Cross-modal Interactive Tools for Inclusive Learning

有特殊教育需要的学生通常被安置在专门的学校，在那里为他们提供设施和训练有素的工作人员来满足他们的需要。如今，政府政策转向支持教育机会均等，体现了联合国教科文组织的《萨拉曼卡世界宣言》，该宣言认为“包容和参与对人类尊严至关重要……享有和行使人权”（教科文组织1994年）。这一转变强调了将更多视障儿童纳入主流学校和减少排斥的国家议程，这种排斥往往是未满足特殊需求的结果。根据皇家国家盲人研究所（RNIB）最近的一份报告，英国大约70%的视障儿童在主流环境中接受教育。这种形式通常是由一到两个学习者组成一个完全有视力的班级。在这种情况下，与如何最好地修改学习材料以及如何管理小组工作以培养所有人的适当学习环境有关的问题具有挑战性。例如，科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）核心部分的一些课程标准强调了图形素养的重要性，为未来的实践奠定了基础。因此，主流学校的教师不得不修改包括图形在内的课程资源，通过使用盲文、触觉图或热提升图像等物理工具，使视障学习者能够使用这些资源。然而，这些工具是为视力受损的学习者单独使用而设计的，而不是为视力正常的同龄人使用，因此最终可能迫使他们作为孤立的个体学习，并被排除在群体学习活动之外。此外，随着教室越来越电脑化，视障学习者可能会面临更多障碍，因为他们主要依靠屏幕阅读器来访问计算机，而这些阅读器可能不足以访问图形，并可能阻碍与视力正常的同龄人进行有意义的合作。如果不仔细研究和设计，技术可能会对将视障学习者纳入主流学校产生不利影响，特别是在他们与视力正常的同龄人互动的环境中，并可能对他们成年后的生活产生严重影响。例如，需要数据分析的工作，包括STEM领域的职业，通常使用图形对信息进行编码，需要团队合作。学习如何解释和构建图形，以及如何有效地与同伴互动，应该，而且通常确实是从学生的基础教育开始的。潜在的问题是，目前对混合教室学习的技术支持强调可及性，而不是包容性，针对个人而不是社会学习和小组工作。因此，重点放在个人的残疾上，而不是在涉及学生、教师和技术的群体学习的社会背景下出现的各种能力。这个早期职业奖学金的目的是研究和开发互动学习工具，使混合教室更加包容视障学生。非视觉模式（例如音频、手势、触觉和触觉反馈）已经显示出支持无障碍交互的潜在好处，但它们在现实世界环境中的适用性仍然存在局限性，例如当群体使用不同感官一起工作时，跨模式效应的问题。开发的工具将通过将参与式设计活动与跨模式互动的实证研究相结合，找出如何将不同的感官与视觉能力相结合，重点关注适应国家课程标准的技术支持方面的差距。这些工具将在课堂环境中进行验证，以发现它们如何改善小组学习活动和教学实践。

Students with special education needs are traditionally placed in specialized schools where they are provided with facilities and trained staff to accommodate their needs. Today, there is a shift in government policies towards providing support for equalisation of education opportunity, embodying UNESCO's Salamanca World Statement which considers "Inclusion and participation [as] essential to human dignity [...] enjoyment and exercise of human rights" (UNESCO 1994). This shift underlines the national agenda for integrating more visually impaired children in mainstream schools and reducing exclusion, which is often the result of unmet special needs.According to a recent report by the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), approximately 70 per cent of visually impaired children in the UK are educated in mainstream settings. This often takes the form of one or two learners in a class of fully sighted peers. Issues related to how best to modify learning materials as well as how to manage group work to nurture an adequate learning environment for all is challenging in such settings. For instance, a number of curriculum standards of core components in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) emphasise the importance of graphic literacy to establish a foundation for future practices. Teachers in mainstream schools therefore have to resort to modifying curriculum resources that include graphics to make them accessible to visually impaired learners by using physical tools such as Braille, tactile diagrams or heat-raised images. However, these tools are designed to be used by visually impaired learners alone and not by their sighted peers, and thus can end up forcing them to learn as isolated individuals and exclude from group learning activities. In addition, as classrooms become more computerised, visually impaired learners are likely to face with more barriers since they mostly rely on screen-readers to access computers and these can be inadequate for accessing graphics and can inhibit meaningful collaboration with sighted peers. If not carefully studied and designed, technology can have detrimental effects on the inclusion of visually impaired learners in mainstream schools, particularly in contexts where they interact with sighted peers, and can lead to drastic effects on their lives as adults. For instance, jobs that require data analysis, including careers in STEM, often encode information using graphics and require teamwork and collaboration. Learning how to interpret and construct graphics as well as how to effectively engage with peers should, and generally does, begin during a student's basic education.The underlying problem is that current technological support for learning in mixed classrooms emphasise accessibility over inclusion, targeting individual rather than social learning and group work. Focus is thus placed on an individual's disability and not on the variety of abilities present in a social context of group learning involving students, teachers and technology. The aim of this Early Career fellowship is to research and develop interactive learning tools to make mixed classrooms more inclusive of visually impaired students. Non-visual modalities (e.g. audio, gestures, haptic and tactile feedback) have already shown potential benefit to support accessible interactions, but there are still limitations in their applicability in real world settings, such as issues with cross-modal effects when groups work together using different senses. The developed tools will focus on gaps in technological support for accommodating national curriculum standards by combining participatory design activities with empirical research into cross-modal interaction to find out how different senses can be integrated with visual capabilities. The tools will be validated in classroom settings to find out how they can improve group learning activities and teaching practices.