Teaching methodology for people with intellectual disabilities: a case study in learning ballet with mobile devices

Abstract

Developing artistic skills in students with intellectual disabilities (ID) entails several difficulties including selecting the appropriate teaching methodologies to use and adequately integrating teaching and technological resources. This article puts forward a teaching methodology combined with the use of mobile devices for students with Down’s syndrome (DS). To support this, we present two studies. In the first study, we create a teaching methodology of good practices developed from the experience of 37 participating teachers. In the second study, this methodology is used together with a tablet application for learning certain basic dance steps, and a pre- and post-test experience is carried out with seven DS students. The results indicate that students did improve their dance skills but that this improvement was not statistically significant. Furthermore, we found that students’ motivation is related to their perception of development of skills.