Institutional Projects of Diversity Attention versus Regular Didactic Methodology Adapted to Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

The teaching and learning of students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) requires the design of diversity projects at the different institutional levels of the educational centre. However, if these projects are not well adapted to the specific needs of the students, they will not achieve the expected effective results. In a study conducted with a total of 145 participants from different schools, it was shown that the presence of specific institutional educational projects was not a sufficient condition to respond effectively to the needs of the participants, whose curricular and social improvements were not shown to be significant (sig: .66). Even in the absence of these high-scale projects, when the usual methodology was well adapted to the specific needs of students with ASD, the improvements found in the academic and social, that´s coded as dependent variable (DV): improving, domains were highly significant (sig: .00) in terms of the use of meaningful didactics based on the creation of networks of relationships between informative content or highly meaningful learning. Now, the interactive constant of both components, i.e. the intersection of a project design when these have been appropriately adapted to the particular needs, then both variables became the explanatory variance of the academic and social of DV of students with ASD (constant t for the sum of nodal relationships + project: 3.70 (sig: .00), to which was added the explanatory variance of the students' age intervals (constant t for the sum of nodal relationships + project + age: 4.07, sig: .00): 3.70 (sig: .00), to which was also added the explanatory variance of the students´age intervals (constant t for the sum of nodal relationships + project + age: 4.07, sig: .00). 70 (sig: .00), to which the explanatory variance of the students´ age intervals were also added (constant t for the sum of nodes + project + age: 4.07, sig: .00). In conclusion, the design of general institutional projects, even if they cover all levels of education, are not effective on their own unless they are specifically tailored to the particular needs of the target student’s variable: “improving”.