Supporting Students with Autism in your class

Area of interest: Education

About this Event

These professional learning workshops can be taken individually, or as a pair. Teachers who complete both workshops can then undertake further assessment in a micro-credential unit for Recognition of Prior Learning for postgraduate study.

Teachers have been described as facing “unprecedented pressure” due to soaring disability rates, with the number of students with autism increasing by almost 15 per cent per year. Added to this, “there are fewer staff trained to support them as the number of special education graduates fall.”

1. Evidence-Based Practice for Social and Communication Skills and Sensory Issues (Monday 14 December, 9AM - 4PM)

• What evidence-based practices can I apply in class to support students with autism?
• What technologies can I access to support communication difficulties?

Topics include:

• The prevalence of autism
• Common misconceptions about people with this condition
• The diverse terminology and classification used in relation to autism
• The importance of language we use with people with disabilities
• Social interaction patterns related to autism and ritualised repetitive behaviours
• Sensory issues often experienced by people with autism across the lifespan
• Communication difficulties and the technologies to support them:

• • alternative and augmentative programs (PECS and Makaton)
  • mobile devices (tablets, smart phones)

2. School Transitions, Collaboration with Families, and Life-Span Perspective (Tuesday 15 December, 9AM - 4PM)

• What evidence-based practices can I apply in class to support students with autism?
• What strategies can I use to support home-school collaboration?

Topics include:

• The learning characteristics and needs of school-aged students with autism, and strategies and adjustments to support them
• Transitions to and from school, particularly focused on student involvement in Individual Educational/ Transition Plan (IEP/ITP) development
• Resilience in families, siblings, and grandparents of people with autism
• Supporting the collaboration between home and school

Facilitators

Dr Joanne Danker is a lecturer in Special Education at School of Education at UNSW Australia. Her research interests include the well-being of students with developmental disabilities (i.e., autism spectrum disorder and intellectual disabilities), and using innovative research approaches such as Photovoice to enable the authentic voices of the often silenced and marginalised children with disabilities to be heard. Prior to her academic career, Joanne worked as a mainstream primary school educator in Singapore for 10 years.

Iva Strnadová is Professor in Special Education and Disability Studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Prior to her academic career, Iva worked for 7 years with people with intellectual disability and with autism. Her research aims to contribute to better understanding and the improvement of the life experiences of people with disabilities, especially those most marginalized, such as people with intellectual disabilities. Combining research with advocacy is essential in her research program, which builds on supporting the self-determination (including self-advocacy) of people with intellectual disabilities, and is grounded in an innovative inclusive research approach, in which people with intellectual disabilities are included in the role of researcher.

She has a particular research interest in the well-being of people with developmental disabilities (intellectual disabilities and autism) and their families over the life span, diverse transitions in lives of people with disabilities (particularly intellectual disabilities and autism); girls and women with intellectual disabilities; parents with intellectual disabilities; people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities, and inclusive research.