Download Slide 1

The Education of Students with
Autism: lessons from research
Professor Rita Jordan
Autism Centre for Education & Research
University of Birmingham, UK
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
What’s 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
Move away from ‘deficit’ model
• SEN from
• Difference and transactional nature
– condition
– work to strengths
– strengths
– match to style
– interests
– respect for compensation
– environment
– teach for meaning / relevance
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 --> reference
• Repetition & consolidation
• Explicit strategies for problem
solving
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
Child factors: Sociability
• Wing’s classification
– withdrawn/ solitary -> passive/ responds -> ‘active but odd’ -> eccentric &
sensitive
• Varies with conditions & with teaching
• Level suggests optimum form of approach
– withdrawn - 1:1 directive & desensitisation
– passive - interest & structured play experience
– active but odd - social rules & experience (context)
– eccentric - social skills in context e.g. buddy
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 -> relational -> functional -> symbolic
– social
• alongside -> imitative-> ‘join in’ -> co-operate - collaborate
Process for social engagement
• No fixed assumptions
• Enabling structures for participation (including repetition)
• Supporting the supporters - paired schemes
• Allowing risk -> excitement
• Supported peers better that trained ones
Teaching Social Interaction
• Videos / instant photographs for social cues
• Innovatory aspects of ICT
• Range of techniques based on mutual enjoyment of interaction:
– Intensive Interaction
–Sherborne movement
– Option/Son Rise
–Hanen/ Child Talk/ PACT
– Frameworks for communication
–DIR/ RDI/SCERTS
– Music therapy
–SMILE
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
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
Communication and ASDs
• Language and communication separate
• Often associated language problems
• Prognosis
• All aspects:
– gesture
– posture
– facial expression
– emotion
– pragmatics
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
‘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
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?
Processes for Inclusion
• Support
– trained - ASDs
– enabling - Observe/ Wait/ Listen
• Staged
– special -> reverse ->integrated
• Resource base
• ‘Free time’
– use of buddies / circles of friends
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
Remember
..calling it so does not make it so …….
• ‘Inclusive’ settings may be socially isolating
• ‘Specialist’ settings may be narrow & of poor quality
An ASD Curriculum?
• No ‘autism’ curriculum or single approach
• Needs to fit:
– individual
– family
– practitioner
– context
– current goals
– prognosis
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
Single vs Eclectic Curricula
Single
Eclectic
• Enables staff expertise
• Can match to goal
• Better monitoring & easier
evaluation
• All needs can be addressed
• Builds staff & parent confidence
• Needs compatibility checks &
child perspective
• Enables positive views
• Take strengths from each
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
Judging Research
• Does it relate to children with this child’s 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?
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
Teaching for Purpose
Different approach needed to suit
• Individual characteristics
–
–
–
–
–
sociability
language
cognitive level
sensory issues
age
• Goal
• Practitioner comfort/ ability/ knowledge
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