Home Forums TEACCH DISCUSSION FORUM Peer -reviewed research on the efficacy of TEACCH Re: Peer -reviewed research on the efficacy of TEACCH

Anonymous
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Hi
New here, but I have been reading this post with interest over the past few days. I am a teacher in a residential special school which specialises in ASD and predominantly uses TEACCH as the main approach. I say predominantly as my class group don’t use TEACCH, we use Intensive Interaction as a whole class teaching approach. The reasons for me deciding to do this was that I felt TEACCH was too much of a blanket – one size fits all – kind of approach, and that there were students in the school for whom TEACCH was not suitable. I wanted to develop a class group which had a firm focus on social skills and communication in whatever form the students choose to use. There is a lot of pressure to use TEACCH in many schools now, and I realise how lucky I have been to be able to step away from this. The end result has been that I am now getting referals from other classes/memeber of sataff to do Intensive Interaction sessions with students who don’t ‘fit’ with the TEACCH approach.
I relate to a lot of what has been said previously in this debate about TEACCH, and having done the 5 day TEACCH course last year, also think that the approach leaves a lot to be desired with regards to building social and communication skils, which of course, are the skills that students with ASD struggle with. I really hope that other schools/teachers begin to realise that TEACCH is not the be all and end all of ASD education. No 2 students are alike,. and our teaching methods need to be adjusted accordingly. I would be intertested to hear more about other people’s TEACCH experiences, both positive and negative. Sorry for the length of this, got a bit carried away [:)]