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Teaching and Learning

Learning is skill acquisition and increased fluency. A teacher is anyone who affects the environment so that others learn. (By this definition you don't even have to be alive to be a teacher!) These notes describe some building blocks for effective teaching. They do not deliberately target teaching children with autism but you will certainly see that focus.

Foundations of effective teaching

The foundations of effective teaching are not all explicitly behavioral, or only for disabled people. They apply equally well to teaching any person with any degree of ability or disability. These principles should be mastered thoroughly by anyone who is going to teach your child.
1. Establish attention 2. Give instructions - define the task and provide resources to complete that task 3. Complete the task 4. Provide reinforcement

Curriculum planning (what is taught when) requires an understanding of learning. Actually, all aspects of teaching depend on understanding how learning works.

Establish attention
I cannot pay attention to two conversations at once. I have tried too many times - it seems like something I should be able to learn, but I never will. You cannot talk to me and watch TV at the same time. Attention is a prerequisite for learning. Assessment The teacher assesses the level of his student's attention before presenting any task or information. Observe:
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Eyes - visual focus frequently indicates mental focus Motor activity - talking, yawning, wiggliness (relative to norms) Recent and global history - is the student tiring? Distractors and discomforts - noise, interesting people, animals, too hot or too cold

Interventions If attention is inadequate:

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Verbal or visual reminder ("nagging") Reduce distractors, remedy discomfort

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Terminate (or interrupt) instruction - go play or choose another program Eat, sleep

Give instructions
Instructions can get better but they are never ever clear enough (Bush v. Gore, anyone?). Considerations:
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Use known vocabulary, symbols, and materials - nothing novel, or all terms defined Be brief and uncluttered Be unambiguous - understanding what is expected does not depend on personal history, "common sense", or other missing context Everything must be accessible - readable, visible, audible, well-organized Monitor attention during instructions

Complete the task

Program for success. The task must be selected so the learner has at least an 80% chance of completing it successfully. Assessment
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Teaching is a lot of work, particularly if you have many students. Structure tasks so that success (or at least some part) can be evaluated easily and quickly. Failure should be interrupted at a planned point that depends on the student's skill level and learning style.

Interventions Strategies to maintain or increase the success rate (percentage or frequency):

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Prompt immediately - provide the answer, or in some cases, a similar example (some call this errorless teaching) Prompt after a small number of failures (such as, two) Break down the task into simpler tasks or a problem-solving strategy, and teach those first Monitor attention during task completion - repeat instructions, reduce distractions etc. as needed

Provide reinforcement
Whether simple "discrete trial" style immediate reinforcement, pleasure at having created something novel, or long-term payback like a college degree, the learner must get something from completing the task. There has been a lot of research on reinforcement, measuring the effects of reinforcement type, schedules, saturation, and other variables. One constant challenge is to find novel rewards.

Rewards are almost always positive (giving something) but there is nothing inherently wrong with "negative reinforcement" (removing something undesirable). Is a vacation a positive (day on the beach) or a negative (day off from work)? Intermittent reward can be stronger - the "payoff" is not predictable Delayed rewards can be less effective Knowledge that others are being rewarded can make rewards mode desirable Attempts to "reinforce" intrinsically satisfying activities can be counterproductive. People often don't like to be interfered with. Rewards lose effectiveness over time, novelty is powerful There is no such thing as "a reinforcer." Any reward or consequence is called reinforcing only if introducing it has the effect of increasing the frequency of the desired behavior. Positive attention can trump material gain A reward should not include a demand to perform yet another task Access to preferred activities increases rate of less preferred activities - "Premack principle" Surprises can be nice - "catch them being good"

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Learning
Learning is a poorly understand biological process. We can measure it, we can "image" the brain to see what areas are active, but we know next to nothing about the biochemical changes that take place while (and after) someone listens to a lecture, reads a book, or practices the piano. Some important considerations:
1. Ability - the potential for skill acquisition 2. Learning style - different roads to learning 3. Repetition - repetition - repetition 4. Timing - task interspersal and skill maintenance

Ability
Don't put your toddler in calculus class. Actually, don't put any typically developing toddler in any class. The potential for learning must be there or the student will fail. On the other hand, if the potential is extremely high, teaching may be unnecessary.
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Brain development: on average, the ability to learn increases through childhood and into late adolescence. 'Increase" refers not to the child's rate of skill acquisition but to the variety and complexity of skills that may be acquired. Toddlers are actually faster language learners than adults. Genetics: I've been trying for over twenty years to learn to play the piano. Mozart picked it up in a few days. This is the way it goes. Our definition of 'ability' and 'disability' is based on averages. By the Mozart standard, I am severely music-learning disabled.

Prerequisites: this seems obvious, but researchers are still discovering interesting things about how seemingly unrelated skills can interact. Who would have expected that learning to discriminate related sounds could affect the ability to read? Good days and bad days: ability is an average about which we all fluctuate from day to day and hour to hour. Mood, health, hunger, fatigue, and phases of the moon may all influence our ability at any instant.

Learning style
There is a lot of research on "how people learn," and a proliferation of "teaching methodologies," each claiming to be more successful than the others. The claims and measures are usually based on average results from a large group. Within any group, though, there is not a single average learner. The educational program that best develops any individual's potential is the one that best accesses his particular learning style. That's why IEPs have student profiles.
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'Visual learners': this is a bit misleading, it doesn't necessarily mean someone has above-average ability to access visual information, rather, it indicates that aural (spoken) information gets lost (is inaccessible). Information printed can be scanned and rescanned as needed. Information spoken evaporates unless it is stored in the listener's short-term memory (or transferred to intermediateterm memory). Most people will answer me correctly if I ask "what is eight minus six," but fewer can correctly answer "what is four-hundred and thirty-six thousand two-hundred and twelve minus forty-seven thousand eight-hundred and sixty-eight".

Repetition
The analogy to muscle development is apt. Practice is essential to learning many - most - skills (I need to find more time to play the piano!). Once a skill is developed, it needs to be maintained or it may be lost. After a certain point, more practice does not help, and may even be counterproductive (overtraining).

Timing
Teaching, practice, and testing all change the brain. Whether it's the growth of new cells, connections between cells, or the chemical contents of those cells, the right chemicals need time to be made and transported. Those processes take time. Some are practically instantaneous, others require minutes or hours, still others days or weeks. After a certain amount of practice the measurable skill level may continue to increase with time. Eventually it will probably decrease. Given an hour available to learn a task, it may be more efficient to spend half an hour over two days than the same hour every other day. (This is a made-up example, I may have it backwards! The point is that timing matters.) Task interspersal (mixing up a set of exercises) is one way to efficiently teach and maintain a set of skills in a given amount of time.