Challenges and Successful Pedagogical Strategies: Experiences from Six Swedish Students with Blindness and Autism in Different School Settings.
Kim de Verdier, Elisabeth Fernell, Ulla Ek
PMID 29080033WHAT IT FOUND
Students with blindness and autism described confusion from fast, visually based instructions and noise.
Teachers and parents reported calm, small, highly structured settings and using students' interests as helpful. No tested intervention was shown to work.
Key findings
01Students reported confusion when teachers used visually based language, and they said noise and bustle made concentrating hard.
02Teachers described small, calm groups and highly planned, structured tasks as helpful for the students' learning.
03None of the teachers had received formal education about the combination of blindness and autism, and parents worried that expectations could be set too low.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included only 6 students, 7 teachers and 8 parents, so it describes experiences rather than testing any strategy. The students were selected for interview ability, and the one child with severe intellectual disability could not be interviewed, so the sample is not representative of all children with blindness and autism. Many children with blindness and autism also have moderate to severe intellectual disability, but only one participant had severe intellectual disability. The findings are from Swedish schools, so placement options and support services may not match other settings. The study did not measure academic or communication outcomes, so it cannot show which strategies work.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these strategies as proven to improve school performance. The paper reported experiences from 6 students, 7 teachers and 8 parents, and it did not test an intervention or compare groups.