Effective Teaching Techniques for Children with Autistic Disorder in Individual Swimming Lessons

Abstract

How children are taught affects how well they learn and comprehend something. Research has shown that autistic children need to be taught using various techniques and that each technique is not effective for every child. Many studies have been conducted in traditional classroom settings with groups of students. The current study examines whether or not results from past studies can be extended to one-on-one teaching out of a traditional classroom setting, but rather in a swimming pool. The researcher examined the effectiveness of the presence of skill demonstration in aiding the advancement in swimming lessons and hypothesized that students would advance further with an instructor who demonstrated skills before the student tried them his or herself than those students who received no skill demonstrations. Three swimming instructors and six autistic children participated in the study. Students were tested for initial skill levels, and tested again every three weeks to track improvements. Results show that the students who received skill demonstrations exhibited significant improvements in skill levels over students who received no skill demonstrations. This suggests that skill demonstrations do help students and increase chances for improvement in swimming lessons.