Design of Cognitive Tutor to Diagnose the Types of Intelligence in Preschool Students from Ages 3 to 5

Abstract

The relationships between preschool, employment and economic productivity, as well as cost-benefit studies in this field, show a potential high return on investment in the early years of childhood. Preschool is the main base of the educational structure according to the Peruvian Ministry of Education. However, investment in this type of education is on average about 250 soles ($77) per student. On average there is one teacher per 18 students and just 60% of these teachers are specialized in preschool education (Escale 2015). In this context, talking about equal opportunities have been contradictory because these kinds of students have been part of the population that has not generated productivity in the country. On the other hand, when talking about the productivity of people, this could have a direct correspondence with the innate capacity that people have (Cerquín Cortez 2017), which are call like intelligences according to Howard Gardner in the theory of seven intelligences. Could you imagine that we can detect these intelligences in the first years of a child? This gives us an opportunity to improve our abilities in the coming years. For several years, student abilities have gone unnoticed because of curricular education and even now continue to remain the same. Although there are current methodologies designed for the diagnosis of these types of intelligences in early education, this could go unnoticed given the inexperience of the teacher and excessive workload as well as the need of psychologists for its proper application. In contrast, increasing the use of technology could be to our benefit. This work proposes the development of a cognitive tutor to diagnose the types of intelligence in preschool aged children in rural areas with teachers without an educational degree and little to no presence of psychologists.