Little Canaries

What is TEACCH?

Excerpted from the TEACCH website:

Developed in the early 1970's by Eric Schopler, the TEACCH approach emphasizes individualized assessment to understand people with autism as they are and to build programs around where each person is functioning.  Structured teaching is an important priority. Organizing the physical environment, developing schedules and work systems, making expectations clear and explicit, and using visual materials have been effective ways of developing skills and allowing people with autism to use these skills independently of direct adult prompting and cueing. These priorities are especially important for students with autism who are frequently held back by their inability to work independently in a variety of situations. Structured teaching says nothing about where people with autism should be educated; this is a decision based on the skills and needs of each individual student. Some can work effectively and benefit from regular educational programs, while others will need special classrooms for part or all of the day where the physical environment, curriculum, and personnel can be organized and manipulated to reflect individual needs.

Cultivating strengths and interests, rather than drilling solely on deficits, is another important priority. Obviously any program working with handicapped people has to maintain a balance between developing skills and remediating deficits. In this sense TEACCH is no different from any other program. On the other hand, most programs dealing with developmental disabilities emphasize remediating deficits and focus their entire efforts on that goal. Our approach, respecting the "culture of autism," recognized that the differences between people with autism and other can sometimes favor people with autism. Their relative strengths in visual skills, recognizing details, and memory, among other areas, can become the basis of successful adult functioning. TEACCH has also observed that capitalizing on their interests, even though they might be peculiar from our perspective, helps increase their motivation and understanding of what they are doing. These strategies enhance efforts to work positively and productively with these people, rather than coercing and forcing them in directions that do not interest them and that they cannot comprehend.

The TEACCH approach is also broad-based, taking into account all aspects of the lives of people with autism and their families. Although independent work skills are emphasized, it is also recognized that life is not all work and that communication, social and leisure skills can be learned by people with autism and can have an important impact on their well-being. An important part of any TEACCH curriculum is developing communication skills, pursuing social and leisure interests, and encouraging people with autism to pursue more of these opportunities.

In addition to these techniques of understanding autism, developing appropriate structures, promoting independent work skills, emphasizing strengths and interests and fostering communication, social and leisure outlets, the TEACCH approach is most successfully implemented on a systems level. Based on the concept that coordination and integration over time is as important as consistency within a given situation, the TEACCH approach is most effective when it is applied across age groups and agencies. Frequently professionals obsess over maintaining a consistent environment from day to day, but then a child jumps from technique to technique when changing settings over time. Division TEACCH believes that the interests of people with autism are best served with coordinated and cooperative programming based on consistent principles over a life time. Therefore, we try to maintain continuity in our approach while integrating new ideas slowly and only after they have proven effective. Our TEACCH principles, developed in 1974, have stood the test of time; adults brought up using those practices are now the most productive and successful in the world with lives that are full, rich, and meaningful.

Bibliography

	Psycho Educational Profile
	Teaching strategies for parents and professionals
	Teaching activities for autistic children. PROED, TEXAS, Publisher, 1979

You are visitor number to this site.

[ Home ] [ Up ]

Send mail to littlecanaries@aol.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2005 Little Canaries
Last modified: 04/24/05