Teaching strategies that mediated the learning of reading and writing in students with multiple disabilities from the Carlos Luis Valle Masis Special Education Center, Costa Rica

Abstract

This article is the result of a Graduation Seminar to obtain the degree of bachelor in Special Education, focused on Multiple Disabilities of the University of Costa Rica which main objective was to analyze the teaching strategies of literacy acquisition of multi disabled students.

The research was oriented toward a qualitative perspective with a phenomenological design. It was held with the cooperation of eight teachers of the Special Education Center Carlos Luis Valle Masís, in Costa Rica, who along their careers had successfully instructed students, under this condition, in reading and writing. The analysis of the information was triangulated by comparing the data obtained from different sources (eight teachers), by means of two research techniques (interview and self-report), and based on the sequence of actions to be followed in the phenomenological analysis of the data collected in an interview proposed by Mari, Bo and Climent (2010).

The results show that in order for the students with multiple disabilities to have access to literacy acquisition, it is necessary to meet three conditions: the characteristics of the teaching body, the particularities of the students and the support systems. With regard to the strategies, namely, the actions carried out to achieve the objectives of the instructional process, the teaching faculty highlights three basic aspects: a comprehensive diagnosis, the selection of the method based on the characteristics of the students and the adaptation of the technique to the particular communication system.

Conocimiento Educactivo, Vol. 4, 2017: 111-125