#CoLweeklyupdate (W10T12018) - Academic readings about Autism

Effect of Classroom Modification on Attention and Engagement of Students With Autism or Dyspraxia
Moya Kinnealey; Beth Pfeiffer; Jennifer Miller; Cecilia Roan; Rachel Shoener; Matt L. EllnerPublished in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy. 

This article discussed different things that affect students with Autism or Dyspraxia in mainstream classroom. 

Things to think about

• Mainly, this article talked about sound and light. These are both issues for Ryan. He hides under tables on a daily basis and once laid under the chair at the movies because the screen was too bright. He doesn't like loud noises but doesn't effectively use the ear muffs I provided for him. 
• could I possibly change the lightbulbs in my classroom to Hallogen lights? The readings showed this to decrease stress behaviours in children with Autisim, and reduce fidgiting in the child with Dyspraxia. 
• It talked about different kinds of attention - "Various types of attention—orienting attention, sustained attention, shifting attention, social attention, and joint attention—have been studied in people with autism, as described by Patten and Watson (2011). Orienting attention is a person’s initial physical orientation to a stimulus, person, or event, and sustained attention is the ability to maintain the regard of an object or event. Shifting attention is the process required to disengage attention from one stimulus and to reorient and engage attention toward another. In contrast, social attention is a naturally occurring orientation to social stimuli such as voices and faces of others, and difficulty in this area is a core feature of autism. Finally, joint attention is shared attention between two or more people or between people and an object or event. Joint attention is particularly pertinent in the educational context; it involves all other components of attention and is a social behavior. All of these types of attention, except for sustained attention, are problematic for people with autism (Patten & Watson, 2011)." (page 512).
• I think Ryan has issues with orienting attention and a shifting attention. When he is overly distracted, he often physically moves around a lot around the classroom or even within a physical space, moving from standing, leaning, sitting, back to standing, within a few minutes. He struggles to shift from one activity to another, especially when the first activity is incomplete. 

Investigating the social engagement of children with autism in mainstream schools for the purpose of identifying learning targets - By Carmel Conn

This article discussed a study where one autistic child was observed etc in the context of a mainstream school. 

Things to think about

•  'Children's friendships were partly defined by their play' (page 156) - therefore they play with people who want to play the same game as them. I can connect to this because Ryan often says nobody likes him, as they don't want to play with him, but in reality he and his peers just don't want to play the same game, or in the same way. This leads to his perception of lack of friends. It also talks about kids having friends in other classes and how this affects them in the class. For Ryan, he does have friends in other classes but I don't perceive these to be positive friendships. His other friends don't understand him in the same way our class does so this often leads to fights etc on the playground.
•  The case study school relaxed their seating plan policy in order to accomodate the focus students better. Possibly the opposite could apply to my situation? Maybe an overabundance of choice of where to sit and who to sit with is too much for Ryan?
•  It talks at the end about how more time and effort needs to be spend on making observations, having discussions etc with the autistic children and their social group. How do they perceive each other? What is friendly, helpful behaviour and what is not? The purpose would be to 'find out what existed in the environment to support or constrain social inclusion' (page 158).  
• At the end they discuss a list of things that were discovered about the case study student 'Kyle'. One of these was having clearer learning targets (which I think Ryan needs). They also discussed Kyle's imaginative thinking, and how although it worked for him at this point in time, it would cause issues as he grew older and imaginative play was not 'normal' for his age. I can notice that Ryan plays mostly with year 5s or very immature year 6s, and hardly ever speaks to the more mature year 6s. Maybe this is why...?

A Meta-Analysis of School-Based Social Skills Interventions for Children With Autism Spectrum DisordersScott Bellini, Jessica K. Peters, Lauren Benner, Andrea Hopf

Things to think about

•  This article talked about having social skills interventions for students with ASD, suggesting 30 hours over 10-12 weeks. That's 3 hours a week, if not more, of specific time where ASD students should be learning social skills. As much as I agree with that, how is that realistic when students are in a mainstream classroom? There is no way I can provide that time 1:1 or even for a group. 
• It also talked about that when interventions are done, they are often not as successful as they ought to be because students are pulled out of the classroom into resource rooms or other rooms. This disconnects the learning to the context where it should be applied, so the results are not always high. The article recommends that social learning interventions should happen in the classroom environment in a normal way as possible. 
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