Connective Education

[oracle]

I have removed the name of the school where Connective Education is delivered. Neither of my twso sons have ever attended but we have adpted this style of learning for both Matthew and David.

 

Oracle

 

Connective Education: Introduction

 

Connective Education is both the philosophy and practise which drives strategy and curriculum development

 

Essentially, Connective Education aims to support and facilitate students with autistic spectrum disorders to

 

� make sense of their bodies;

� make sense of the environments that work best for them;

� make sense of their role in events

� make sense of how they interface and interact with others.

 

 

 

 

What we consider makes Connective Education unique is the fact that we aim to support students to make connections between these domains. So, not only do we want students to understand what their body is doing, for example, experiencing a fast rate of breathing.

 

We support students to make the connection that this increased rate of breathing is as a response to environmental or people factors. In our experience, these are the connections which our students with ASD may not make themselves.

 

Given the difficulties that people with ASD experience with theory of mind, we also believe that we need to help our students to make connections with their own thought processes and so develop skills to think about what is happening to their bodies; to think about what they are doing in their environment and to think about what they are thinking and learning ? what strategies they are trying and then evaluating the success of these strategies.

 

We want to empower our students and make them in charge of their learning ? supporting them to understand what structures and strategies helped them and how to request these structures or how to make sure these structures are put in place. We wanted to adapt trends around how typical learners learn given what we know about patterns of learning for people with ASD. And in so doing, facilitate our students to reflect upon their actions, including more complex socially communicative behaviours and to even reflect upon their thoughts and internal states such as emotion ? in a way which promotes connectedness with those around them. Long term we hope to be able to demonstrate that people with autistic spectrum disorders can be supported to reflect upon their actions, think about their thoughts and so learn to modify their actions according to the social context. This could simply mean excusing oneself when things become too much.

 

The Five Principles of Connective Education

 

1. We learn to be calm

� I can feel changes in my body

� I use Body Basics to help me feel calm

� I go to places to be calm

 

2. We learn to use systems of work

� I learn to use work systems in different tasks, with different people

� I learn that someone else sets my work

� I learn I am in charge of the work I do

� I learn it is down to me to do the work to get my reward

 

 

 

 

3. We learn to relate/ interact

� I learn that my actions connect with others

� I learn there are rules to what I can do with/to others

� I learn to ask for help

 

4. We learn to think about what we have done

� I learn that I have chosen an action and I learn that there are consequences to this action.

� I learn to think about my actions and to think about what other people think about my actions

� I learn to plan and practice new actions

� I learn to follow the school rules; these are my life rules.

� I learn that if I break a school rule I will go to the function room.

� I learn that in my life, there are consequences bigger than the function room.

 

5. We learn that we have responsibilities and rights

� I learn that I will be held responsible for my actions

� I learn I have a right that staff will listen to my perception of events.

� I learn to accept there are rewards, sanctions & consequences for my actions

� I learn that sometimes it is my responsibility to calm down, away from Heathermount.

 

These are principles which underpin skills for life. Skills that will help me to:

 

Live away from my family

Earn my own money (get my own rewards)

Relate to others

Ask for help

 

The Five Strands of Connective Education

 

In conceptualising Connective Education, we have identified five strands which can be addressed individually but which in practise connect and interweave fluidly. We use these five strands to help us plan teaching-therapy sessions, to analyse incidents of behaviour and consider challenges faced by our students. The fluidity of this means that a student can ebb and flow; showing moments of insight and self-belief when they are calm and the environmental supports are appropriately structured and being accessed by students. . In unstructured times, the same student may struggle to simply remain seated and focused on another?s agenda.

 

 

 

 

Body Basics.

 

Connective Education began with a very detailed and comprehensive Body Basics curriculum which is used to facilitate and support students in their ability to identify and respond to body states such as anxiety and in developing strategies for maintaining periods of calm.

 

With a state of manageable calm, students appear more able to physically give their attention. This sets the scene for us to help them come to another person?s agenda and so the learning to learn can begin.

Our fundamental strand of Body Basics holds the key to a student?s state of being. One of the primary aims of using Body Basics is to help students find a rhythm of calm. This is taught through:

 

� management of breathing. Environmental strategies are in place to support this and dedicated carryover throughout the curriculum.

 

A second aim of the Body Basics curriculum, Body stories, is to support students who are touch sensitive and

 

� encourage students to accept touch from others through the use of hand, foot and back massage.

 

A third aim of the Body Basics curriculum is to develop a greater understanding of, and use by, students? of specific and targeted body postures:

 

?I use my hands to help me breathe?, especially at times of stress.

 

?I use my hands to help me think/listen? in helping them to regulate their attention.

 

?I use my hands to help me calm? to establish and regulate calm during low stress .

 

Body Basics begin with specific learning opportunities which are then incorporated across the curriculum through task instructions and other environmental support.

 

Environment

 

The environment strand provides students with the structure which they learn to use and which then supports their access to school-based and work-based tasks.

 

 

In addition to this structure students work towards using an organiser in order that they can access an individualised, daily timetable and know what sessions they will access, the order of these, the location of these and which adults will be present to help. In every session students are provided will the number of tasks they must complete; what will determine when these tasks will be completed (time or productivity) and again who will be present to help.

 

Drawing on what is known regarding the transient nature of verbal language and the visual strengths of many of our students, all information is presented in written or graphic form.

 

Graphic support within the environment includes not only visual timetables and specific task parameters but also includes the use of visual support to aid students in negotiating the social communication demands of their tasks.

 

Relatedness

 

In our experience, with maintenance of calm through a greater sense of self and structure comes the opportunity to facilitate awareness that there are others in the environment and that these people can operate alongside and interact with us.

 

And so the area of relatedness refers to how we support students in understanding others, their relationship to others; understanding events and their relatedness to events. When considering the relatedness strand we put elements of visual structure and specific feedback to help students connect with people and events in their environment. This occurs at two levels: specific skill-building therapeutic/education sessions but also consistent and specific feedback throughout the curriculum. Adults interpret what they (the adults) are doing:

e.g. ?My hands are down ? showing you I am waiting. I am waiting for you to stand on the waiting squares?.

 

We see the role of staff in this sense-making process as one of making explicit any communications whether they be verbal or non-verbal. Staff need to think ?Do these students know what I am communicating?? and make explicit any implicit social codes through verbal or non-verbal communication.

 

So, the adult?s role is to make what we take to be implicit as explicit; this is regardless of whether the student shows overt signs of confusion or not.

 

 

 

In a functional, daily context this role is supported by staff through the use of mantras as opposed to detailed explanation and rationale. Currently in our secondary department, set times occur which enable students to explore social misunderstandings.

 

Curriculum activities are considered in light of their social communication demands and strategies put in place to support these e.g. students are given visual cues to support their participation in group discussion. For students in the primary department this includes quiet and talker graphics helping students to focus on their role as being a listener or as taking a turn to talk within a very structured turn-taking routine. For older students we may visually map the process of communication to facilitate their conversational competence.

 

Alternatively, the social communication demands of a work skills task may well be included and accounted for within their task instructions.

Students are provided with visual support to facilitate their ability to request help. Staff working with students who are more passive will provide variable levels of support to facilitate students to access these visuals and initiate. Students who happily initiate but do so inappropriately, will be given explicit feedback coupled with visual support

e.g. ?I didn?t know you were talking to me? in order that students understand why the communication has failed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Insight

 

Can students develop insight into their strengths? Can they reflect upon the success of the interactions; the completion of tasks? Anecdotally we can say yes. We want to prove it.

 

In typical learners, there are those students who are more reflective than others and it is these reflective learners who tend to be more successful in their learning.

 

 

Many learners without ASD, who aren?t naturally reflective, can be taught to reflect upon their performance as a learner ? to great effect.

 

There are many people with ASD who do pass theory of mind tests. We have direct access to people with ASD, as well as to those through the literature, who are able to use their strengths of logic thought to problem solve stressful or social situations. If we use these people as our models ? much like the models of reflective learners- then we believe many of our students may well be able to become more reflective in their thinking about their bodies & physical states; their environment; their interactions with others. Such reflections can then lead towards insight into the use of strategies and the success of such strategies.

 

We want to students to develop insight into:

 

� What makes my body get hot, what makes my heart beat faster, what makes me break out into a sweat;

 

� What things in my environment do I respond well to?

 

� What things in my environment do I find difficult?

 

� What strategies will help me to complete tasks?

 

� What happens when these strategies aren?t in place:

� I don?t get it! (don?t understand);

� I don?t know what to do;

� I don?t know when I am going to be to finished

� I don?t know where I am supposed to be.

 

� What won?t work in this situation

 

� What to do in order to get the system and strategies they need, into place.

 

There exist different perspectives in the literature about whether you can reflect upon a skill if you don?t have it in the first place. Can you reflect upon a learning strategy as a strategy if you aren?t already using it? We want to prove that with the right tools in their toolkit, our students may well be able to take a set of strategies and use them as a means to an end. The ultimate end of course being successful employment.

 

Self-belief

 

Self-belief comes from trying strategies and being supported to choose ones which work.

 

 

 

Self-belief that they are actually in control of making the right choice.

 

These choices specifically include:

 

� What I can do to breathe calmly

 

� What I can do to ask for the strategies that I need to be present in my environment.

 

� What I can do to change things in my environment which I find difficult?

 

� What strategies which I can ask for will help me to complete tasks e.g.

work systems;

instructions;

verbal vs written.

 

� What I can do to clarify when these strategies aren?t in place:

� ?I don?t get it!?, ?I don?t understand?

� ?I need some help?, ?I don?t know what to do?

� ?When will I be finished??

� ?Where do I go?? ?Where do I do this job?? ?Where do I go when I am finished??

 

� What will work in this situation

 

We suggest that students who will be successful in the workplace and manage themselves need to have successful support with higher order functioning. This will be necessary for them to develop insight and self-belief into their functioning.

 

FINALLY?

 

We are not suggesting that all of our students with ASD respond equally well to all aspects of Connective Education. What we want to identify is that by thinking about the learning needs of pupils with ASD from an holistic perspective, by giving them strategies and tools to enable them to make connections within themselves and between themselves and the world around them and eventually between themselves and the world of work, that some students will achieve work-based success and an essence of well-being which is within their control. What we hope to demonstrate in the medium-term is that our students achieve a higher level of employment than is currently achieved by adults with ASD in the UK.

[denise2]

Thanks for that information, I've printed it off. This is just the sort of thing we were discussing trying to find out about yesterday. Our son is also home educated and we wanted to try and incorporate this sort of learning so if you have any further information I would be grateful.

 

Denise 2

[Kazzen161]

I visited this school for my son. They do training courses/talks I think.

 

Karen