A Basic Request: Teaching Training to Teach Autistic Students
November 12, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Education
Teachers need autism training, as Cam Ward writes in the November 11th Shelby County Reporter (Alabama). Ward suggests that one way to provide teacher training is by making use of ACCESS, a distance learning infrastructure. Yesterday’s Guardian also highlighted why there’s an immediate and seemingly ubiquitous need for training teachers about teaching autistic students. A report from the University of Birmingham’s Autism Centre for Education and Research “shows that too many teachers and support staff are unfamiliar with the needs of autistic children and struggle to teach them effectively”:
…….instead of recognising the atypical development of children and young people on the autistic spectrum, teachers tend to view them through a “typical lens”, comparing their behaviour with children who do not have the condition. Some, like Ieuan’s teachers, believe they can force autistic children to behave as other pupils do, or that it is a condition that they will grow out of.
There is also general confusion about autism. Teachers do not realise, for example, that the challenging behaviour can be accompanied by high intelligence.
One father describes in the report how his seven-year-old son, who has Asperger’s syndrome, another condition on the autistic spectrum, has been deemed to be “too bright” for support, and yet “he can’t work with other children and he struggles to understand some instructions”.
The report says that autistic pupils make the most progress when teachers provided an individualised programme that addresses specific social, personal and learning difficulties.
A perceived, or otherwise, lack of support from school often leads to difficult relationships between the child’s home and teachers. The study finds that parents are often left to fight alone for the right education for their child and to deal with the effects of autism, leaving them “emotionally and physically exhausted from the constant demands and the harrowing situations they experience”.
That all sounds familiar and even applies to some more recent experiences we’ve had with Charlie’s education, and we live in a school district that families move into because of its services for special education and autistic students.
Jeff Stimpson
Jill Cornfield
Absolutely agree!
Battling the school system is the most exhausting and stressful experience as parents trying to get appropriate accomodations in place.
Teachers and support often use sound bites of information they gather in determining the IEP. They just don’t have enough experience or training on autism - and they don’t like to be told otherwise! They end up always blaming the child, eventhough he’s been assessed with superior IQ and intelligence (they say; “we don’t see it”) What’s even more frustrating is that the board’s own so called specialists are not trained, other than taking a few general sessions on what autism is -yet they impart their “expertise” as the standard for approaching autistic teachings across the board.
When we finanlly got someone (EA) who had training in effectively dealing and working with autistic children, things improved a bit…until the teacher got involved and took the back seat driver approach with the trained EA…and now this year were back to battling them. I could go on but…
When it comes to teaching autistic children, it’s not only the techniques that are important, but the ability to interact and effectively respond to the actions and reactions of the child. It takes a trained person.
“emotionally and physically exhausted”…. yes, that describes me well enough. We had and continue to have some issues about our son’s school placement and conditions of education that made us realize how ignorant some people in authority can be about autism and special education in general. I felt really frustrated but now anger has taken place.
I certainly agree that there is value in preparing teachers to be capable of teaching students with Autism. If one can teach kids with Autism, teaching other students is much easier, in my experience.
Of importance, however: What would one teach teachers to do? Should a teacher educator prepare her teacher-wannabes to use Method A, Method C, Method R, or Method X (which might be the eclectic approach)?
My bias, of course, would be to identify the practices, procedures, techniques, and curricula that have repeatedly been shown to be effective in rigorous studies and teach those prospective teachers those skills. However, given that they are skills and that they would have to be executed with fidelity, it would be important to teach them effectively. Doing so probably requires extensive practice in realistic situations with expert coaching. That would be pretty expensive, no?
So, perhaps is makes sense to prepare fewer people with pretty substantial expertise in faithfully employing extensively tested procedures. Sure, there would be some basics that one would hope virtually all teachers would know and employ (e.g., catch ‘em being good), but the heavy lifting would be better done by individuals with advanced preparation.
There is no guaranteed way to teach an autistic child. The method with the most research behind it, and the best success rate ABA does not help every child.
I have friends with a four-year old son who is eager to learn, but wants no contact with other children. He excels at learning and sees no reason for friendship.
My daughter shows little interest in learning anything from which she does not receive an immediate benefit. At 11.5 she keeps on slipping behind her peers. The four-year old is ahead of her. I don’t think she lacks the capability to learn, she lacks the will.
Finding a method which wants her to yearn for knowledge is a quest at which we, her parents have not succeeded. She is showing promise with an online ABA curriculum, but generalization of that has not been successful.
If one finds a method or methods which work, so much depends on the teacher and the relationship they build with the child.
“we live in a school district that families move into because of its services ”
Your school district has just as many trying to move out, as fast as they can get out.
If one finds a method or methods which work, so much depends on the teacher and the relationship they build with the child.
Mayfly, I think you hit the nail on the head.
@anon,
one thing we’ve learned, there’s never a geographical cure!
ditto Regan quoting mayfly
I totally agree. I’m struggling with the same issue and my son is in a program that’s supposedly specifically for kids with his Dx, and the teachers are paid extra and the district gets extra $ to give them dx-specific training! Supposedly.
I think part of the problem is that the training aims to generalize the population, the The Whole Point of this population is that each one of them, ideally, will do best when approached as an individual.
Sometimes I think my son would be better off in a general classroom (if they just weren’t so gosh-darn BIG); I think he’d be treated as more of an individual than he is in his current classroom, where they take great pains (at least, it pains ME) to treat everyone the same.