AUTISM Understanding autism


Children on the autistic spectrum can range from the


academically bright to those with very significant learning disabilities. Professor Tony Charman discusses his team’s research in this area and the challenges for schools


O


ne Of the challenges facing teaching and support staff working with children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is the variability of abilities and attainments that are commonly found in pupils with an ASD diagnosis.


Over the past two decades, there has been much


broader recognition and acceptance of the variability of presentation and abilities seen between individuals with an ASD diagnosis, for example in general cognitive abilities or language and communication abilities. As such, it is now widely recognised that the ASD


diagnostic category can include a non-verbal child with very significant learning disabilities, but also a bright secondary school pupil destined for university. However, more recently, researchers have begun to


focus on the variable profile seen within individuals with ASD. These new insights are in some ways equally important for practitioners to recognise and understand as they will, in part, determine how the curriculum needs to be differentiated for it to be accessible for any individual pupil with an ASD.


Understanding language


One important example that has been studied by research groups including ours at the Centre for Research in Autism and education (CRAe) is the profile of relative strengths and weakness in receptive and expressive language and communication abilities. In many areas of communication, such as word


learning in the early years, understanding (receptive abilities) by definition is in advance of production (expressive abilities). This is because a child cannot functionally use


the label for a word (e.g. “car”) before they have understood that the label applies to that class of object (intuitively recognising that these objects are what people call “car”). However, for many children with an ASD


– in comparison to typically developing children – expressive skills are a relative strength compared to their receptive or understanding skills. At first this might seem counter-intuitive since a


high proportion of children with an ASD have delayed language milestones in the early years. In the clinic, parents often tell us that their non-verbal toddler with an ASD understands much of what they say to them. However, following formal language assessment this sometimes turns out not to be the case. This apparent discrepancy is explained by the


fact that basic following of instructions can be based on familiar routines, non-verbal cues and language understanding per se. There is a danger, particularly for more able children with good expressive skills, that the outward presentation of verbal competence will mislead parents and practitioners into assuming a strong foundation of comprehension skills, something which may not be justified. The message is that language and communication


needs to be matched to the level of a child’s understanding and not their expressive language skills, and if practitioners are unsure they should seek the advice of a colleague from speech and language therapy services.


Attainment


In another recent study, we assessed the attainments (reading, maths) in year 11 of 100 adolescents with an ASD, including those with IQs as low as 50 and those with above average IQ. Children with an ASD showed a strikingly uneven


profile of academic attainments. One group of children showed a “peak” of ability in reading; while another,


SecEd • March 17 2011


separate, group of these children showed a peak in arithmetic skills. Yet another group showed a “dip” in reading comprehension (not understanding what they have read). More notably still, the groups which displayed


the peaks of ability had widely different profiles of intelligence. for example, children who had a reading peak (with good word reading compared to general ability) had average word reading but well below average intelligence; whereas children who had an arithmetic peak (with good arithmetic skills compared to general ability) had average intelligence but exceptional arithmetical skills. This latter finding could be consistent with recent


ideas that autism is sometimes characterised by a facility for abstract (in this case numerical) “systems”. further work to identify the learning styles of


children with autism may therefore help us understand the “fractionated” profile of attainments and abilities within children with an ASD. One implication of these findings is that teachers working with children with an ASD must take great care not to generalise from a single ability – such as isolated good skills in reading or maths – to all other abilities.


Visual search skills


The idea that individuals with an ASD might be characterised as “systematisers” – more comfortable and facile with mechanical and regular systems than with social relating and understanding – was introduced to autism literature by my mentor Professor Simon Baron-Cohen. My colleague at CRAe, Dr Liz Pellicano recently put the systematising theory to the test using, for the first time, a “real-world” experimental task. Liz and her colleagues tested 20 children with an


ASD and 20 typically developing children in a large- scale “foraging” game. It was designed in a purpose- built laboratory setting and the children had to search for a “prize” among 16 green illuminated locations laid out on the floor (when they found the correct location the light turned red). The object of the game is to search quickly and efficiently – not to return to previously visited locations. Moreover, the “game” was rigged so that across


trials the prizes were more likely to be found on one side of the foraging space than the other. Over trials, the most efficient foragers would begin to use this information to start their search on this side. Surprisingly, the control group outperformed


the ASD children, who engaged in very inefficient searches. The researchers attribute this to an inability to form a global representation of the search space and problems with short-term spatial memory that prevented them from discerning the rules and applying them effectively. finding an apple on a fruit plate is a much different visual task than finding an apple in the supermarket. Previous research has shown that children with an


ASD are generally better than their peers at small-scale visual tasks like the former, but large-scale tasks, like the latter, are crucial for independent living. Contrary to previous studies, which show that


children with autism often demonstrate outstanding visual search skills, this new research indicates that children with autism are unable to search effectively for objects in real-life situations – a skill that is essential for achieving independence in adulthood. These are the sorts of skills that also underpin everyday independence skills in children with an ASD. Liz concluded: “We discovered that when people


with autism are asked to search for something in a large-scale space their apparent advantage over others drops away. “It is vital that we fully understand the strengths and


disadvantages of individuals with an ASD so that we can help people, and especially children, with an ASD maximise their wellbeing in the long-run.” This experiment is an example of one strand of


the work CRAe is attempting to undertake – to use experimental approaches to test-out theories about everyday problem-solving in young people with an ASD.


Our contention is that there is still much to learn


about how young people with an ASD develop and learn and what their profile of strengths and weaknesses is. A better understanding will enable us to develop approaches to maximise learning and achievement inside and outside the classroom.


SecEd


• Professor Tony Charman is chair in autism education at the Centre for Research in Autism and Education at the Institute of Education, London. Visit www.ioe.ac.uk/CRAE


Future of vocational education Union address: NAHT


The debate is now about employability


skills, not vocational skills, argues Russell Hobby


PROfeSSOR ALISOn Wolf’s long awaited study into vocational education (Wolf yields 27-point plan for vocational education, SecEd 277, March 3, 2011) is a thoughtful and weighty analysis, but this is a problem that we have persistently failed to crack in this country. Does the report offer any hope? Despite misleading headlines about forced re-sits


of english and maths, the point that immediately struck me about the report lay in its analysis of the labour market for young people. Some stark facts: • There is little demand for inexperienced workers. • There are still plenty of low skilled or unskilled jobs.


• There is growing demand for highly skilled knowledge workers – it is the middle that is being squeezed.


• There are near universal aspirations for higher education.


• Some qualifications actually result in lower lifetime earnings.


• The fastest growing job in the country for the last few years was that of teaching assistant. Above all, though, the report highlighted


turbulence and change. even before their mid-20s, most young people will have held several jobs, in different occupations and even in different sectors. The idea that, at an early age, you can select a


trade or profession and specialise in it exclusively is not tenable. Young people will need to be able to adapt to many different circumstances, to retrain and redirect. employability skills trump vocational skills. This reinforces much research in corporate


human resources. Skills and knowledge can be provided through training; attributes and values such as energy, confidence, responsibility, resilience and initiative are much harder to instil in adults. faced


with two otherwise equal candidates, choose the one with the right attitude. As Daniel Goleman noted in his research into


emotional intelligence,eI is twice as likely to predict career success as technical skills and IQ combined. One conclusion is to delay specialisation as long


as possible. Another is to invest in more generic, broadly applicable skills, which certainly includes literacy and numeracy. This is not the same as suggesting that everyone should re-sit maths and english GCSe until they at least get a C – different approaches to teaching and framing the subject may be required. Another conclusion, shared by Prof Wolf, is to


focus on a more traditional academic curriculum as the best source of broadly applicable skills and habits of thought. This is not the same, of course, as approving rote learning of facts and figures. It is clear that one of the most important outomes


of an education in the 21st century is the ability to learn and adapt. This does not take place in a factual vacuum, but does it depend heavily on intangibles like curiosity, self-confidence and resilience. I was taught long division at primary school.


I haven’t used it since. However, I am confident performing financial calculations – I use a spreadsheet, which weren’t invented when I was at school. Somewhere, I was given the confidence to experiment with new technology, make mistakes and learn from them. That was the most valuable lesson, and I’m not sure what league table would capture it, but it’s definitely what our children need to prepare them for a world we cannot fully predict. It’s also why those education systems that have most effectively mastered rote learning and teaching are worried about their innovation and creativity, and maintain an interest in our supposedly “underperforming” education system. The fact is you can’t measure everything that matters. The pendulum swings regularly from facts to


attributes, from knowledge to experience, and back again; but we must take care not to caricature either side of the debate. The pendulum is in danger of swinging too far, however, and we need to defend the importance of attributes, values and experience. Knowledge means little without the ability to use it in complex settings.


• Russell Hobby is the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. Visit www.naht.org.uk


15


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16