Initial literacy processes for young people with Down Syndrome: towards the construction of a socio-educational inclusion

Abstract

This work emerges from a broader one consisting of several interdisciplinary study cases with children and adolescents with specific diagnoses, integrated into common public schools on how they learn to read and write. Therefore, the investigation aims to interpret the best didactic and/or therapeutic strategies to accompany them in that process. Given this background, the present article partially reports the data obtained through a psychogenetic and sociocultural methodology from three adolescent students with Down Syndrome in specific reading and writing situations. The research, still in progress, reveals that the investigated young people develop cognitive processes of complex psycholinguistic character and continue mastering written language under certain didactic conditions. These advances contribute to the analysis of cognitive potentialities of these students for the learning of written language and the incidence of teaching modalities in their possible development. It is intended from this study to contribute to the revision and reformulation of educational practices in terms of literacy to achieve the construction of effective inclusive education