The Education of Students with Autism: lessons from research

1
The Education of Students with Autism lessons
from research

• Professor Rita Jordan
• Autism Centre for Education Research
• University of Birmingham, UK

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A Developmental Disorder

• Behaviour alone is misleading in ASD.
• Teachers need to be aware of the developmental
  differences, leading to
• compensation
• secondary 'handicaps'
• a transactional process

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Whats Special about ASD?

• Need to learn explicitly what others acquire
  intuitively or through social tutoring
• identity of self/ other
• saliency of social signals
• agency and intention
• relevance and priority
• social/cultural meaning
• nature of communication
• emotional consciousness

4
Move away from deficit model

• SEN from
• condition
• strengths
• interests
• environment

• Difference and transactional nature
• work to strengths
• match to style
• respect for compensation
• teach for meaning / relevance

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Learning Style

• Visual rather than verbal
• Memory
• cued
• rote
• Social a dimension of difficulty
• Emotions and cognition
• use interests for engagement

• At sensory stage of meaning
• presentation --gt reference
• Repetition consolidation
• Explicit strategies for problem solving

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Autism Friendly Environments

• Respect and dignity
• Life-long education not conformity
• Reduce stress to allow flexibility
• Allow right to be different
• Build on strengths compensate for weaknesses
• Build protection against anxiety/ depression
• Trained staff for inclusion

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Child factors Sociability

• Wings classification
• withdrawn/ solitary -gt passive/ responds -gt
  active but odd -gt eccentric sensitive
• Varies with conditions with teaching
• Level suggests optimum form of approach
• withdrawn - 11 directive desensitisation
• passive - interest structured play experience
• active but odd - social rules experience
  (context)
• eccentric - social skills in context e.g. buddy

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Teaching Play Making Friends

• Essence of play is
• spontaneity
• emotional engagement
• Need informed choice about friends
• fear of loss of control
• no experience
• 2 strands to play teaching
• cognitive
• sensori-motor -gt relational -gt functional -gt
  symbolic
• social
• alongside -gt imitative-gt join in -gt co-operate
  - collaborate

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Process for social engagement

• No fixed assumptions
• Enabling structures for participation (including
  repetition)
• Supporting the supporters - paired schemes
• Allowing risk -gt excitement
• Supported peers better that trained ones

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Teaching Social Interaction

• Videos / instant photographs for social cues
• Innovatory aspects of ICT
• Range of techniques based on mutual enjoyment of
  interaction
• Intensive Interaction
• Option/Son Rise
• Frameworks for communication
• Music therapy

• Sherborne movement
• Hanen/ Child Talk/ PACT
• DIR/ RDI/SCERTS
• SMILE

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Teaching Social Understanding

• Cognitive aspects of early interaction
• Social Stories
• Comic Book Conversations
• SULP
• SEAL?
• P4C
• TEACCH explicit labels What did she say? What
  did she mean?
• Video analysis

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Teaching about emotions

• Self then others
• External cueing - teach to connect
• Language / symbols assist generalisation
• Give panic reactions
• Teach cause effect for own anxiety
• Stress reductions
• Allow for uniprocessing

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Communication and ASDs

• Language and communication separate
• Often associated language problems
• Prognosis
• All aspects
• gesture
• posture
• facial expression
• emotion
• pragmatics

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Communication teaching in ASD

• Communication language
• use of music and visual structure
• COMFOR (Noens Berckalaer-Onnes, 2004), PECS
  TEACCH
• comprehension of educational language
• Inner language
• language needs to be contextualised
• associate with meaning / action

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Educational Language

• Model of conversation
• contributions, topic maintenance
• Assumption of joint attention
• holding up, eye/finger pointing
• Sarcasm metaphor
• Literal understanding
• jokes, idioms, pragmatic context,
• Model of questions
• display, probe

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Tensions in Education for ASD

• Entitlement vs. specialism
• access or meeting SEN?
• Optimum for learning vs. optimum for social
  integration
• specialised or peer engagement
• Readiness for inclusion vs. learning without
  experience
• how to achieve readiness without experience?

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Processes for Inclusion

• Support
• trained - ASDs
• enabling - Observe/ Wait/ Listen
• Staged
• special -gt reverse -gtintegrated
• Resource base
• Free time
• use of buddies / circles of friends

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Curriculum Issues

• Individual - no subject exclusions
• Foreign language teaching a good model for social
  linguistic understanding
• Use interests where feasible or work then play
• Aspects of some subjects a problem - teach
  specifically or by-pass

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Remember

• ..calling it so does not make it so .
• Inclusive settings may be socially isolating
• Specialist settings may be narrow of poor
  quality

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An ASD Curriculum?

• No autism curriculum or single approach
• Needs to fit
• individual
• family
• practitioner
• context
• current goals
• prognosis

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24 hour Needs?

• Need to teach
• regularisation of daily living
• functional contexts for social skills
  communication
• leisure opportunities
• Severe problems in sleeping/ feeding/ toileting/
  behaviour management
• Need for structure not always compatible with
  family life
• Home not able to cooperate in needed consistency
  in environment
• Leisure life opportunities restricted through
  geography, behaviour or lack of support

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Single vs Eclectic Curricula

• Single
• Enables staff expertise
• Better monitoring easier evaluation
• Builds staff parent confidence
• Enables positive views

• Eclectic
• Can match to goal
• All needs can be addressed
• Needs compatibility checks child perspective
• Take strengths from each

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Evidence

• No single approach
• Evidence for
• structure
• behavioural methods
• training parents in social interaction
  communication techniques
• In all studies some do well and some do not
• In all studies children tend to learn only what
  are explicitly taught

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Judging Research

• Does it relate to children with this childs
  characteristics?
• Is implementation the same as the original study?
• Does research presented represent a fair sample
  is reference made to systematic review findings?
• Where there is a comparison group are comparisons
  fair?
• are the goals the same?
• do assessments favour one group?
• What are time-lines criteria for assessment
  return to mainstream?

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Building on specific approaches

• Choose on basis of principles - not chance
• Understand the principles of each approach
  adopted
• Individualise
• Take perspective of child and examine interaction
  - i.e. the effect of the whole
• Use professional judgment
• Treat each situation as a single study to assess

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Teaching for Purpose

• Different approach needed to suit
• Individual characteristics
• sociability
• language
• cognitive level
• sensory issues
• age
• Goal
• Practitioner comfort/ ability/ knowledge

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Conclusion

• Treating people equally does not mean
• treating people in the same way
• but treating them differently
• to provide equal access
• To do otherwise is to discriminate