Extending the Flexibility of Learning Environments for those with Autism
The COVID-19 pandemic reached New Zealand shores in March 2020, abruptly disrupting education and forcing teachers, students and parents to quickly adopt and adapt to a new norm of what some have labelled emergency remote education. Such unprecedented disruptions, however, also sparked new discussions about how to re-imagine the future of learning.
In my years of experience of working with families of children with autism, I have heard many stories about their struggles and successes. Some frequent utterances that these families are familiar with, include: “the teacher aide is away today, can you please keep your child at home”; “your child has to be kept at home 3 days this week as the class is going for a camp”; “your child is having a meltdown, can you pick him/her up?” Worn down over the years, there are many families who have and are homeschooling their children.
But what a game changer of sorts COVID-19 has been! As a result of lockdown, educating all children at home became a norm, rather than the exception. While some children and families may have found this a hard experience to adjust to, my recent conversations with few parents of children with autism as well as students revealed that remote education appeared to have had lesser discomfort for them, which should not be overly surprising. However, we must exercise due caution before jumping to the conclusion that home schooling is the best option for some groups of children. Rather, we need to learn that there are different ways to conceptualise how learning conditions can be maximised for these groups of children and young people. In embracing new forms of learning, we must take two key points into account.
Firstly, during the COVID-19 lockdown, children and young people with autism did not learn in ‘isolation’ but were in a bubble with their family/whānau and experiencing the interactions and banter that goes with living together. That is, it was potentially as much a social experience as it was about their formal learning. Secondly, conversations with teachers, and parents following the lockdown suggest that many of these children and young people wanted to return to school once the lockdown was lifted. It is this point that intrigued me the most, and triggered me to share this blog post. It highlighted the fact that children and young people with autism value socialisation as much as their neurotypical peers. The importance of focusing on their social experiences has long been a point of advocacy by parents of children and young people with autism, and the lockdown situation brought a new dimension to socialisation.
The COVID-19 pandemic, if anything, has provided us with the opportunity to reconsider the meaning of Flexible Learning Environments for students – a flexibility that has stretched to lounges and kitchen tops! In re-imagining what is possible in the future of learning, schools could take this as an opportune moment to embrace flexibility and to enable the best possible learning and social experiences for those on the autism spectrum. Being flexible could include allowing students with autism to learn at home and school, rather than home or school, and could result in a WIN-WIN situation for all. Parents are often very intuitive about good and bad days for their children from the outset. Learning from home when anxiety levels are high (i.e. bad day) could be a more positive experience for all, rather than having meltdowns during the day, which schools might find challenging to manage while also causing major distress to the child. I wonder if it would be less disruptive for parents to have a flexible learning option that would involve their child not attending school on a given day, rather than having to respond to a phone call from schools requesting their child be taken home. A more flexible approach to learning might not be a panacea for all children and young people with autism, but at least it might provide a more amicable alternative to the dichotomy of schooling, and in the process alleviate tensions in home-school partnerships.
In considering how to embrace more flexibility in learning, I am not anti home-schooling, particularly when this is sometimes a parental lifestyle choice. However, in my experience many parents turn towards home-schooling as the last resort, after a series of negative experiences with schools, to continue their children’s education. If we are to truly offer parents and children choices in education, here is a prime opportunity that may provide optimal learning and social experiences for those with autism. More importantly, if we want to genuinely act upon the voices of children (Lundy, 2007), who have repeatedly emphasised their desire to have friends, as well as needing quiet spaces to work, there can be no better time than now to extend the ‘space’ in which their learning and social experiences can be maximised. Dare I add, it might also provide a fertile opportunity for schools to rethink a more systemic approach in the deployment of the valuable and finite resource of teacher aides as a class-wide resource, than being tagged on to individual students. After all, the notion of flexischooling for children with autism is not entirely a new concept and has been mooted some years ago by Clare Lawrence. (See Autism and Flexischooling: A shared Classroom and Homeschooling Approach. Jessica Kingley. 2012). The time is right to revoke this conversation.
(This is an opinion piece, informed by my experience of working and researching families of children with autism).
Lawrence, C. (2012). Autism and Flexischooling: A shared Classroom and Homeschooling Approach. Jessica Kingley Publishers.
Lundy, L. (2007). ‘Voice’ is not enough: conceptualising Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. British Educational Research Journal, 33: 927-942. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411920701657033
Vijaya Dharanv.m.dharan@massey.ac.nz
Vijaya is a Senior Lecturer at Massey University, Institute of Education, where she is involved in coordinating and teaching postgraduate specialist teacher training in ASD, Educational and Developmental Psychology and others at a post graduate and under graduate programmes. She is a registered psychologist and a teacher. Her research interests are in the field of inclusive education, Autism, emotional and behavioural difficulties, student disengagement and pedagogy. She is keen that her research activities are centered on being useful to wider communities and support the cause of equity and diversity.