An innovative research-based teacher professional development approach, enabling improved learning/wellbeing for pupils with autism
This project enables teachers to connect with the research base on autism, gather data on pupils with autism in their own setting, and work with colleagues from multiple schools to design and test innovative practices to improve learning and wellbeing for pupils with autism. The evaluation showed impact on teachers and pupils.
Information on this page is provided by the innovator and has not been evaluated by HundrED.
The project needs careful construction and leadership to ensure it bridges research and practice, rather than merely enabling the sharing of practical tips amongst colleagues.
We commissioned a literature review from University College London's Cognitive Neuroscience team, along with a full set of journal articles. We made this accessible to teachers be extracting key sentences and paragraphs, putting them onto strips of paper and asking them to work in groups to sort and arrange them so that they made sense. This encouraged discussion of quite complex academic material, and made them more likely to follow up by reading a journal article for a strip that was meaningful to them.
Teachers used a variety of material to model the challenges they and their pupils faced in the classroom. The process of creating and explaining the models helped them make sense of the situation and come up with more carefully designed solutions.
This approach has potential to support classteachers in meeting a wide variety of special needs for pupils in their care. At the moment, we are moving to focus on children with Speech, Language and Communication needs.