DUA and multimodal storytelling: improving school meals and performance in deaf schoolchildren

Abstract

Introduction: The study was situated at the crossroads between school health promotion and educational inclusion in Chile. It started from the health priority in the face of childhood obesity and considered the healthy school as a framework to articulate curriculum, protective food environments and community participation. He defined healthy snacks as daily practices that stabilized glycemia and favored attention and memory. It recognized that the Deaf school population, users of Chilean Sign Language (LSCh), faced linguistic and pedagogical barriers that required redesigning messages from a sociocultural perspective of disability.
Development: The chapter defined the concept of healthy school and linked the nutritional quality of snacks with performance in language and mathematics. It described linguistic and didactic criteria for LSCh materials and proposed multimodal inclusive narratives that integrated sign interpretation, food iconography and minimal textual reinforcement. Aligned these decisions with Universal Design for Learning (UDL), proposing multiple avenues of representation, expression and participation. He presented Deaf schoolchildren as visual subjects and established a hierarchy: primacy of the LSCh interpreter, iconic food examples and brief text, in order to reduce extrinsic load and maximize comprehension and working memory. He also highlighted the role of regulated kiosks, consumption routines and family-school cooperation to coherence what was taught with what was offered.
Conclusions: The study argued that nutrition education communicated in the predominant language and channel of the Deaf student body improved the adoption of healthy snacks and contributed to health, participation and academic performance. It recommended institutionalizing accessible guides, training teachers in DUA and LSCh, strengthening Deaf interpreters and referents and evaluating comprehension, adherence and academic and health effects.