Adapting to Autistics' Needs: Opening New Horizons for Pedagogical Adaptation and Research

Bertrand Monthubert - Aspie-Friendly Program (France)

Objectifs

  • Discover the Aspie-Friendly program and the pedagogical innovation workgroup

  • Discover the insights of this work and some of the resources produced

  • Examine the need for research about fundamental aspects of pedagogy which autistic students have helped to identify

  • Propose new research themes

  • Prioritize them

The Aspie-Friendly Program and the pedagogical innovation workgroup

The Aspie-Friendly Program

Main facts

  • 2017: 17 universities have come together to propose to the government that it launch a pilot program to improve academic inclusion for students with autism

  • Project selected by the government at the end of 2017 as part of a university pedagogical innovation program, started in early 2018 for a duration of 10 years.

  • Project funded by the Programme Investissements d’Avenir, hosted by the University of Toulouse, included in the French National Strategy for Autism

  • Many partners: Ministries, Autism Centers, National Agencies, companies.

Some figures

  • 500+ students

  • nearly 30 universities (out of 71 French universities) belong to the program

  • 100 teachers involved in pedagogical activities

  • 1000 views of our Pedagogical Kit in one year

Structure of the program

An iterative method of conception

Some of the resources

Aspie-Friendly - La Série - Episode 1 - Le Trouble du Spectre de l'Autisme

The Pedagogical Innovation workgroup and its productions

The « pedagogical innovation workgroup »

During the last three years, series of online pedagogical workshops gathering 100 teachers in total.

Objectives:

  • Allow everyone to raise the issues met

  • Co-creation of solutions or experiments

  • Conception of new pedagogical recommendations

Main animators: Patrick Binisti, Leila Boutora, Julien Mésangeau, Bertrand Monthubert.

The Pedagogical Kit

Kit pédagogique
Kit pédagogique

The Kit is organized in three parts:

  • Part 1: Training on autism at University

  • Part 2: Preparing for teaching

  • Part 3: Accompanying the students

Digital tools

Research in progress!

  • Avatarization of pedagogical videos

  • Individualization of display of pedagogical supports

Pedagogical challenges

Introduction

Autism is not only made of sensorial issues, social challenges, communication specificities:

  • autistic people have particularities in the brain development

  • it leads to specific challenges in the learning process

  • teachers need to take these cognitive particularities into account in their teaching

➡ working with students on social skills and executive functioning is necessary but not suficient.

Issues:

  • The pedagogical recommandations found in the literature don't address deeply enough the challenges of autistic students

  • We want to adopt facts-based practices... but research is lacking when we address challenges of adult autistic people without intellectual deficiency

Diving into the challenges raised by autistic students

Progressive complexification

In teaching: begin with simplifications of the problems so that students can practice, hiding complexity.

For instance: in physics, consider an object as reduced to a point and neglect the effect of the air.

But in real life, it can be quite different! And autistic students may have learned that by themselves.

How to teach them when they have knowledge going beyond what is expected at their level?

Global approach vs step-by-step

Is it a good approach to avoid giving the whole picture and to discover it piece by piece?

Many teachers have a linear, step-by-step approach to their field of knowledge. This may be very confusing for some autistic students who need to understand the global framework first.

Isabelle Soulières, prof. at Université du Québec à Montréal, showed that autistic kids have better results learning multiplication tables when they are all given as a whole, not table by table.

Hierarchisation of information

Many autistic students have trouble making a difference between all the information which is given.

They may put on the same level a general, global scientific fact and an example.

How to help them sort out the information ?

Writing issues

Writing is cultural.

  • Trouble knowing what to write ➡ very short or very long writings.

  • Maybe the result of difficulties to hierarchise the information (➡ 'too many' details)

  • Maybe because of Theory of Spirit (Whom am I writing for ?)

Should we help them produce writings more fitted to academic habits ? Should we organize writing groups so that others can handle the writing ?

Fulgurances

Some autistic students have 'fulgurances':

  • they find the result of a math problem extemely quickly

  • they don't know what has been the process of thought leading to the result.

Major example: Ramanujan.

Should we work hardly to make them become capable of writing proofs, or should we let them build their knowledge in this very particular way ?

How would YOU prioritize the work? Other ideas?

Please vote on

https://aspie-friendly.fr/CAS-vote

(think to click on the UK Flag unless you want to practice French 😉)

Other ideas? Please share them here:

www.wooclap.com/TMBKNX

Results

Results of the survey
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