What's an autistic classroom?

When I sent the title of an event I’m planning to introduce the Our Mythical Childhood project to a colleague who was putting together a programme of upcoming classical events at Roehampton the colleague wrote back to check whether I’d got the title of my talk at this event right. The title I’d sent her was along the lines of ‘classical myth in the autistic classroom’ and she wanted to check whether I’d meant to write ‘autistic classroom.’ I assumed that I had managed a typo thanks to autocorrect with tends to offer me ‘artistic’ for ‘autistic’. But I checked, and I had correctly written ‘autistic’. So I confirmed this to my colleague and she who said that that she’d wanted to make sure that I’d actually meant ‘autistic classroom’ as she is not sure what such a classroom might be. I’m glad that she asked about this because the question has got me to think about what I do actually mean by the phrase.

The answer I gave her – this was about a month ago - was this: come along to the event and you’ll find out! So I have a few weeks to get my thinking sorted out ahead of the event which is on Thursday 6^th March. Here are some initial musings, informed by the chapter on autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in a book that I’m grateful to my colleague Lena Kamenopoulou for recommending: Special Teaching for Special Children? Pedagogies for inclusion, ed. By Ann Lewis and Brahmn Norwich. The chapter in question, by Rita Jordan, and also synthesises the author’s previous work on autism and education. Perhaps I should write to her to ask whether she thinks there might be such thing as an ‘autistic classroom.’

For one thing, an autistic classroom might be one where children diagnosed as autistic are taught, and were special provision is made for their distinctive needs. Jordan, building on her own previous work - and others’ notably Lorna Wing’s – defines these as dealing with difficulties in:

1. Social and emotional understanding
2. All aspects of communication
3. Flexibility in thinking and behaviour.

She doesn’t number these three points – I’m only doing so because I’m following the order in her list. Indeed, what she stresses is that educational practice that only focuses in on one of the three might be inadequate – because it is the ‘triad of impairments,’ Wing’s term, that is key here. Jordan writes:

Communication difficulties, for example, are apparent when the child has problems in understanding his or her own and others’ emotions and social signals and when they have problems being spontaneous and monitoring feedback to their own actions …  ASDs are transactional disorders, appearing in their interactions with others and not to be understood without the contextualization from which special needs are determined (p. 111).

So, an ‘autistic classroom' might be one where the educational needs of diagnosed children are met, so that transactional problems can be helped, and where, for instance, their flexibility in thinking is helped in relation to how they communicate with others, and where their social and emotional understanding is fostered in the context of how they think about their behaviour and the behaviour of others. An autistic classroom might, then, be one where autistic children are helped to become more emotionally engaged and which seeks to remediate their difficulties in being socially engaged, emotionally engaged and in communicating and in developing flexible thinking and actions. Such a classroom might find ways to help those children who find it hard to participate in the mainstream classroom – the space where other children are helped in socialising and becoming enculturated. An autistic classroom could deal with needs of those who develop different from others in such areas as the following identified by Jordan:

• Joint attention
• Imitation
• Social and emotional identification
• Reading social signals

For example, as she says, autistic children can find eye contact ‘intrusive and painful’ so getting them to do this might make listening to what the speaker is saying a challenge. An autistic classroom would hopefully support an autistic child in building up confidence in making eye contact and responding to eye contact from others – and in gaining understanding of social signals and what these might mean.

So this is one answer to my colleague – an autistic classroom is a classroom for autistic kids where the specific challenges they face can be addressed. However, the Lewis-Norwich volume title ends with a question mark - signalling that the authors are engaging with a debate over whether there should be ‘special teaching for special children’ and what it means for a child to be regarded as ‘special.’ They are engaging with the call to move away from ‘special needs’ to an inclusive education. From this perspective, should there be a distinctively autistic classroom in the sense of a space that supports the learning of those diagnosed as autistic – or should autistic children have their own classroom – or should a classroom be created that supports the learning of all, autistic and otherwise?

A few follow-up points:

Firstly, I’m going to reflect about how the debate around how to meet the needs of autistic children vs. inclusive practice might impact on the resources I’m currently developing around the mythological adventures of Hercules, including around eye-contact, imitation and reading social signals.

Secondly, I’m going to read one of the items referenced by Jordan, which looks at the role of drama and also play in autistic pedagogy: Sherrat and Peter 2002. Developing play and drama in children with autism (David Fulton).

And finally this! In yet another happy coincidence – I’ve reported on others previously over the last few months – on drafting this posting on Monday morning (20^th Feb), Katarzyna Marciniak the Principal Investigator for Our Mythical Childhood, emailed me on Monday afternoon to tell me about an event taking place in Warsaw on inclusive practice. I’d initially planned to write up this posing on Friday. Instead I’m doing it today (Weds) ahead of the event on Friday. I’m looking forward to finding out about the event from Katarzyna, who will be attending it – and, hopefully, to making contact with the organisers.