Teaching Children with Autism in Regular Classrooms: A Delphi Investigation of Necessary Knowledge for Teachers.

Abstract

Autism is a developmental disorder with a current prevalence rate of 1:150 in the United States. As children with disabilities are now commonly taught within regular education classrooms for at least part of their school day, regular classroom teachers are charged with teaching children with autism who present a number of challenges unique to the disorder. A review of the research shows that regular teachers feel ill equipped to adequately educate these children, and that the advice and training available to teachers is often vague or conflicts with the empirical evidence regarding effective methods for educating children with autism.

In order to address this problem, this study employed the Delphi method to identify necessary knowledge of autism for regular classroom teachers. The Delphi method uses a series of iterative surveys to solicit the opinions of a group of experts concerning a particular topic and aims to reach a group consensus. Board Certified Behavior Analysts were selected as the participants in this study as Applied Behavior Analysis interventions have been shown through research to be the most effective means for teaching children with autism.

One hundred and one suggestions were made by the participants in six areas of knowledge: the nature of autism, the specific child that is to be included in the teacher’s classroom, Applied Behavior Analysis, other interventions and teaching strategies, working with others, and other training and knowledge. Seventy-three items within these categories reached consensus to be of at least moderately-high importance to teachers’ knowledge. Of those, the participants voted that teachers should be able to demonstrate practical application of 33 of the items. The items that did, and did not, reach consensus on level of importance in terms of teacher knowledge are considered in light of existing research and available teacher training.

The results of this study highlight the necessity of teacher training in empirically validated methods for educating children with autism. The specific recommendations of the participants in this study may be considered in the development of teacher training curricula.