Workshop and seminar topics are listed below. (Some topics require other topics as a pre-requisite.)
What is Asperger syndrome (AS)?
- ‘Wing’s Triad’, High-functioning autism (HFA), autism spectrum disorders (ASD)
- What is meant by the autism spectrum?
- From subtypes to spectrum: perspectives on the DSM-5
- Historical and fictional characters with ASD
Communication mismatch
- Information processing styles
- The jigsaw effect
- Seeing the pieces vs seeing the big picture
What is learning?
- Teachers’ conception of ‘learning’
- Learning ‘algorithm’
- Challenges for twice-exceptional learners
Introduction to neuroscience for teachers
- How neuroscience research has much to tell us about the nature of learning
- Neuromyths
- Neurodiversity
Memory
- Human memory systems
- Memory profiles
- Memory and learning
Five explanatory theories of autism
- Theory of mind: false belief tasks
- Central coherence
- Executive function(s)
- Amygdala theory and the limbic system: emotional markers for cognition
- Enhanced perceptual functioning: sensory sensitivities, enhanced perception
Cognitive profiles
- Strength and weaknesses
- Learner characteristics
- Multiple Intelligences, rapid profiling
- Mapping autism explanatory theories to memory systems
- Comparing the cognitive characteristics of typically developing and autistic learners
The ‘Learning Ladder’
- Dr Norris’ framework for understanding different learners’ strengths and weaknesses on mental tasks.
- The hierarchical nature of mental tasks
- Understanding the cognitive demands of different mental tasks on learners with differing cognitive profiles.
Time and autism
- The role of time in learning and memory
- Time processing varies for learners of differing cognitive profiles
- Strengths and weaknesses
Identity and Asperger syndrome
- Identity formation
- ‘Self-referential processing’
Case studies
‘Kahla’
- Eidetic imagery
- Memory as ‘filing system’
- Memory as separate entity
- Language: ‘You don’t have to say everything you think’
- Childhood amnesia
- Eye gaze and face recognition
- Study of people
‘Rhoda’
- A sense of different, alienation and isolation
- Learning:
- Language – verbal vs. visual processing
- Processing verbal instructions
- Dyslexia
- Handwriting vs. drawing
- Learning via rote memory
- Cognitive processing style
- Sensory sensitivities and phobias
- Executive control of attention and ‘filtering’ sound
- Serial processing
- Auditory processing
- Visual processing
‘Colin’
- Language
- Cognitive profile – processing style and memory
- Creativity and giftedness – the antidote to alienation
- Animals – a path to acceptance and belonging
- Fictional characters and fantasy
- ‘I have always felt like a fraud’
- Knowledge and the knower – ‘superpowers…?’
- An educational paradox
‘Nadia’
- School experience
- A sense of difference, alienation and isolation
- Language
‘Riley’
- Handedness
- Language
- Giving and receiving social cues
- Social conversations and thinking – ‘Translation’
- Reading
- Dyslexia
- Cognitive profile: processing style
- Enhanced perceptual functioning and sensory sensitivities
- Attention and language processing
- Perseveration
- Perfectionism
- Three-step thinking process
- Visual processing style
- Inner speech and mental rehearsal
- Cognitive profile: memory
- Semantic-style memory and temporality
- Autobiographical memories
- Rote memory
- State-dependent memory
- Childhood amnesia and source attribution
Themes
- Compensatory learning
- Self-referential thinking vs. externally oriented thinking
- Enhanced perceptual functioning and giftedness
- Temporality (concepts of time)
- Philosophical questions:
- Life-defining problems
- ‘Mindblind’ schools
- What is true? Lying and a sense of justice
- Identity formation
- Am I smart or am I dumb?
- What does Rhoda mean by ‘logic’?
- Being a member of a minority ‘cognitive cultural group’
Pedagogical insights
- Language and different mental cultures
- Symbolic modes of thought other than language
- Concepts and concept development
- The ‘learning ladder’
- Teacher perceptual limitations
- The value of rote memory
- Heuristics