by Jess
Bring ABA into Inclusive Classrooms Instead of Sending Students with ASD to ABA Schools and Programs
March 15, 2012 in Special Education Articles by Jess
As you may have already figured out by the title of my book and my previous blog posts, one of my missions is to help educators and caregivers learn how to design meaningful ABA interventions that can be implemented within everyday home, school, and community routines. More and more special schools (segregated settings) for children with ASD are opening up across the country to provide 1:1 ABA instruction. The problem I have with this is that these children are missing out on thousands of learning opportunities that occur in inclusive classrooms and inclusive schools. The reason why these schools keep popping up is that there is strong research support for ABA interventions for kids with ASD, and the truth of the matter is public schools typically do not provide intensive ABA interventions for kids with ASD within the context of general education classrooms (or even special education classrooms). So, private or publicly funded schools are setting up camp to deliver 1:1 ABA interventions. Here’s one very important word of caution, though: While there is research support for the use of ABA interventions with kids with ASD, there is also research that documents that many kids do not maintain and generalize skills being learned when they are taught outside of the environments in which they will use them. Children may not maintain or generalize skills taught in isolation because the contexts in the natural environment are so significantly different from the therapeutic setting. They also may not maintain or generalize skills taught in isolation if the skills being learned are not meaningful and useful across contexts. All ABA intervention program goals should be able to answer the “So what?” question: If the child masters the goal, so what? How will it positively impact the child’s life and/or the life of those the child interacts with? If this question cannot be answered, the goal should not be included in the child’s program. Read the rest of this entry →
