with disabilities went to school. Later, this percentage decreased to 77.5% during years 12 to 14 then it dramatically decreased to 43% for ages 15 to 18 and until it finally reached 15% for ages 19 to 29. These numbers showed that there was huge diminishment after middle school that had a negative tendency until university. Also, we need to keep in mind that these numbers represent people with any form of disabilities so that this percentage that can reach college might be related to those with special needs that do not interfere directly with educational aspects.
Edumakers
With this in mind, we reached out to Dr. Reynaga, and she gave us further insights on why the statistics are so alarming. She explained that, in the case of people with visual impairment there is a serious lack of basic educational material to teach STEM during elementary and middle school. Then, since our education programs are designed to build upon the curriculum seen in previous years, if a student with visual impairment has trouble with basic concepts, as the complexity of the topics increases this demotivates them strongly to pursue further education. Therefore, there is an importance in creating materials that help explain subjects at a primary and secondary school level to address this problem. Also, many teachers both public and private feel that they do not have the necessary resources nor training to accommodate a student with special needs. In more extreme cases, children are outright rejected from private institutions if the school principal feels that they are not able to provide the same level of education as their other students. This creates a need for inclusive educational material so that teachers can use these resources in their classroom and bring a better quality of education to this demographic.
After having this conversation, we decided to collaborate with the “Edumakers” research project coordinated by Dr. Cristina Reynaga. This research group works on developing prototypes of educational material focused on different types of disabilities based on Universal Design for learning. Specifically, we worked closely with the Touch and Learn team who is working on a prototype that helps add interactivity and audio cues to models or representations that lack any electronic components to aid the blind and visually impaired.
Our first instance working together was when our member Daniel Cuellar participated in the brainstorming session for the topics chosen to develop as inclusive material. Ideas that ranged from teaching about photosynthesis, ecosystems, animals and insects to geography and history. At the end, History and Biology were chosen as the subjects to cover taking topics that related to the curriculum taught at ages 6-12. We decided to aid in developing the materials related to biology, so we had to search in the books used by the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) for topics that were related to our brainstorming ideas.
Prototyping the materials
After investigating potential topics, we chose the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, animal cells, plant cells and the covid-19 virus to explain for 4th grade. Afterwards, we looked for existing models and 3D representations that were open source to 3D print and design the educational experience. However, we had some difficulties in the process to 3D print some of the materials, but we managed to successfully print in better quality.
With our model printed, the descriptions of the object were made into a format that represented the different layers of information that will be given. It also includes the topics it relates to and school level. The next file is an example of the structure and general description that were made for each of the educational materials to be recorded as audio.
Validation
Now with these descriptions along with the Touch and Learn team we arranged a meeting with M. Ed. Evelyn Escalante, who has experience as a special education teacher in San Luis Potosi and has a master’s degree in teaching mathematics to the blind and visually impaired. In this meeting we were able to validate our proposals with her and receive promising congratulations on the work that was being developed. Later, we further validated by presenting these descriptions with Dr. Reynaga, who has a PHD in Molecular Biology, and she gave us greenlight on the scientific accuracy of the content and the amount of information that was being given.
Since our collaboration was showing promising results, as well as the advancement of the teams involved in the research group, our progress was shown to officials belonging to SEP thanks to Dr. Reynaga’s contacts. This resulted in a notarized agreement between Tecnologico de Monterrey and the regional Secretariat of Public Education of the state of Guanajuato where 25 kits of the different materials being developed by the teams will be delivered across public schools with visually impaired students. This means that our proposal and designs are going to be given to real users and hopefully aid teachers in their classroom with the use of the Touch & Learn Prototype. The delivery is due at the end of November of this year, so we are still working hard to create these replicas even after the iGEM competition is done. Due to certain terms and to respect the notarized agreement we cannot show the final products that will be delivered nor the details of the working prototype but rest assured that they are not far off the descriptions and prints that are listed here.
References
- INEGI. (2018). Encuesta Nacional de la Dinámica Demográfica (ENADID) 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/saladeprensa/aproposito/2019/discapacidad2019_nal.pdf
- INEGI. (2014). Encuesta Nacional de la Dinámica Demográfica (ENADID) 2014. Retrieved from: http://coespo.qroo.gob.mx/Descargas/doc/DISCAPACITADOS/ENADID%202014.pdf