174 Stephen Shore
or more paraprofessionals in the room. Engaging other classmates for peer tutoring
and working in teams that include students with Autism can be helpful. At the very
least the other students learn how to work with an individual on the Autism spec-
trum and possibly become friends.
However, working in groups can be particularly challenging for students with
Autism due to the load of having to process multiple conversations and social inter-
actions at once. Preparing the student with Autism with clear explanations of their
role in the group based on their ability can be of great help. In fact clear explanation
of all the roles for group work will be helpful for the entire class.
I found group work particularly difficult in grade school as it was hard for
me to negotiate my role with my classmates and determine what I needed to do
and how to get it done, all while socially integrating with three or four or more
group members. Greater clarity from the instructor would have been a very useful
support.
Input
Adapt the way instruction is delivered to the learner.
Whereas most individuals on the Autism spectrum are visually based (including
me!) the key word is most! Like with the rest of the population, learning styles differ
between people with Autism. The learning style of a person on the Autism spec-
trum will be to an extreme. So extreme, that unlike the general population who
can still achieve sufficient functionality with the weaker learning modalities, the
person on the Autism spectrum may have access to only a single modality at a very
high level at the expense of the others. Visual aides, concrete examples, hands-on
activities, and learning content put to rhythm and/or melody can all be helpful for
diverse learners.
This makes it incumbent upon educators to engage as many senses as possible
during instruction. In the previous example discussing the management of time,
while developing a timeline of intermediary deadlines accesses the visual and
auditory modes, having the student actually place the classmates’ work in the appro-
priate column employs the kinesthetic sense as well.
Although this example is at the college level, it still can be generalized to
education at all levels. In taking a course in qualitative research for my doctoral pro-
gram in special education I was totally mystified by the professor’s verbal explana-
tion of the process of going from general to specific in the introductory section of a
qualitative research proposal. Part of the challenge may have come from that many
of us on the Autism spectrum tend to be inductive rather than deductive thinkers.
In other words, we tend to need a number of specific examples from which we
can make broad generalizations, which is opposite from the style required for the
qualitative paper.
After a week of futile discussions with the professor and remaining mystified
it suddenly occurred to me that if I converted her words into a graphic made
up of pouring words and phrases into the wide mouth of a funnel with them