Sarah J. answered • 06/23/24
The Neurodivergent Educator- Special Needs and English Tutor
At one time, ABA was considered the only evidenced-based approach to autism. Unfortunately, as time goes on, more and more studies are finding how traumatizing and unhelpful it actually is for autistic people. This has become a source of a lot of controversy as the education world fully embraces ABA while the autistic community speaks out against it. While there may be some very niche and hard to find studies that have found other teaching methods, I have yet to personally find them. ABA has become a huge money making industry and despite it not truly being effective in the long-term, it is still considered the one and true evidenced based autism therapy. While this affects mostly high support need students, I have also encountered lower support need autstics who still received at home ABA therapy. I have heard first hand from these students how horrible it is to experience ABA as a student.
At the same time, I began my career in ABA and even received my RBT certification in it. I think there are some positive take aways from it, but overall, I believe we can do better! Although science has yet to truly grace us with alternative evidenced-based approaches, we do know from mostly newer studies how the autistic brain works and how they learn. Autistic people are all different, but there are certain teaching styles that are more likely able to help autistic people. For example, many autists are gestalt cognitive processors which means that when learning, they need to start with the product or the goal and approach it in a more top to bottom way. Chunking is still useful, but each chunks should be created through this lens. I believe that this is why Project Based Learning (PBL) has been shown to be so useful for neurodivergent students.
I am an autistic special educator with an interest in twice exceptionalities. I will be working in a non-ABA base autism public school regional program starting in the fall.
