Teaching the Hidden Curriculum of Group Work for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Kristina Scott

doi:10.1515/edu-2019-0008

Abstract

Abstract Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with marked abnormal impairments in social interactions. This study used a multiple baseline design (A-B-A) to understand how four fifth grade students with ASD verbally interacted with five teacher-nominated peers during cooperative group work. The purpose of this study was to examine how students with ASD participated in the hidden curriculum of socialization that group work has associated with it. Video-recorded observations were transcribed and coded based on the nature of each conversational attempt: prompted reciprocal communication, unprompted reciprocal communication, self-centric conversations, directives, clarification questions/statements, and off-topic remarks. Data was taken at baseline, during a time period where a structured protocol was used in reciprocal peer tutoring during literature circles, and when the literature class returned to business-as-usual. Results from this study indicate that when the four participants with ASD used a structured protocol that guided communication attempts (through explicit tasks) during cooperative academic group work their overall interaction attempts increased, as did their (prompted and unprompted) reciprocal exchanges. Generalization happened for one student, but a limitation may explain why it did not happen for all four students.

Highlights

The hidden curriculum of schooling has specific requirements and behaviors that an individual is implicitly supposed to know for each of the different environments and grouping structures they encounter
A multiple baseline case study design was used to understand how four fifth-grade students with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) verbally interacted with peers during cooperative group work
In the 570 minutes of video data, 16 total attempts at communication were made by the students with autism, and only one conversational attempt was made towards a student with autism

Summary

Introduction

The hidden curriculum of schooling has specific requirements and behaviors that an individual is implicitly supposed to know for each of the different environments and grouping structures they encounter. The Center for Disease Control (2019) reports that one out of every 59 individuals will be diagnosed on the autism spectrum This disability is characterized by “persistent deficits in social communication and social interactions across multiple contexts” Individuals with ASD often exhibit verbal communication that is one-sided, through making requests, labeling items, or having selfcentric conversations (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) These pragmatic difficulties can include topic management (or the ability to make comments pertinent to the topic being discussed and the ability to introduce topics that are relevant and of interest to others), information management (providing the appropriate amount of information to aid the listener) and reciprocity (having a balanced back-and-forth conversational exchange) (Parsons, Cordier, Munro, Joosten, & Speyer, 2017; Paul, Orlovski, Marinko, & Volkmar, 2009). These breakdowns happen because of difficulties in taking another person’s perspective, inflexibility in activities and interests, and a lack of understanding in how tone, kinesics and proxemics play a part in the content of a verbal exchange (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)

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