Abstract:
This case study examined the role that providing teachers with research-based information about brain development, executive functioning, Theory of Mind, prosody, and other nonverbal language elements, can play in supporting the literacy skills of students who have been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome or high functioning autism. Furthermore, the purpose of this study was to determine which strategies teachers might find the most successful in improving the literacy skills of their students with Asperger Syndrome or high functioning autism through a series of five professional development sessions and follow-up classroom visits to support teachers in their execution of strategies meant to strengthen the literacy skills of these students. This study looked at the perceived effectiveness of various instructional strategies and interventions implemented in the classroom based on the current research in each of the areas listed above. These strategies and interventions included: the use of graphic organizers to facilitate expressive and receptive language organization and comprehension; 'keep the conversation going;' pre-teaching and post-teaching lesson content; teaching students to read nonfiction effectively; providing graphic organizers to support students' interpretation of fiction; Theory of Mind training; 'thinking with your eyes,' 'thinking with your body,' and 'thinking with your mind' to teach non-verbal language skills; language scenes to teach prosody; teaching idioms to foster an understanding of metaphors and words and phrases with double meanings; and using journaling and computers to facilitate written expression. This research explored teachers' perceptions and understandings of the various areas of literacy research, their willingness to incorporate new strategies and interventions into their classroom/teaching repertoire, and their perceptions of students' improvement in their literacy skills. Findings indicated that teachers found the strategies of explicit teaching and scaffolding most successful with their students with Asperger Syndrome or high functioning autism. More specifically, strategies such as QAR (Raphael, 1982, 1986), graphic organizers, writing territories (Atwell, 2002), or heart mapping (Atwell, 2002), seemed to be especially successful due to their highly structured and explicit nature. Teachers' perceptions of their abilities to teach students with Asperger Syndrome or high functioning autism seemed to change as a result of their participation in professional development. Changes were due to the professional development addressing a topic of interest to the teachers, the on-going nature of the professional development (over five months), and the frequent feedback provided to the teachers through workshops and bi-monthly classroom visits, which thereby improved their confidence in teaching students with Asperger Syndrome or high functioning autism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)