Collaboration is essential for stakeholders who must work together to advocate for, support, and meet the needs of students with ASD. Leading and training stakeholders in advocacy and collaborative practices is a key function of autism specialists, who are often called upon to assist with training and implementation of strategies and routines that can be used by stakeholders to advocate and help students with ASD reach their IEP goals.
Allocate at least 5 hours in the field to support this field experience.
Part 1: Observing Collaborative Practices
Many stakeholders work with students with ASD within the school environment. The collaborative practices used in various settings can differ greatly, depending on the needs of the students with ASD and the types of settings.
Building administrators
District personnel such as special education coordinators or autism specialists
Paraprofessionals
Related service providers such as speech and language professionals and occupational therapists
Others as approved by the clinical field experience mentor
Observe the selected stakeholders. Submit your observation notes and use them as the basis for additional discussions and activities. During the observation, pay special attention to the following:
Describe the various individuals and groups with whom the stakeholder collaborates.
Describe the types of collaboration activities and strategies you observed.
Discuss how the stakeholder and others collaborated to advocate for students with ASD.
List specific skills the stakeholder uses as part of the collaborative process.
Explain how the collaboration helped stakeholders meet the advocacy and classroom needs of students with ASD.
Part 2: Discussing and Researching Collaborative Strategies
Meet with your mentor and share your notes and observation experiences. Focus on the role of collaboration in advocating for the needs of students with ASD and how collaborative practices encourage and contribute to the success of students with ASD in meeting their established goals.
Work with your mentor to discuss and research the role of collaboration in leadership and advocacy activities by identifying the following:
Explain why the use of collaborative skills and strategies is an important part of advocating for students with ASD.
Discuss why developing collaboration skills and being knowledgeable about a wide range of collaborative strategies is important for autism specialists in their roles as district and school leaders.
Using the results of the needs assessment survey conducted in Topic 1 Clinical Field Experience A, identify the information and training about collaboration that your audience would most benefit from receiving as part of the professional development presentation you will be planning.
NOTE: This information will be used in Part 3 as you begin planning the content for your presentation.
With your mentor, research 3-5 collaborative strategies that could be considered for the presentation and discuss the pros and cons of including each. Include a discussion of real-world examples that could be part of the presentation to illustrate how each strategy could be employed to lead others and/or advocate for students with ASD.
Use any remaining field experience hours to provide support or assistance to the class as directed by your mentor.
Part 3: Leadership and Advocacy Presentation Outline
In Part 3 of Clinical Field Experience B, you created a proposal for a professional development session focused on how you can implement leadership skills and research-based trends and best practices to provide training for administrators, teachers, and support staff on ways to collaborate, advocate, and create a productive work environment to better meet the needs of students with ASD.
Using the research you have conducted throughout the course so far, create an outline for the first part of the presentation. Throughout the outline, cite the specific references you intend to use to support the ideas presented. The draft outline should include the following:
Session title
Introduction/Purpose of the session
Hook/Attention Getter
Productivity strategies to be modeled and discussed
Collaboration strategies to be modeled and discussed
When the outline is completed, meet with your mentor to receive feedback about the organization and quality of the content and any changes that could be made to clarify the outline.
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