15 February 2023

What is the Autism Inclusion Teacher (AIT) role? How will AITs support South Australian primary school teachers? Discover more about this nation-leading initiative and hear from Keith Area School about the difference this role will make at their site. You might notice us use the terms autistic person or person with autism and this is because we recognise that there are people in the autistic community who prefer identity-first language. Thanks to Anna, Erin and Ceri for participating in this episode. 

Show Notes

• Improving support for children and students with autism
• Practice guidance for learners with additional needs

Transcript

Intro: Teach is produced on the traditional land of the Kaurna people. The South Australian Department for Education would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and pay our respects to all elders past, present, and emerging.

Bella Pittaway: Hello and welcome to Teach, a podcast about teaching and learning in South Australia. My name's Bella Pittaway and I'm from South Australia's Department for Education. Today we're talking about the Autism Inclusion Teacher role. We'll be seeing across our primary schools this year for the first time. Soon, we'll head to Keith Area School to hear from a special education teacher about the difference this new role will make, but before then, let's get some more information about the Autism Inclusion Teacher role. Joining us, uh, Anna Noble, Assistant Director of Inclusive Practice, and Erin Anear Manager of Disability Advice and Research. Welcome to you both. Now, the big news last year was that an Autism Inclusion Teacher will be appointed in every public primary school this year. What exactly is the Autism Inclusion Teacher role?

Erin Anear: Yeah, it certainly was big news. Since then, we've been working really hard to make that announcement kind of become a reality. But before we talk about the role, I just wanted to explain really quickly that you might notice us use the terms autistic person or person with autism today.

And this is because many autistic people prefer identity first language, and we might use both interchangeably. So you might hear autistic person or child with autism. But we use both because each person is unique and their preferences around identity are different. The Autism Inclusion Teacher role is really exciting.

It's a new role. It's been developed with a focus on improving school support for autistic children in young people in ways that work for their school. And that's really important because while we're rolling this out statewide, we have been really conscious of ensuring that each school can develop the AIT role to work within their own site context. But we don't wanna lose focus around that role. And the consistency as well. The AIT role's really focused around two key areas, so that's helping teachers to build their own practice in teaching autistic children and their knowledge around autism, but also influencing the practice of others at their school as well.

So that's really our two key things that we're looking at. There'll be opportunities for formal and informal professional learning, and the AITs will all be connected to a network as well. And I know Anna will talk a little bit more in detail about that, um, later on too. And it's unique because the role isn't just release time and it's not just training, it's a whole package of supports around the teachers.

We've been calling it the team around the AIT. . So this definitely includes that release time and that targeted training, but it's more than that. And this is something that hasn't really been done before. So it's a really new concept. Um, and it is a really exciting initiative as well. And I guess the role itself has been developed with input from educators, from schools, from teachers, from industry groups, university researchers, specialists in autism, and most importantly, with input form autistic people themselves. And so from teachers in our system who are autistic, and also from young people as well in our system.

Bella Pittaway: And Anna, why is this such an important role?

Anna Noble: Well, the prevalence of autism diagnoses among children and young people has increased substantially over recent decades, and this has in part, been driven by a greater awareness of the condition of autism.

And what we are finding is that school outcomes for many of our students who are autistic, they're poorer relative to their non-autistic peers. Uh, so things like not feeling connected at school, not feeling like they belong, difficult relationships sometimes with peers and with their teachers. It really is something that is noticed throughout the education and throughout their research.

The other thing is participation rates, and it's not just children not attending school. What we're finding is participation rates within a classroom. So for a lot of our autistic students, teachers will be providing opportunities for learning, but not think about, well, how do I make sure that a young person with autism is fully included in this? Have I provided supports around working in groups? Have I prepared this person so they know what's coming? For many of our children with autism, school can present a real challenge. So given this, there's a need for building teachers knowledge of autism so that they can apply effective approaches in their classrooms and so that they can make good decisions about which supports, which services, which interventions will likely be in the best interest of their students.

And this is really about the best interests of our children with autism. So that's one of the key reasons it's building the capacity of our Autism Inclusion Teachers to know and recommend good practice. Another reason is we know um, autistic students benefit mostly from teachers who can recognise or maybe anticipate where the challenges are at school for their children. Is the classroom noisy? Is there too much going on? Is there not enough going on in the classroom for these children to keep them engaged in their learning and motivated in their learning? Is the classroom too unpredictable? And as well as those, those aspects, there's things around, um, opportunities. Where are the opportunities such as freedom to follow a deep interest? We know that for a lot of our autistic students, they have very deep interests and passions, and teachers can use these strategies and these interests of the children to really engage and motivate their kids. So there's lots of things that can make or break a good schooling experience for our autistic students.

Bella Pittaway: And do we know approximately how many students have autism? Bearing in mind that there would be students who are undiagnosed.

Erin Anear: This can be a tricky question to answer. There may be children and young people in our schools who are undiagnosed, and there also might be students who are diagnosed, but they don't necessarily receive any extra support or resourcing or anything around them.

But what we do know is that sort of at the end of 2021, when our last data came through, there were around 4,900 students who you know, had an autism diagnoses, were in a mainstream school and they received additional resourcing as well. And I guess if you look Australia wide, the number of people with the diagnosis of autism is actually growing.

When we have a look at the data in 2015, there were 164,000 people across Australia who were diagnosed. And by 2019, that had grown to 205,000. And that's a trend that's sort of across the world as well. So we are looking at about one in 70 people would have a diagnosis of autism.

Bella Pittaway: Anna, who will be in these roles at school this year, what training are they going to receive?

Anna Noble: There are gonna be lots of teachers. We're expecting there to be about 440 teachers, and they're all different kinds of roles. The people who be AITs are coming from different positions within schools, so lots of them are teachers. Quite a few are leaders, and some are teacher leaders.

The teacher leaders are those who hold those specialist positions in their school, such as an Inclusive Educator or a Wellbeing Coordinator. What we know about them is that they're going to come in with different levels readiness for this role. And so when you talk about, you know, what training's going to be provided, the training will be set at different levels because some of our teachers, such as our Special Options Teachers or our Special Class Teachers, or our Inclusive Leaders, Inclusive Education Leaders, they'll have deep knowledge in autism already. And so they'll be training for them set at a more advanced level to build teachers understanding of autism and to know its impact on learning. Most of our autism inclusion teachers will participate in a two-day face-to-face course provided by Positive Partnerships, and they will complete one of their modules.

Plus they'll receive training in how to use some of their autism specific tools that will be incredibly helpful for our teachers in the classroom and across the school and these tools will help support their decision making for their autistic students. Then what will happen is they'll be provided with a whole suite of training options.

We'll be pointing them to other training opportunities that are accessible on plink online. Or coming to South Australia, for example, Barry Carpenter is coming to South Australia in March, and the AITs are going to be invited to come along to that training.

Bella Pittaway: Awesome. And so once they've had all this training and they're taking up the role in their school, what will they actually be doing?

Anna Noble: They'll be analysing the data schools have on their students with autism. And this is to identify the strengths of the school already. So where are they already providing evidence-based strategies and supports and evidence-based interventions, and also looking at the needs. So with the AITs, they'll be receiving our training.

This will always be around what are effective practices in schools. And our AITs will then be able to say, okay, so we are doing this practice, but that doesn't seem as evidence-based as something else. Maybe we should introduce this. They'll be supporting their fellow educators to know a range of strategies and support.

So in-class supports, assessment modifications, ways to engage students in different classroom activities, such as working within groups, speaking in front of a class. They'll be sharing resources across the school, such as our newly released autism practice guides, and they'll be sharing their learning from the training.

So leaders, Will work with their Autism Inclusion Teachers to support them to identify what's gonna be most beneficial for that school community. So the main focus on site will be to provide guidance to the fellow educators on how to best support and educate students with autism and embed inclusive practices that support learning and development.

Bella Pittaway: And Erin, how does this role, the AIT role connect with other student support services?

Erin Anear: That's a really good question. It's so important that we recognise that there's excellent work happening across the system already to support autistic children and young people. And the AIT role is not designed to replace any of the supports that already exist.

So your special educators, your behaviour coaches, psychologists, speech therapists, they're going to continue to be available and they can help schools. They might work with the AIT at the site as part of that help with the school. But the AIT role isn't designed to be a main point of contact for the services, and we still expect schools to manage referrals just as they have been through their student referral teams. Or through just general consultations with their student support services providers.

Bella Pittaway: And we know you mentioned earlier, I mean, there are at least more than 4,000 students with autism. And for teachers out there that might have, uh, a student with autism in their class, they might be thinking, well, how can an AIT support me?

Erin Anear: And I guess building on what Anna said earlier, we really see that AIT role being able to support teachers in lots of different ways. And that really depends on the site context. But the AIT can share the learning that they're doing in the professional development. They can guide teachers to different approaches or strategies to trial, and they might be able to share resources like articles on specific areas around autism.

It might be that the cohort of students at that school has a specific need. You might have a number of girls diagnosed with autism, and therefore you might need some resources specific to that. That's something that our autism inclusion teacher could help teachers to access, or it could even be different kinds of scaffolds. So you know, ways of teaching students with autism, it might be strategies you can use around specific areas of learning. So that might be comprehension reading fluency, it might be, how do I best work with an autistic learner around multiplication? So there's lots of different ways, but I guess the most important thing is just sharing those contemporary evidence-based practices.

Bella Pittaway: That means you've got someone in that school that you can go to, if you've got a question, you can go to that person and go, look, this is what I've got happening in my class. Is there anything you can suggest or something that I can follow up on?

Erin Anear: That's right. And then, you know, the autism inclusion teacher has access to those networks of those professionals, um, to then be able to have those questions in supported by the professionals who have an experience as well.

Bella Pittaway: Well, we've sort of touched on it already, but Erin, what do you think AITs will be able to teach, you know, other staff at their school?

Erin Anear: The fact that we've got an AIT in all of our primary schools is such a unique position. So while we're talking about this being something that's site specific to the context and how they'll work, we're also making sure that there's a consistency of the information that's being shared with schools.

So this is an opportunity for those contemporary evidence-based practices to actually be shared more widely across the state as well. And we know that the research in and around autism is developing rapidly and there's new information being shared every day. So the AIT will be in a position to be able to share that with staff.

And they might not necessarily formally teach the staff, but they might be sharing information perhaps as part of a staff meeting. They might have a regular sort of sharing spot, but it's more about them guiding others, demonstrating that best practice and modelling that within their own classrooms um, or with the autistic students at their site as well.

And at the same time, the AIT is going to be regularly connecting with the networks as well, and the networks themselves will be able to help with some of that, I guess on the ground information. So, you know, I tried this and, and that didn't quite work. And oh, hey, maybe try it this way. So you've got this AIM team of professionals giving you the, the evidence base, and then you've got your contemporary peers actually helping you with, how do I actually get this happening on the ground at my school? I, I think that's a really unique part of the.

Bella Pittaway: So we've talked about what the autism inclusion teacher role, what they will be doing. What are some misconceptions you'd like to address or some things that they won't be doing?

Anna Noble: I think it's important for people to know that the autism inclusion teachers won't be teaching all of the children with autism on their site, that's not the role. That's not their particular role. They won't be providing the referral services Erin spoke to, and they're not going to be the centre point for families. Classroom teachers will still be the first point of contact for families, but if teachers are saying, I need some support to engage our families in working with this child who happens to be in my class, then the autism inclusion teacher, who will be undertaking some professional development around engaging families, will be able to bring some of those strategies to that teacher.

Bella Pittaway: And just also something unique. What has it been like, because this is an Australian first, so I can imagine it's not like you've had a model where you can look at and go, okay, well this is how they've done it in their school system. This is happening for the first time. What has that been like?

Anna Noble: It's, I don't know that we've had an opportunity in the past before to really step back and have a look at the science of learning, really considering how do adults learn, how do teachers come together? What makes a network? Because a lot of this work is going to be supported by the networks and teachers coming together, sharing practice.

So we've had to think really deeply about what does an effective network look like? How do these teachers stay connected? How do we ensure that we provide them with the ongoing support, ongoing modelling that we are guiding the work they're doing and giving them an opportunity to say, actually this is what's happening in my site, and is anyone else finding something similar? And the support of the Autism and Inclusion multidisciplinary team, we just call them the AIM team, is really to bring in their sort of credible scientific knowledge to go, these are the strategies that you could use in your classroom, hearing about what's not working, and then exploring with our AIM team around, you know, why don't you think this particular intervention might be working at this point in time?

So they're gonna have access to these opportunities. I think that's what's the difference and the time we've really taken to look at what does an effective network look like. That has been the most significant part of this.

Bella Pittaway: You're sort of forging this path, and I'm sure you know, other states will be looking on and seeing how it all goes and probably have their own questions about it too. Before we finish up here, what impact are you expecting the Autism Inclusion Teacher role will have in our schools,

Anna Noble: Given that there'll be one person who is released one day per week or one day a fortnight, to focus on improving the school experiences of students with autism, I'm expecting that they'll support schools to feel more confident in the approaches they're using for their autistic students, that they will increase their repertoire of strategies and interventions available in their schools. They'll have more evidence-based resources to draw from when thinking through tricky situations. And I heard Ceri talking about sometimes it's tricky and I'm going, yeah, that's kind of what we are doing here to be more inclusive.

And I guess the ultimate impact I'm expecting is that they'll have this sort of ripple through effect across the state, across our primary schools of building knowledge I'm hoping that families will report that their child's previously unmet needs are now being addressed better. I don't know that we can solve all problems in this, but we can start to improve and that children with autism will say they feel better connected to school. They feel they belong and they wanna be there.

Bella Pittaway: It's a big, big task and obviously something that is much in need. Um, and yeah, wish you all the, the best with it. It's, yeah, really, really important work. Thank you for joining us today to take some time out to sort of explain a little bit about the role and, and the impact, um, you're hoping it'll have.

Anna Noble: Thank you.

Erin Anear: Thank you.

Bella Pittaway: Joining us on the phone from Keith Area School in South Australia's Southeast is Ceri Price, a year four, five special education teacher. Welcome, Ceri.

Ceri Price: Thank you. It's nice to be here.

Bella Pittaway: Can you tell us a little bit about your school?

Ceri Price: Yes. So Keith Area School is a rural school. We've got approximately 310 students from foundation to year 12, and almost every class has autistic students.

My year four five class, for example has two autistic students, one of which is quite high needs.

Bella Pittaway: What difference does additional training and support for students with autism make in your classroom?

Ceri Price: So for me, the training and and support is all about leading the improvement of the experiences that my students have, not just in the classroom, but also in the yard. I want them to be positive and to cover all their needs, including functional needs and skills as well as the curriculum. So having that additional training's going to enable me to be able to deliver that.

Bella Pittaway: And how have you sort of had to change things or the way that you do things in the classroom to make sure that your teaching is inclusive?

Ceri Price: One of the things that we do is clear timetables, and I know many teachers out there will say, but we do that anyway. But for many of our autistic students, having it on the board isn't enough. They need their own personal timetable, differentiating the work so that it's inclusive. So we are using their interests, their interests to engage them in the activities, making it all relevant and personalised to them.

Bella Pittaway: What sort of changes have you noticed when it comes to inclusive teaching? Where we are now, say from 10 years ago?

Ceri Price: Nowadays, it is a very big focus on inclusive teaching, on making sure that all students are having their needs met, that we are differentiating the curriculum, that we are not just delivering one size fits all.

Because as we know, students aren't all the same. They don't learn at the same rate. They don't learn in the same way. So we have to be able to be adaptable and to make sure that we take into account their backgrounds, their abilities, um, their disabilities.

Bella Pittaway: And how do you go about sort of balancing the needs of your students in your class?

Ceri Price: It's a tricky one, and each day can be very different because as students come in like one day they can come in and have had a bad morning. And so you teach to the emotions that day, but it, it's knowing your students, it's getting to know them and keeping up to date with evidence-based practices and knowing what strategies and methodologies are the ones that are recommended. And ones that are known to work are not ones that are just, 'Hey, one teacher's done this and it worked there', but there's no backing to it. There's no scientific evidence that says that it either works or doesn't work.

Bella Pittaway: Is there one in particular that you've sort of been using that you've found really helpful?

Ceri Price: I wouldn't say one, I'd say there's a lot of different methodologies that I incorporate cause you need to have a toolbox. I like the Positive Partnership and a lot of the advice and strategies that they promote on their website and in their trainings. But yeah, it's really about getting to know your students and, and having that toolbox and, and knowing what you can and can't do at a different, at certain times.

Bella Pittaway: And Ceri what are you looking forward to with the Autism Inclusion Teacher role?

Ceri Price: Well, a school can be a really isolating place, especially when you're trying to improve the experiences of students. So I'm actually really looking forward to being able to work with other teachers in the same role, to develop that sense of collegiality and support and to lead the upskilling of educators at our sites with evidence-based practices and methodologies, but also working with other professionals such as the psychologists, having that extra support to back us and to advise us is going to be so worthwhile and useful.

Bella Pittaway: What difference do you think it's gonna make to Keith Area School?

Ceri Price: I think it's gonna make a huge difference having so many students that are autistic, being able - school bell sounds -

Bella Pittaway: I love that we've got the school bell. It's perfect. . We're having a chat with you at school, so of course the school bell's gonna go off.

Ceri Price: That's it. It signals the end of the day, so it's the mad rush hour. But no, being able to help the students gain a better experience to help the teachers, the SSOs or the educators to be able to provide that and know that actually they're doing the right thing as well. It's that sense of peace of mind that comes with it.

Bella Pittaway: And Ceri before we, we let you go, because the school, school bell has, uh, just rung there, . What does, um, what does inclusive teaching mean to you?

Ceri Price: Well, inclusive teaching's about what we've just talked about, really it's about meeting the needs of the students. It's about having that toolbox of strategies and methodologies. It's differentiating and it's engaging the children in the class, no matter what their abilities or backgrounds, and having all of that together will then help develop their sense of being valued, their wellbeing and their overall success at school, which is essentially what we've become educators for.

Bella Pittaway: That's a lovely way to end there, Ceri. Thank you so much for your time.

Ceri Price: Thank you.