Arthropod Case Study

Table 1. Evaluation of the didactical material.

Step Dynamic evaluation

Pre-Test questionnaire and plasticine use A questionnaire containing seven questions was orally presented and the responses about students' preconceptions about arthropods were recorded and transcribed. Plasticine was offered to both visually impaired and non- visually impaired students so that they could represent arthropods according to their preconceptions. After that, they shared their models raising discussions about the anatomy of arthropods and their importance to the environment.

Test kit ( 2D and 3D-didactic material) We presented the group Phylum Arthropoda to students. Theyt were divided into two group: a) a group that interacted with 2D-material, along with

(Figure 2. D)

Figure 2: The inclusive tactile teaching materials in 2D and 3D. Material representing the anatomical parts of a separately or together (A;B) with the bug. Subtitle on the back (C) and the. Three-dimensional model (D).

Before the application of the material, a pre-test in the form of structured interview questionnaire was also applied, This methodology was chosen because the oral form offers to the students freedom to formulating responses without concerning about written / structured terms compared to the Braille/written form.

After the pre-test questionnaire, visually impaired, low vision and non visually impaired students were invited to represent the insects according to their individual conception, using plasticine (Figure 3; E). Literature [11] considers some concepts as descriptions of parts to understand the whole animal body

According to our high school textbook used in this study arthropods are segmented animals, covered by an exoskeleton and with jointed appendages [1, 20]. The analysis of the answers to the question "What are arthropods?" revealed that most of visually impaired students consider arthropods just animals with paws. As these students have no access of Arthropods visual context and don’t know the meaning of the arthro, they failed to answer the question by analyzing the word. This result show the importance of offering a tactile material to fulfill this gap of