Unit 2-Research-based accommodations for students with ASD
=== The importance of using scholarly, research-based accommodations ===
Now that you know a bit more about autism and how it effect’s learning, you need to understanding the difference between popular, or fad accommodations and scholarly, research-based accommodations. Often when educators have a student with a disability placed in their classroom they are given little time to prepare. With the rise of the internet era many professionals began turning to sources which seemed straight forward, popular among other educators, and appropriate for their situation. The problem with this is that there are many accommodations which look good on paper, and which seem generally supported by the educational community, but which have no real effect on the students learning or behavior. There is a lack of funding going towards research in the educational field which means that new accommodations are being created and implemented all the time, without the resources available to first test them and determine their real effectiveness.
Research on services received by children with ASD in public school classrooms showed the out of 185 Georgian teachers, 7.7% of the teachers surveyed used strategies that were scientifically based, 20.9% used promising practices, 27.9% used strategies with limited supporting information, 4.7% used strategies that were not recommended, and the remaining 38.8% used strategies were not rated (Hess, Morrier, Heflin, & Ivey, 2008, p.967). Clearly, there is an issue when over half of the teachers who completed this survey did not use strategies that were either scientific or showed promising practice. Many were using strategies which had little to no support and of which there was little known about. Some were even using strategies which had been researched and were not recommended.
The lack of proper strategy use is partially at fault with the educators implementing them, but is also to be blamed on the administration at their school whose responsibility it is to ensure proper accommodations are being implemented. The blame also needs to fall on the lack of funding for research in their field on top of the rate which new strategies are being created and implemented.
=== Learn about three different researched methods for accommodating students with autism ===
Three scholarly, research based theories on teaching students with autism include the high-preference strategy, incorporating motivational components into academic tasks, and offering choice. Each strategy has been researched and results have shown that they are effective in helping students with autism to learn.
High-preference strategy involves a presentation of two to three preferred academic tasks (i.e., tasks that are likely to be completed with high frequency) before the presentation of a non-preferred academic task (i.e., tasks that a student can do but in which he or she does not frequently engage). When a high-p task is presented in a sequence before a nonpreferred task—a student is more likely to comply with the nonpreferred task, a concept based on the theory of behavioral momentum (Mace et al., 1988; Nevin, Mandell, & Atak, 1983 as cited in Banda & Kubina, 2010, p. 81).
To incorporate motivational components the researchers introduced things such as being able to choose what instrument the child wanted to use to write and where they wanted to sit. Incorporating motivational components into academic tasks resulted in faster completion rates, decreased disruptive behavior, and improved interest and suggested that not only did academic performance improved, but interest in academic learning improved as well (Koegel, Singh, & Koegel, 2010).
Lastly, when offering choice, the child was allowed to make choices concerning things such as which activity they would like to complete (across activity choice) or how they would like to complete it and where they would like to complete it( within activity choice). The researchers found that in either case the amount of challenging behavior demonstrated decreased and remained low which lead to the conclusion that offering students either type of choice would lead to more successful learning (Rispoli, Lang, Neely, Camargo, Hutchins, Davenport, & Goodwyn, 2013).
=== Understand where to find scholarly, research-based accommodations ===
It may seem like more work at first, but using scholarly, peer reviewed articles can be very useful. The more you look at them the better you will become at determining what information is important to you. Using search engines such as jstor and ebscohost can help you to limit your searches and help you find exactly what you are looking for. To practice search for this item:
Ryan, J. B., Hughes, E., Katsiyannis, A., McDaniel, M. & Sprinkle, C. (2014). Research-Based Educational Practices for Students With Autism Spectrum Disorders. Teaching Exceptional Children. 47(2), 94-102.
This research gives a chart with six specific accommodations which are research based,a description of the program, what the demonstrated efficacies are, and a link to where you can find more information on that specific accommodation.
Why is it important to know how to find research?
Is there a time when you would want to use un-researched accommodations?
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