Desarrollo cognitivo y estrategias de enseñanza – aprendizaje para estudiantes con Síndrome de Down, en la Unidad Educativa Especial Municipal Girón

Abstract

Students with Down Syndrome in their cognitive development have as main problems the limitation of learning and data processing that are not fully worked within the classroom. Due to the fact that adequate teaching-learning strategies are not applied by teachers, therapists and the lack of responsible empowerment of parents, directly affecting students in the advancement of pedagogical content. Therefore, the objective was to understand the cognitive development and teaching-learning strategies for students with Down syndrome in the Girón Municipal Special Education Unit. The methodology used was qualitative, whose techniques and methodological instruments were aimed at evaluating the basic cognitive development for school learning through an observation guide, a semi-structured interview and finally a proposal of teaching-learning strategies was developed. The most outstanding findings on cognitive development are that students have low levels of language development, memory, and non-verbal cognitive mental ability (ability to encode and retrieve memories about figures and images). In addition, to difficulties in concentrating and performing tasks; however, they show good attention when teachers conduct their classes with different visual and auditory materials. Likewise, it was concluded that some factors that make it difficult to develop cognitive skills have to do with the lack of knowledge of teachers about teaching strategies for Down syndrome, the scarce support of parents, the absence of didactic material, among others, etc.