Individualizing the autism assessment process: A framework for school psychologists

Abstract

AbstractSchool psychologists familiar with the autism evaluation process have an awareness of the complexity of this school‐based process. This paper provides school clinicians with an introduction to a visual framework and descriptive language to think and talk about the complex students they evaluate in positive, nuanced, and accessible terms. This framework shifts the way in which school psychologists describe students during the autism assessment process away from the reductive language of deficits to the expansive language of describing individualized patterns of strengths and differences. The shift away from labeling behavioral deficits to describing patterns of behavioral differences leads to a positive narrative and creative ways to develop supports and interventions for students across age and ability levels. The use of this strength‐based language supports parents, teachers, and students in their development of an individualized understanding of the diagnosis, promoting resiliency in the individual and in their support systems. Readers are provided with a student sample case to show how using this visual framework provides a way to describe individual students using a behavioral profile of strengths and differences, linking those profiles to positive behavior supports.