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Educational Environment Design and Adaptation for Students With Autism: Rules of Thumb for Teachers, Clinicians, and Service Providers |
Friday, May 24, 2013 |
4:00 PM–7:00 PM |
101 A (Convention Center) |
Area: AUT/PRA; Domain: Service Delivery |
CE Instructor: Eitan Eldar, Ph.D. |
EITAN ELDAR (Kibbutzim College), JONATHAN FOGELSON (University of Pennsylvania School of Design and Michael Singer Studio) |
Description: The goal of this workshop is to help teachers, clinicians, and other professional service providers adapt the spaces in which they work with individuals who have autism spectrum disorder to the particular needs of this heterogeneous population, even with the most modest of resources. The workshop accomplishes this goal by introducing participants to the main considerations to be addressed in creating classrooms and other spaces that are to serve individuals with ASD, and by empowering them to realize the significant positive influence they may affect on the environment in better adapting it to their client population. Workshop content is based on a collaborative endeavor bringing together a group of behavior analysts in Israel and an American research group funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Activities will be based on this mutual project, presenting the accumulated knowledge in behavioral principles and procedures terms, that commensurate with the BACB 2015 task list. This workshop may contribute to devising behavioral tools and techniques by which behavior analysts can measure the success of “architecture” as part of functional assessment of a building or space. |
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this workshop, participants should be able to:
Empower professional service providers to positively affect physical changes to spaces so that they may better serve their ASD client population.
Expose workshop participants to the main parameters and considerations to be addressed when creating or improving spaces dedicated to serving individuals with ASD, and provide them with the skills necessary to affect positive change.
Encourage conference attendees and the ABA community to consider developing behavioral methods to measure the success of architectural and other design interventions; so that these can be assessed objectively in the context of human behavior. |
Activities: 1. Presenters will share the main research findings derived from the National Endowment for the Arts funded effort: the main parameters to consider when creating a space to serve individuals with ASD. This will include brief summary of relevant literature and publications, survey and observation results, and the review of case study precedents. 2. Presenters will relate findings and precedents to behavioral principles and procedures. 3. Participants will actively partake in identifying possibilities and difficulties while reviewing precedents. 4. Participants will share and describe their own ASD client work spaces, and work to identify challenges and opportunities for modification. In preparation to this activity, participants that pre-register will be given simple directions (optional) by which to easily document their work spaces using digital photography. Presenters will process the digital photography and incorporate it into the workshop content. 5. Participants will be challenged to devise strategies, relating to the physical design of their own work environment with ASD clients. 6. Participants will be introduced to the types of imagery produced by architects and design professionals as well as their inherit limitations and drawbacks. This is so that they will be able to actively engage in design processes that affect their client population and their institutions, and guide them toward higher levels of compliance with their ASD client population’s (as well as their own) needs. |
Audience: Behavior analysts, teachers, principals, consultants, lead therapists, line therapists, administrators, and students. |
Content Area: Practice |
Instruction Level: Basic |
Keyword(s): autism-environmental design, architecture |