Restoring the Basic Philosophy of Education into School Programs for Students with Autism

While Meeting Federal, State and Local Education Mandated Requirements

by Tracie Mauch

Like many educators dedicated to working with students with ASD, I have been a part of the ongoing search and evolution of effective instructional strategies for children with autism. Based on my personal experience with specific students, I have watched these students over the years demonstrate the mastery of specific skills in a “one on one” setting or in isolation, however later, in a generalized setting, not be able to demonstrate the same skills. These are students who can provide basic information, but can not maintain a relationship with a friend or independently go into the community. These are students who can read words, but not enjoy or share a story. They are students who can identify money, but not go to a store or restaurant and pay for an item or meal. They are students who can say hello, tell someone whose turn it is, but not demonstrate any enjoyment of a social interaction with someone else. However, it was not until I began to understand Autism through RDI Program training that I was able to organize the different components of things that I had liked about individual modalities into an effective model for the education of students with Autism.

To begin with, I found through RDI when students are provided a structured learning experience it provides neural connections in the brain which affect the strength and duration. When student supports are organized in a manner where the expectation is clear, then the student can begin to develop independent skills. When we start where the student is successful, they feel competent and are more willing to participate; they have a clear understanding of what is expected of them. Along with the other features of guided participation, I also emphasize: the importance of routine activities, tacit as well as explicit communication, supportive structuring of novices’ efforts, and transfer of responsibility for handing skills to novices. Educators can then build on the student’s abilities by adding variations and change while supporting the student to ensure success. By scaffolding (an RDI concept), like typical children, ASD students begin to establish trust with their teachers. Scaffolding is provided when the teacher begins to balance for the weakness of the student, by providing the supports to assist the student to achieve beyond his current level of competency. The teacher then begins to gradually withdraw supports as the student continues to gain mastery, remaining one step ahead. As I learned through the RDI certification process scaffolding is vital in increasing student independence and the initiation of simplistic problem solving skills. It is vital to remember scaffolding is an ongoing process; many times student supports like schedules, task organization and supports are not faded or removed. When these supports are not gradually removed the support becomes part of the routine, not building to independence, the routine becomes static.

Static systems do not require thinking; the skills become rote routines that students will not generalize into daily life. Doing the same thing over and over does not increase a student’s ability to think. While rote routines are stored in procedural memory (if they are not used or built on) the memory is lost. In order to use or build on the procedural memory we must provide the student an opportunity to pull the memory and use it in relationship to something else. As well, when we remove needed supports too quickly, students can fail; when students continue to fail over time, they lose their motivation to participate. For students with autism, I think of it as the ultimate “flight or fight” response. Flight being the complete disengagement from the world around them, and fight as the maladaptive behaviors that are frequently observed and not understood in regards to students with autism.

Based on what we know about learning in general, for all students increased learning occurs when we take a multimodality approach. A multimodality approach is using sights, sounds and movements to add to the richness of memories. While I find many of these strategies useful in the classroom, what I observed as I worked with students from preschool to high school, was students could perform rote skills in isolation like following a schedule to complete a specific task, however they did not generalize the skills from one environment to another. They would have difficulty completing the same task in the natural environment even with the same supports. They had learned to complete the task following a schedule, but the task did not require active productive thinking, it was like they were going through the motions without “thinking about it.” Therefore by not requiring productive thinking, students had not been active participants in the learning process; the focus of the instruction had become compliance and skill based. And, unless a skill is functional and relevant to the student; they can not use it spontaneously. Thus, the most usable and useful curriculum for classroom teachers would be one that made clear for student and teacher what the patterns are (i.e. the concepts to be learned) and how those understandings would be used in the real world, a core RDI concept.