Research Proposal - Developing Curriculum for Elementary Aged Children with Autism

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Developing Curriculum for Elementary Aged Children with Autism

 Frequently, the students who have behavioural and psychological problems are the ones who need such special treatment or intervention in education. They are the young people who experience mental, emotional, and behavioural problems that are real, painful, and costly. Their problem is often called "disorders," which are sources of stress for children and their families, schools, and communities (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Association, 2004). Also referred to as mental health disorders (SAMHA, 2004), the condition is said to be caused by biology, environment, or a combination of the two. Examples of biological factors are genetics, chemical imbalances in the body, and damage to the central nervous system, such as a head injury. Many environmental factors also can affect mental health, including exposure to violence, extreme stress, and the loss of an important person (SAMHA, 2004). Basically, children and adolescence with behavioural problems demonstrate behaviour that is noticeably different from that expected in school or the community and are in need of remediation.

One of the most recognized behavior disorder in children is autism. Autism is characterised by qualitative impairments in social interaction and communication and by the presence of restricted and repetitive behaviour (American Psychiatric Association, 1994; World Health Organisation, 1993). It is a developmental disability that typically involves delays and impairment in social skills, language, and behavior (Adams et al, 2004). Autism is a spectrum disorder, meaning that it affects people differently.  Some children may have speech, whereas others may have little or no speech.  Less severe cases may be diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) or with Asperger’s Syndrome where affected children typically have normal speech, but they have many “autistic” social and behavioral problems (Adams et al, 2004). Its onset occurs during pregnancy or the first three years of life. The co-occurring conditions in the disease include: mental retardation; seizures; chronic constipations or diarrhea; sleep problems; pica; low muscle tone; and sensory sensitivities (Adams et al, 2004). This paper will try to present a study that will relate to autism, particularly the development of an effective curriculum for the elementary setting. It is known that some schools are inclusive, and includes special education for children with autism. However, research shows that that there are only few in post-preschool age.

Statement of the Problem

The problem being presented here is that there seems to be limited formal curriculum for children with autism in primary education or in the elementary level. Similar to most European countries, children with behaviour problems are the most difficult to cope with. This is where ordinary school teachers are having trouble with. Their approach in handling this kind of problem is by pressing the children or just by completely ignoring them which, according to Faragoulitaki and Emmanuel and EADSNE, are both ineffective. In cases of mental retardation, only students with mild retardation are acceptable but children with serious mental deficiency are kept out of inclusion classes. Greek teachers feel that the serious conditions of the students are out of their responsibility. Thus, students such as those have to be transferred to special schools for mentally handicapped children where they receive special education and proper support (Faragoulitaki and Emmanuel, 2001). On the other hand, children with specific learning difficulties (dyslexia) are another category which is difficult to incorporate into inclusion classes because of the inability of teachers to apply proper methods of teaching and lack of suitable educational material (Faragoulitaki and Emmanuel, 2001). Furthermore, lack of supportive people to help teachers for accommodation, as well as of equipment, teaching materials and the reaction of teachers and parents made autistic children and those who have multiple disabilities excluded from inclusive classrooms.

Research Questions

            To address the problem mentioned, the researcher will try to answer the following queries:

1.         What is the current status of curriculum for autistic children in elementary schools?

2.         Do elementary schools have any plans in improving its curriculum for children with autism?

3.         What are the barriers of creating a much firmer curriculum for autistic children in the elementary setting?

4.         What are the ways or methods to develop an effective elementary curriculum for autistic children?

Objective of the Study

            The objective of the study is to seek the opinions and knowledge of elementary school leaders and educators regarding the development of an elementary curriculum for children with autism. This includes the investigation on how the school plans to improve it, or are there any plans at all. The study will also seek the barriers that prevent the effective development of a formal curriculum. This will be done through the use of both qualitative and quantitative research method. The research aims to expose the recent status of autistic students in the elementary setting and to motivate or convince educators that an immediate action should be done.

Literature Review

            Autism is a disorder that is considered prevalent in today’s world. From the time of its discovery, autism has been considered a rare disorder with an estimated prevalence of approximately 4 per 10,000 children (Prior, 2003). But then, studies from the past 10 years or so suggest that this was a major underestimate as current figures vary from the original 4 to almost 60 per 10, 000 children, depending on the place, time, country and population from which the estimate is derived. The British Medical Research Council (2001) stated that there was an average prevalence rate of 1 per 1000 children for autistic disorder and 2.5 per 10 000 children for Asperger syndrome in 2000. However, with its prevalence, there are already actions taking place to build awareness about the Autism. Research and Media publicity, including films, books and writing by people with autism and repeated stories concerning environmental toxins, such as the claimed relationship between MMR vaccination and the onset of ASD, affect public awareness of Autism (Prior, 2003) and thus can promote understanding and early diagnosis.

            There are difficulties in treating children with autism. It can lead to difficulties in mapping casual connections from the child’s own feelings to their thoughts and from experience of self to the perception of equivalence in the behaviors of others (Sherratt and Donald, 2004). Furthermore, difficulties in regulating the potency of memory and emotion also inhibit the perception of relevance within the social narrative, producing idiosyncratic rather than shared means (Sherratt and Donald, 2004, p.10). Thus, autistic children are hard to deal with, especially when the people dealing with them have a narrow understanding. That is why there are certain programs to build awareness about autism – to be able to avoid discrimination and to make the society accept and understand such conditions.

            Aside from the parents of autistic children, the siblings can be said to be mostly affected. Even though having a sibling with autism doesn’t create a genetic implication for normal siblings (Pillowsky et al, 2003), they are still exposed to the stressful autistic behaviors. Gray and Holden (1992) stated that individuals with autism frequently engage in behaviors that are potentially disruptive to family life such as aggression, self-injury, impulsivity, hyperactivity, temper tantrums and obsessional ritualistic behaviors. Furthermore, there is difficulty in communicating with them because of their language deficiency (Pillowski et al, 2003), which have an impact on the interaction of autistic children with family members. What more if they are interacting with a sibling that are still in the young age? It can be assumed that because of children’s limited nature of understanding, such actions can affect the behavior of young siblings of children with autistic. In addition, public contact and family outings may be tough for parents and siblings of children with autism because of the odd behaviors displayed by children with autism (Bouma and Schwietzer, 1990; Gray and Holden, 1992) that would catch the attention of nearby people. The siblings can also be affected by the inequity of attention that their parents give. Autistic children need more time and attention for their therapies and thus, could result in that the other siblings would be taken for granted.

            Inclusive classrooms are one of the ways in which educational interventions are delivered to students with behavioural problems in Europe. EADSNE (2003) stated that behaviour; social and/or emotional problems are mentioned by almost all countries as being the biggest challenge within the area of inclusion of pupils with special education needs. Furthermore, character approach to students with SEN is rejected in favour of a more environment-interactive approach to SEN. Furthermore, handling diversity is the key issue at the classroom level. When dealing with differences in the classroom, class teachers need an extra pair of hands or extra support from either colleagues (or special education teachers) or other professionals. Basically, it leads to the challenges of co-teaching (classroom level), team teaching and the need for good co-operation between teachers, on the school level and co-ordination with professionals from other support services (EADSNE, 2003).

Classroom practises in European inclusive education includes approaches such as: co-operative learning; peer tutoring, curriculum based measurement; collaborative problem-solving; and other mixed designs (EADSNE, 2001). In co-operative learning, students with special needs are not pulled out of their classroom for supplemental in­struction rather, the special education staff provides instruction in the regular classrooms, to increase learning time, reduce behaviour problems, give students an opportuni­ty to participate fully in their classrooms, and teachers an oppor­tunity to learn from each other. On the other hand peer tutoring enables students to be assigned to heteroge­neous ability pairs and has been proven to be an effective strategy in increasing the academic achievement of students with and without disabilities (Kamps, Barbetta, Leonard and Delquadri, 1994; Stevens and Slavin, 1995a, 1995b) and in increasing social interactions (Kamps, Barbetta, Leonard and Delqua­dri, 1994). In curriculum based measurement (CBM) conditions, on the other hand, pupil pro­gress is monitored using a computer program while in a collaborative problem-solving (CPS) programme, students are asked to solve problems together whenever a physical, social or instructional exclusion of a student occurs. CBM is basically useful for instructional adjustments while CPS is effective in promoting inclusion, and easy to implement according to the teaching staff (Salisbury, Evans and Palom­ba­ro, 1997). Finally, mixed-designs are the use of different treatments or combination of all or some of the previously mentioned approaches (EADSNE, 2001).

Method

Primary and secondary data will be used in the study. Primary data will be acquired from the respondents i.e. their responses to the semi-structured questionnaires and interviews given to them. On the other hand, the secondary data will come from related literatures that will be collected to be reviewed and provide guidance on the development of the results. As a naturalistic study, the research will not dwell on statistical designs but rather on interpretation and observation.

The study will be conducted in a descriptive way. A descriptive research intends to present facts concerning the nature and status of a situation, as it exists at the time of the study (Creswell, 1994). It is also concerned with relationships and practices that exist, beliefs and processes that are ongoing, effects that are being felt, or trends that are developing. (Best, 1970) In addition, such approach tries to describe present conditions, events or systems based on the impressions or reactions of the respondents of the research (Creswell, 1994).

For this research, the researcher, after gathering the relevant data needed, will collate them together with published studies from different local and foreign universities and articles from social science journals, then afterwards render a critical analysis on the collected documents and verbal materials. A summary of all the information gathered will also be provided by the researcher, as well as a conclusion and insightful recommendations on how younger siblings of children with autism respond emotionally on their situation.

This study will employ the qualitative research method because this research intends to find and build theories that would explain the relationship of one variable with another variable through qualitative elements in research, which is the purpose of a qualitative research method (Patton, 1990). These qualitative elements do not have standard measures; rather they are behavior, attitudes, opinions, and beliefs. (Patton, 1990)

Moreover, the qualitative research is multi-method in focus, involving an interpretative, naturalistic approach to its subject matter. (Patton, 1990) This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. (Patton, 1990) Accordingly, qualitative researchers deploy a wide range of interconnected methods, always hoping to get a better fix on the subject matter at hand (Patton, 1990).

To investigate the barriers and the ways in creating a curriculum for children with autism in the elementary setting, the researcher will employ quantitative research method. Structured survey-questionnaire will be used in this investigation. It will have two sections. The first part will intend to acquire the demographic profile of the respondents, while the other section will contain a set of attitude statements. The purpose of the set of attitude statements is to determine the level of agreement or disagreement using a five-point Likert scale. In the Likert technique, the degree of agreement or disagreement) is given a numerical value ranging from one to five, thus a total numerical value can be calculated from all the responses. (Underwood, 2004) The equivalent weights for the answers will be:

Range                                                            Interpretation

            4.50 – 5.00                                                    Strongly Agree

            3.50 – 4.00                                                    Agree

            2.50 – 3.49                                                    Uncertain

            1.50 – 2.49                                                    Disagree         

            0.00 – 1.49                                                    Strongly Disagree

            The respondents of the study will be 5 elementary school principals for the quantitative investigation. An open-ended questionnaire will be used for their interview. The sessions will be recorded via an audio cassette recorder. On the other hand, 50 elementary school teachers will be interviewed for the quantitative investigation. A structured questionnaire will be used for their interview. Data collected will be tabulated and will be analyzed with the use of median and percentage deviation.

References:

Adams, J.B., Edelson, S.M., Grandin, T. and Rimland, B. (2004). Advice for Parents of Young Autistic Children. Autism Research Institute, San Diego, CA, U.S.

American Psychiatric Association (1994). Diagnostic and statistical Manual of mental disorder (4^th Edition). Washington DC. American Psychiatric Association.

Best, John W. (1970). Research in Education, 2^nd Ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc.

Bouma, R., and Schweitzer, R. (1990). The impact of chronic childhood illness on family stress: A comparison between autism and cystic fibrosis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 46, 722–730.

British Medical Research Council (2001). Review of Autism Research: Epidemiology and Causes. British Medical Research Council, London.

Creswell, J.W. 1994. Research design. Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.

European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education (2001a). Special Needs Education: European Perspective. (eds.) C. Meijer and A. Watkins, Proceedings of the International Conference in Brussels. Brussels, Belgium.

European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education (2001b). Inclusive Education and Effective Classroom Practices. eds.) C. Meijer, Brussels, Belgium.

European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education (2003). Key Principles for Special Needs Education: Recommendation for Policy Makers. Brussels, Belgium

Faragoulitaki, A. and Emmanuel, M. (2001). Greece. In Inclusive Education for Inclusive Classroom Practices, (eds) C.J.W. Meijer, European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education, Middelfart

Gray, D.E., and Holden, W.J. (1992). Psycho-social wellbeing among the parents of children with autism. Australia and New Zealand Journal of Developmental Disabilities, Volume 18; pp. 83–93.

Kamps, D.M., Barbetta, P.M., Leonard, B.R. and Delquadri, J. (1994) Classwide peer tutoring: an integration strategy to improve reading skills and promote peer interactions among students with autism and general education peers, Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 27, 49–61.

Patton, M. Q. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods, 2^nd Ed.            Newbury Park, Cal.: Sage Publications.

Pilowsky, T., Yirmiya, M., Shalev, R.S. and Tsur, V.G. (2003). Language abilities of siblings of children with autism. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Volume 44, No. 6; pp 914–925

Prior, M. (2003). Is there an increase in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders? J. Paediatr. Child Health, Volume 39; pp.81–82

Salisbury, C., Evans, I. and Palombaro, M. (1997) Collaborative problem solving to promote the inclusion of young children with significant disabilities in primary grades, Exceptional Children 63, 195–209.

SAMHA (2004). Available at: http://www.samhsa.gov/index.aspx [Accessed: 12/03/04].

Sherrat, D. and Donald, G. (2004). Connectedness: Developing a Shared Construction of Affect and cognition of Children with Autism. British Journal of Special Education, Volume 31 No; pp. 10-15

Stevens, R.J. and Slavin, R.E. (1995a). The cooperative elementa­ry school: effects on students' achievement, attitudes, and social relations, American Educational Research Journal 32, 321–51.

Stevens, R.J. and Slavin, R.E. (1995b). Effects of a cooperative learning approach in reading and writing on academically handicapped and nonhandicapped students, The Elementary School Journal 95, 241–62.

Underwood, Mick. (2004). The Likert Scale. In Communication Studies, Cultural Studies, Media Studies (CMMS) Infobase. Available at: [www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/index.html]. Accessed: [15/01/04].

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