This text dates from 2007 and is published in the journal The letter of Autism France.
Preamble: This article discusses the teaching of Physical Education and Sports, which we call PSE in secondary education (colleges and high schools). It therefore relates to all children between 11 and 18 since the mastery of academic content corresponding to the age of the student with autism is not a prerequisite for participation in the meeting of EPS
In April 2005, a study of the Directorate of research, studies, evaluation and statistics showed that "Only 10% of school-age children with autism benefit from inclusive education or vocational training in mainstream (part time or full time) , against 28% for disabled children the same age do not have autism or syndromes related. "
In 2007, few children with autism who attend courses and Physical Education (PE) in schools, colleges and universities in French. If the principle of the education of students with disabilities is now recognized in legislation and speeches, the realization by cons, uncertain or nonexistent in most schools. Their presence in the meetings of EPS is more an experiment than compulsory education until the age of 16.
Based on this observation, we will show after have briefly presented the EPS and ASD why Physical Education and Sports of the child with autism is critical to student development and how the EPS is already largely organized for the education of students with autism .
Provided you follow a few simple principles that we will state, Physical Education and Sports could be a "gateway" in colleges and high schools for many students who, until now, can not access high school. We conclude the necessary evolution physical education as part of the implementation of the policy of education of disabled students.
The Physical Education
The Sports and Physical Education has the goal to develop the motor skills of students and allow them access to a common culture through sports and physical activities of expression . It gives students the means to manage their health at different ages.
The Sports and Physical Education is a compulsory school subject that is open to all students enrolled, since there is no proven medical indication cons.
autism spectrum disorders, including autism is a part, are not an indication cons medical practice physical activity at school. Therefore, students with autism to participate in school physical education classes and sports. The Sports and Physical Education is taught in primary school teachers and school teachers. The weekly volume theory is 5 hours per week EPS.
In colleges and high schools, they are teachers of Physical Education and Sports who teach the subject for four hours per week for sixth, three hours for the 5th, 4th, 3rd and 2 hours for high school students. The participation of all students in PE classes is the general rule and applies to all: only one-cons medical indication may limit its scope.
The Directorate of School Education in 2004 states: "Some students have disabilities or functional impairments that nevertheless allow an EPS adjusted. In conjunction with the medical authority school PE teachers organize their practice and their integration. " Teachers Sports and Physical Education are appointed by competition to the end of an academic background includes four years of teaching pedagogy, didactics for Sports and Expression, anatomy, physiology, history APS, sociology, psychology. They thus have an academic background that enables them to adjust the educational principles that are now used as a basis for effective interventions to help people with autism to develop.
Among the tasks assigned to the teacher they will report EPS of instruction, acquisition Knowledge and know-how, the construction of autonomy. To carry out its missions, Professor of Physical Education and Sports as holder uses sports and physical activities of expression. The Ministry of Youth and Sports are over 300 sports practiced by more than 31 million people 15 to 75 years. The actual number of people engaged in physical activity is more important because neither the practice of children under 15 years or walking trip or hunting are taken into account. Physical activities are a major element in the socialization of people in France. However, the teaching of education Physics is not identical with the teaching of sports practices. The performance is taken into account but it is not the most important element of physical education. The teacher conducts a necessary adaptation of practices to achieve the objectives assigned by the official guidelines governing the matter. The work of adapting the objectives, rules, playing surfaces, produced by the PE teachers requires some adjustments to take into account the behavioral and developmental characteristics of children with autism.
Autism Spectrum Disorders
Among the definitions of autism, we retain that of Catherine Milcent: "Autism can be defined as a disorder of the loop 'social perception / action completed'." Autism is characterized by a deficit in social perception, deficits in verbal and nonverbal communication, imagination and a lack of traction finalized towards a social goal. Cons by stereotyped motor exists or centered on self-stimulation.
motility as students with autism is atypical and its orientation is rarely centered around communication with others. The motor problems appear very early in the development of the child before the age of one year, the child has hypotonia: the child does not fit the person wearing it and behaves as a rag doll. Young children with autism may also have trouble swallowing. Facial expressions are reduced. Between 1 and 2 years, the child shows atypical postures. Strategies for turning back on his stomach significantly different from those used by children without autism. During this period one can also note a poor visual attention, a mouthing objects, an aversion to physical contact, hypotonia and praxis difficulties common to children with autism.
The study of motor skills of the developing child with autism reveals a disruption of the power of motion, characterized by several points from the following: disturbance of muscle tone and / or nervous tone (hypotonia, hypertonia), slowness of movement (bradykinesia), involuntary movements, a strange approach (on tiptoe), abnormal postures, a deficit of motor imitation (see the file on mirror neurons, which appeared in the magazine For Science "February 2007), chorea (St. Vitus, convulsion), difficulties in balance in 70% of cases, a lack of handedness and difficulty in the ability to plan and execute movements in the absence of motor symptoms (dyspraxia). By assigning Physical Education and Sport for the first goal the development of motor skills through physical activities and sports, the legislature makes it an ideal tool for educating students with autism to a motor more "efficient" and more "social".
EPS and general teaching strategies
didactic treatment of any sport requires an adaptation of the public concerned by the objectives pursued by the teacher. This adaptation begins with an assessment of motor skills of students from the constraints of activity: moving forward collectively a rugby ball by passes backwards does not mobilize the same resources and skills than those required by crossing a hurdle during a race. Similarly, there are several options to advance towards a rugby ball Brand opposing surface. These options are not mastered by all students. We must help students choose those that best match their current capabilities so that they realize their actions drive safely.
Taking account of the assessment skills of its students, the teacher chooses the EPS objectives for its class at the end of the cycle and organizes learning so as to enable its students to achieve the objectives set. The majority of educational principles used by PE teachers to develop learning engines are already used as part of educational strategies in autism:
Preponderance visuals
The best place for the practice of Physical Education and Sports is the gymnasium, stadium, swimming pool The dojo ... The teacher uses the facilities originally designed for the practice of competitive sports. He must therefore change the game space to suit its objectives. This adaptation is essentially visual: line drawings temporary plots to harness the travel, playing surfaces, targets reach, areas to avoid, scoreboard, bibs for organizing groups are part of the arsenal used by teachers to visually organize the learning situation.
Analysis and cutting task
The practice of sport and physical activity by a large number of people has resulted in the identification and demonstration by the most powerful of these techniques effective in solving problems related to the practice: for example, the discovery and spread of the crossing technique dorsal (Fosbury flop) jumping in height. This high level model of practice is not directly transferable to beginners. The discovery, confrontation of students with some principles derived from the techniques proposed by the practitioner needs a high-level learning. The teacher identifies the relevant elements of the solution given by the practitioner level, and suggests that learning involves cutting the overall technical in small units within the reach of the student. Depending on the broader goals chosen by the teacher for his class and skill level of each student, the teacher will choose among units, those that seem most accessible to the student, placed in a learning situation, and not failing.
Repeating tasks
Working for a more efficient motor gesture requires time and repetition. Few people are capable and students to invent original solutions to problems posed drive through sport. Repeat a similar gesture a number of times and ensure its successful implementation remains the surest way to permanently change the shape of a movement.
Prioritization of tasks
As part of a complex behavior involving multiple nested simple movements, the teacher who cut behavior and identified actions to be taken will provide the student to work part movement. Generally, it will propose to start with simple movements most basic and most accessible to students.
Efficiency verbal instructions
Give a brief verbal instructions, explicit and easily understandable is an obligation for teachers who must manage a group class in an environment as binding as a gymnasium attended by 60 students or when either apply to a group of students located in the opposite corner of an athletics track with a headwind. His verbal instructions should be effective, short and easily understandable. The sound signals are limited and enhanced by visual cues. Routine allows an organization to improve efficiency.
Predictability: The routines of the organization and operation
During the school year, students must engage in activities resulting from the 8 groups of activities: athletics, gymnastics, swimming, outdoor activities, art activities, opposition / cooperation, dual, combat. The entry in the activity goes through a start-up, a general warm-up followed by a specific warm. This essential step to preventing risks to the physical practice can usefully be ritualized and supported by students independently, under the supervision of the teacher. It's the same for cutting a sequence in a group activity.
Example in team sport:
1. Call
2. Makeready
3. General Warm
4. Warm specific
5 Grouping General
6. Driving an exploration technique
7. Enhancing 2-
8. General Grouping: Training teams of 3 students and details of the operating rules
9. Scrimmage: application of the previous technical work
10. Record group class
repetitive and predictable organization saves valuable time by limiting the time of explanation, organizational, management groups. Knowledge by students of different forms of organization groups (pairs, team, opposition, partner, etc ...) allows teachers to save time on the practice in action.
Management heterogeneity
There is no typical profile of the student division. Teachers of Physical Education and Sports need to manage such classes in the sixth over 25 pupils, boys and girls, ages 10 to 12 years, weighing between 25 and 70 pounds, measuring 1.20 m and 1.60 m and with different levels of physical practice very disparate. The solutions found by the PE teachers are rendered obsolete by the enrollment of a student with autism. Last
moving
The wide range of proposed activities is sometimes the student is unable to initiate a movement because the task at hand seemed out of reach. In this case, a classmate or the teacher can invite students to achieve what is expected of him. EPS, this prompt can be verbal, visual demonstration the task at hand, gesture, pointing to the student, the place, the equipment concerned. The calls made by the teacher or a peer may be partial or total physical where the student can not achieve alone exercise.
Management aid
To enable students to make a move, the teacher uses various forms of assistance: it can use a manual or guidance consisting of a physical modeling allows the student to achieve safe movement inaccessible, including and the sequence of sequences. The guidance manual
can be used to help achieve by intervening at the right time. It may also be of assistance to facilitate the movement through a safe and reassuring presence. The teacher may opt for using sign language, pointing to the essential element to achieving the task (pointing a direction, a partner, an empty space).
A visual aid can be given by the arrangement of the environment (targets delineated field boundaries) or by persons (demonstration). The teacher can then opt for a guidance verbal but it requires great precision, knowledge by the student of a technical vocabulary, proximity, a quiet environment.
Management latency
The PE classes are organized into a sequence of motor actions more or less intensive alternating with times of recovery or reorganization of the group or class : change workshops, changing groupings, especially time for explanations and recovery time. The student then alternates with the working time of recovery time. These time Recovery can be arranged: files, observation, arbitration, parade, timing.
Work together in open
Once the workplace of the teacher is a private or public dimension to the sporting spectacle and could accommodate at the same time many teachers, even public, the notion of closed class is meaningless. In daily practice, the teacher of EPS is brought to share with other colleagues in the same geographical location, equipment, a common space. His place of practice may also be public and educational intervention also becomes public. The place of performance of the EPS is an open space or collaboration between adults is required. In this context, the presence of a school carer poses no particular problem.
Working in cooperation with peers
Whatever activity practiced support, students who do not practice in collaboration with peers. When operating in an individual activity such as athletics, it does safe provided that the other participants are taken into account because they live in the same workspace.
The opposition group activities require a high level of communication, activities require a dual socket permanent information on the movements and intentions of the partner deducted contrast, the arts take their meaning through collaboration and cohesion between group members. The development of communication and interaction between members of a group of students is an obligation in the PE classes.
Developed by physical education teachers, the management principles of physical activity which have been set up a large proportion of strategies used specifically for the education of children with autism spectrum disorder (TEACCH, ABA).
Their systematization by teachers of Physical Education and Sports should not be a problem since most already use in their daily practice. More than any other activity, at most, it is necessary to plan the main stages in the development of a proposed enrollment of a student with autism.
A chronology possible enrollment of students with an EPS Autism
The education of a student with autism in PE classes requires collection of information on the current functioning of the child before intervention and then adjusting the practice to its characteristics during the course. You will find below an example of a timeline that should facilitate the education of students with autism and their increased proportion in PE lessons This example is just as the teacher to a student who receives EPS with
Autism in its course to parents who can offer by way of example so that this chronology their child is welcomed in the best possible conditions. This example represents only a small proportion of the visible part of the process should be put in place to educate a student with autism.
Before the session
1. I collect information about the child from parents, professionals who follow him, colleagues who have worked with him, aids health, AVS-I .. Such information includes:
- what the child likes
- that the child hates
- points strengths of the child
- its responsiveness to sensory stimuli
- specific motor skills
- his motor difficulties
- the preferred method of communication that uses
- the quality of its expressive and receptive communication
- its capacity for imitation and attention
2. I prepare my speech, using tools adapted to the child's current skills (mainly visual) that will locate in the spatial and temporal organization of the meeting
The child should know:
- what to do (photos, demo)
- with whom he does (group spotted with patches, friends),
- how long it lasts ( timer, stopwatch, scoreboard)
- what he did after (time visual routines for transition: transition to the locker room and change clothes).
3. I am mindful of the chronological age of the child and its development
- I plan to place the child with autism in groups that correspond to both his chronological age and stature.
4. I foresee the development of the physical environment, taking into account the skills of the child
During surgery
1. The work involved is viewed through demonstrations, pictures, target, space delimited by dots, lines, nets, poles, carpets according to the level of understanding of the child.
2. Relevant conditions of each task are identified and highlighted. Ex: Serving in badminton I prime the movement of the arm holding my racket when my other hand opens to drop the steering wheel.
3. The proposed activity is decomposed into elementary steps easily accessible to the child's success is evaluated for each step completed.
Example: The decomposition of the sequence of archery can be decomposed as follows: the sequence of motor acts, the respiratory sequence, the visual sequence, the sequence of motor images: Example sequence of motor acts:
* Installation: I position myself in relation to the target, I take my ground support equipment, I put my arrow on the bow
* Preparation: I position my hand on the grip and the other on the rope
Préarmement *: I raise my bow to the target me growing
* Armament: I pull on the rope while resisting before
* Shoots: I let the rope while holding in position the arm holding the bow
4. The proposed activity is gradually complicated
Example: put into play badminton
* I plan upward steering wheel landed on my racquet
* I hit the bottom up a loose wheel by a partner 15 cm above my racket
* I hit the bottom up a steering wheel that I just let go with the help of Professor
* I hit the bottom up a steering wheel that I just let go
5. A reward system is specifically set up to replace that which is usually used (encouragement, attention and smiles from the teacher, score, winning the match, the peer valuation). These systems are generally ineffective conventional building and must be replaced temporarily by a system tailored to the student with autism
6. I propose activities positive that will not put the child in difficulty. The teacher has the choice of activities. He can choose according to the facilities and equipment at his disposal activities that will not put the child in difficulty between a cycle of traditional games extremely demanding in terms of social communication and fluctuating rules and codified more than a team sport, the teacher will choose the second choice.
7. I manage the aid application and I get organized so that the child has procedures to seek help in case of difficulties.
During an interaction with students with autism, when I interact with students:
1. I manage with that I bring to the student: *
verbal, visual, gestural, and physical, from low to high to allow the student time to explore
* Physics, gestural, visual, verbal, from strongest to weakest in order to help students achieve a full sequence, safely, to help create a new chain, to help develop safe
2. I speak to the student taking into account the characteristics of his disability: * I speak
avoiding concrete pictorial forms, abstractions, ironic formulation, the second degree
* I speak little and clear up the essential
* I make my request at the end of a sentence so students hear the end of this sentence which is requested
* I speak slowly and clearly by detaching my words
* I speak either on a monotone, either on a slow
* I speak in terms of expected behavior
* I use the only strong voice in an emergency and danger
* I limit my facial expressions and my nonverbal communication
3. I expect a response within a reasonable time (between 5 and 10 seconds) before making my question the same
4. I give my instructions visually with gestures, signs, pictures, objects
5. I question with closed questions "Where is the target? "And not" why did not you tried to reach the target? "
6. I move calmly and quietly I enter in the field of view of student
7. I left alone the child who is conducting an activity satisfactorily and I do not interrupt, including the welcome: I await the conclusion of the event!
8. I reward and reinforce the behaviors I expected and I ritualizes accompanying the social reward of a bonus (encouragement, congratulations, applause, handshakes) to prepare the necessary initial blurring of rewards, especially when they are of a primary (food ).
9. I ignore the inappropriate behavior (provided they do not involve the safety of the student, a student or group) so that the student uses to attract my attention.
10. I do not propose any alternative pleasurable activity in response to a behavioral disorder.
11. I focus on what the student is positive and I do not center on the error made at the risk of a repeat.
Conclusion
The Physical Education develops motor skills that are problematic for most children with autism, proposes the development a motor-based sport and physical activity, socially codified and practiced by a majority of people. It is supervised by teachers trained in general education interventions, which were the basis for the development of educational strategies for autism. It appears that it has great potential to be the starting point of re-schooling of students with autism in secondary education. The education of students with autism will not fail to question the matter EPS points as essential as the role of performance evaluation, management of the heterogeneity of the group, the relevance of the rating, the validity of models for prioritizing skills, interest in the classification of APS, the proper object of the EPS, the ratio of EPS and APS Far appear as a constraint, the education of students with autism in PE classes is fundamental to the progress of the material EPS, looking for a proper object to its teaching, its necessary adaptation to a public constant evolution.
Gerard Mercuriali - Parent and PE teacher.
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