Effectiveness of Special Education as an Intervention Program for Selected Autistic Children

Abstract

Autism is a developmental disorder that is characterized by impairments in communication, social interaction and restricted repetitive and stereotypic behaviors. It does not manifest until a child is at the age of three. Autistic children may seem normal at the outside but they are not. They may also be mistaken as being a normal child because symptoms of autism cannot be easily seen at a glance. Autistic children are just one of the many children popularly known as special children. Autism is a permanent disease. Its effects on a child last forever. What can be done is to administer some form of remedy. That is why various intervention programs have been made available to the autistic individual. At the moment, a proper structured education program seems to be the most viable source of intervention for autistic children. Most of the special education schools in the Philippines have been patterned from foreign special schools. Special education (SPED) schools in the Philippines are able to respond to the challenge of mainstreaming every enrolled student that they have. Faced with the problems of cognitive deficits and abnormal patterns of behavior, special education schools in the Philippines have employed the services of physical therapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists. Much of what has been happening in SPED can be attributed to the gallant efforts of its teachers. How far SPED in the Philippines can go is a question that only dedication to one’s job can answer. This study has posed three problems. The first problem is to describe how special education is being administered to autistic children. This problem suggests that the administration of special education to an autistic child is composed of various techniques just to achieve a favorable result. The second problem is to assess the effectiveness of special education. In this problem, improvements on the autistic child’s development can be seen through the evaluation of the results of the SPED sessions. Lastly, the problem of describing how autistic children respond to the SPED sessions being administered to them have been posted. How much learning can an autistic child get from SPED can be answered by how the child behaves in every SPED session. The three subjects, one female and two males, of the study were drawn from list of enrolled pre-school students of the Carolina Learning Center located at Makati City. The subjects’ activity notebooks, Individualized Educational Plans and Progress Reports have been used as basis for evaluating the effectiveness of special education. Of the three subjects, it had been shown that Subject 1 (S1) achieved the greatest improvement. Subject 3 (S3) lags the most among the three. The study showed that S1 had benefited the most from the SPED sessions. From the total number of activities administered to each subject, it showed that S1 mastered 17.85% of the activities administered to him and no activity has resulted to not yet acquired. Subject 2 ($2) mastered 9.09% of the total number of activities planned out for him and 6.06% resulted to not yet acquired. On the other hand, S3 mastered 7.40% of the total number of activities and 16.67% of her total number of activities resulted to not yet acquired. The three subjects were also evaluated according to their progress in the following areas: concept, reasoning, social perception and social adaptation. The study showed that SI improved the most across all areas. S1 has been the most cooperative in SPED sessions among the three. S3, on the other hand, failed to achieve skills on reasoning. S3’s performance may be attributed to her uncooperative behaviors. She has been reported to throw tantrums most of the times. The acquisition of various skills in the special schools in this study has proven to be very beneficial to the autistic individual. There lies a bright future for special children undergoing special education. It is hoped that one day, every child under SPED can become more like the normal children in society. What matters most is that the SPED administrators draw support from the family members of their students. The task is not easy. But with proper understanding and patience, it is possible to have every special child in society become more or less normal productive citizens.