Ever heard the phrase “It takes a village”? This quote could not be any truer, especially when considering autism. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder, a diverse manifestation of human experience, an identity, a strength, and often a challenge. When these challenges do present, a number of interventions are recommended, each in isolation from the others. In other words, if there are motor challenges, the person may be referred to occupational therapy. Or there may be a referral to a speech-language pathologist for speech delay or other communication challenges. Thanks to a variety of specialists, many aspects of autism can be understood and addressed if necessary, but one aspect always seems to be left behind: cognition and the autistic experience’s impact on learning.
In an abstract by Kaethe Schnider, a professor in the Department of Education and Culture at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany, “Learning is defined as the acquisition of knowledge by reasoning.” In other words, learning is gaining knowledge through processes such as critical thinking, inferencing, and drawing conclusions based on past knowledge. No, you’re not imagining it: learning is a complex concept. I think this is why many fields avoid understanding what and how we learn, including education. Enter the educational therapist—this is where we shine.
Autistic people process information differently than non-autistic individuals, starting from sensory intake to motor/behavioral output. Some fields and interventions only focus on the output. Occupational Therapists focus on motor output, or, if specifically trained, on sensory input and integration. While these fields, including speech, do often consider executive function and other cognitive-based processes, this is not their expertise. So what we have is a giant gap in possible interventions and supports for autistic people.
Traditionally, educational therapy has been a field that helps students with learning differences, which include working with dyslexia, dyscalculia, and executive function challenges like those in ADHD. Executive functions are a huge part of cognition, and they certainly affect autistic folks. Despite this challenge being well documented in both education and psychology, little has been done to develop specific interventions. However, we see time and time again how one-size-fits-all approaches fail autistic people, so educational therapy’s super-individualized approaches would fit such a diverse spectrum of needs and strengths.
The fact of the matter is, these various fields and their corresponding interventions for autistic folks have not kept up with neuroscience. There are so many things these interventions miss because of the disconnect with neuroscience. I’m not saying every practitioner in these fields is lacking this knowledge and understanding; rather, I am speaking for these fields as a whole. Probably one of the most disconnected from modern neuroscience is the field of special education. Here, behavior still dominates the classroom environment, especially when it comes to autistic students. As a special educator, I always wondered why we never taught executive function skills. It was like we expected the students to already have them. Luckily, educational therapy is here to help learners, especially those with autism, foster these executive function skills so that they can access these abilities in more independent ways.
Now the question is how. How can we use the values and practices within the educational therapy field and current neuroscience to help autistic learners? I have been actively trying to figure this out. Executive functions take far more brain power than, say, feeling an emotion or processing sensory information. If these lower needs are not met, executive functions will not work as efficiently, if at all. I think this is one reason why the spectrum is so diverse. The brain is amazing, and neurons can regenerate and create workarounds when a part of the pathway is blocked or damaged. This can most easily be seen in stroke patients. My grandmother had a stroke once, which left her with severe speech challenges, but over time, with intervention, she regained all of her speech capabilities. This only happened because the brain can re-route and regenerate these damaged neurons.
In no way am I saying that autistic brains are damaged or need to be fixed, but I do think that if there are ways to help ease our challenges while keeping our strengths, we should embrace that. I like to say that if the hardware is there, the brain can adapt to neurological barriers, whatever they may be. Rather than fixing these barriers, let’s help learners generate new connections to try to remediate these challenges through their strengths.
While this concept is still new, I really believe that educational therapy can play a huge role in supporting autistic individuals. I chose my practice’s tagline, “Educating the whole self,” because that’s what we do as educational therapists: everything outside of us influences our brain, and everything in our brain influences external behavior. Maybe educational therapy can be the bridge that connects the gap.
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Sarah Juliana
Sarah Juliana, A/ET, B.C.A.S.E., is a Board Certified Special Education Advocate, Educational Therapist…and Floortimer!, She is the owner of Autonomous Hippopotamus LLC. Before leaving the education system to start her business, Sarah worked for nearly 12 years in a variety of special education positions. Her experience with a wide variety of Neurodivergent students, including autistic students, in diverse settings helped Sarah understand and develop her own Neurodivergent identity. This helped her see the oppression, injustice, neglect, and general mistreatment of Neurodivergent people in schools and the workplace.
Sarah hopes that Autonomous Hippopotamus LLC can be a safe and effective place for Neurodivergent people, children and adults, to learn the way their brains were meant to. Her company takes a holistic approach to education that acknowledges the connection between learning and social-emotional well-being. Autonomous Hippopotamus LLC strives not to “fix” Neurodivergent people, but to give them the support and educational opportunities they need to thrive.
