VIEWS & OPINION The (virtual) future of autism education Comment by STEPHANIE SMITH, Head of School, The Cavendish School


Advances in virtual reality, artificial intelligence and software applications are opening up new worlds for special schools. Technology- based interventions are helping educators across the globe to create safe, interactive and therapeutic environments that enable neurodivergent students to thrive.


Using technology to


support students with autism may seem counterintuitive because of the risk of hyperarousal, dysregulation and overstimulation, but implementing technology in educational contexts has been proven to help autistic children to engage with their learning. Technological interventions can help students to develop their social skills and remove the barriers that co-current conditions, such as dyspraxia and hypermobility, can pose.


At The Cavendish School, we have seen the positive impact of integrating technology into our students’ learning and our classrooms, in conjunction with a multidisciplinary team of support staff, therapists and the families of our students.


Break down physical barriers


Dyspraxia and hypermobility can make the physical action of writing painful for autistic students. Challenges with their fine and gross motor skills can also impact many students’ ability to write easily and comfortably. Pain, and discomfort, can divert students’ attention from their learning so alleviating the act of writing helps to improve their ability to engage with their learning.


From electronic devices to speech-to-text apps, there are multiple ways in which technology can play a role in removing students’ physical barriers to learning. When deciding whether the task should be performed by hand or by computer, it is important to assess the learning objective for the student; if the purpose of the task is to demonstrate their knowledge, then using an electronic device enables students to focus on creating content and share their understanding of a subject. At The Cavendish School, we take a hybrid approach that relates to activities and actions that our students will face in their daily lives, to ensure that they are equipped to thrive outside of the classroom.


Physical Education (PE) can present challenges for autistic students because of difficulties with their motor skills, clothing hypersensitivity and anxiety. Virtual reality technology presents an opportunity to encourage exercise by taking part in games in a safe, and comfortable environment. Using one of our virtual reality headsets, students can take part in games that encourage movement to develop their coordination, improve their response times and consider directions. It also leads to the development of enhanced spatial knowledge and increases engagement. This ensures that every one of our young people benefits from regular exercise, which has positive effects on health, motor skills and social skills.


Engage with learning


Technology can also be used to support students to remain engaged with their learning. Our virtual reality sandpit has proven popular with students because kinaesthetic learning encourages movement, which


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provides essential sensory feedback that helps them to self-regulate and stay focused.


Different technologies can also be used to create an ‘irresistible invitation to learn’ for autistic students; the key principle in Attention Autism, an intervention model designed by Gina Davies, which aims to increase attention, encourage interaction and improve communication. Virtual reality provides interactive simulations of real-world environments, where learners can actively participate, facilitating engagement. Last term, our Year 3 students learnt about the water cycle using virtual reality to interact with the topic and to build their world as a team, which gave their teacher the opportunity to model vocabulary back to them – it is a powerful learning style. Our secondary school students have also benefited from virtual reality, using the Anne Frank House VR app to learn through experience. Now our students can virtually explore Anne Frank’s house to engage with the topic of the Holocaust without experiencing the anxiety and distress that an educational visit, with multiple sensory stimulants, might induce.


At The Cavendish School, weekly reward time is embedded into our students learning through the errorless rewards system, which is designed to reinforce positive interactions and behaviours from the students. Using technology in the classroom has enabled us to offer a reward that our students find deeply motivating, helping to decrease frustration and reduce disengagement.


Practise social skills


Virtual reality can also prepare students to feel comfortable in scenarios outside of the classroom and well into adulthood. The Center for BrainHealth and the Child Study Center at Yale University’s School of Medicine collaborated on a virtual reality project to help young people with autism to achieve social and financial independence. The organisations created role-play environments that enabled participants to practice their social skills and prepare for situations, such as job interviews, which can be stressful and anxiety-inducing.


It can be difficult to successfully help autistic students develop coping mechanisms for anxiety when students struggle to imagine visual scenarios. The University of Newcastle created its Blue Room, in conjunction with a virtual reality company, to help alleviate debilitating anxieties by creating personalised scenarios in a controlled environment, so that students learn to manage their fears in the real world – enabling them to attend lessons.


In our experience, virtual reality not only offers students a way to learn to manage their fears, but it also helps them to prepare for real-world encounters. One of our goals at the school is to help our students to progress in their chosen academic or career paths and virtual reality job simulator games, such as Job Simulator, enable our students to experience approximations of real-world job roles to develop the life skills necessary to thrive in the workplace. With more than 160,000 students with autism in schools across England, it is important that we address the challenges they are facing in mainstream and special needs classrooms. During the pandemic, schools quickly pivoted to delivering learning online, using technology to continue to meet students’ needs. Now is the time for schools to assess their current capabilities and invest in the infrastructure needed to break down barriers to learning, deliver improved student outcomes and improve access to education for autistic students moving forward.


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