Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are one of the most common childhood neurodevelopmental disorders which have increased over time. People with ASD have mainly difficulties in social communication and interaction, and repetitive behaviours. At school level, students with ASD have specific needs in different educational stages since difficulties derived from the disorder itself are heightened by the demands at school. It is during the transition from primary to secondary school when the new school demands can produce more stress, depression and anxiety symptoms in students with ASD. These consequences can affect their academic performance leading to school failure or even school dropout or absenteeism. Therefore, these facts show the need to introduce changes in the educational context by providing more training actions focused on teachers and classmates in order to improve the interaction with ASD students based on the support, empathy and comprehension of their needs and requirements. In this sense, IPA2 is aimed at decreasing scholar vulnerability of students with ASD in the transition from primary to secondary school. To this end, IPA2 is focused on the following specific objectives: • Decrease early school leaving in students with ASD. • Improvement relationships in school between students with ASD and their peers and classmates. • Training teachers from primary and secondary schools working with people with ASD in order to provide them with strategies to improve the academic performance of people with ASD and to reduce their anxiety/stress symptoms associated with scholar issues. • Taking advantage of the ASD families experience in order to develop tailored materials and training. • Promotion self-defense strategies in people with ASD to help them to deal with scholar issues. In order to achieve the aforementioned objectives, IPA2 project is focused on developing and implementing a training course for teachers from primary and secondary schools that will be made up of several learning modules, which will be developed by a co-created methodology involving end-users in order to identify and validate the curricular and training requirements. The school vulnerability of students with ASD during this particular transition will be also tackled by developing guidelines for teachers and video guidelines for students so that they can learn how to interact with pupils with ASD, helping them to face school demands. All the materials and products created under this project will be hosted in the e-learning IPA2 platform so that it can be accessible for potential target groups and stakeholders. In order to cover the competences needed for the project, IPA2 partnership is made up of 6 entities from 5 European countries: - 3 NGO’s related to autism: Autismo Burgos (Spain); A Thousand Wishes Foundation (Serbia); Federação Portuguesa de Autismo (Portugal). - 1 organization related to Autism at European level: Autism Europe (Belgium). - 1 research institute as a scientific partner: Polibienestar Research Institute from the University of Valencia (Spain). - 1 enterprise related to the development of innovative ICT in the socio-sanitary field: Social IT (Italy). All the partners involved in this project have experience in carrying out projects related to autism and intellectual disabilities. IPA2 will develop different dissemination actions (i.e. project website, project newsletters, social media, multiplier events, among others) in order to exploit results obtained and reach potential stakeholders as well as to promote the sustainability of the products achieved. Consequently, IPA2 is expected to have the following impact: - Raised awareness among all agents in the field of education (including teachers, students/classmates, tutors, etc.) and also in the general population, of the difficulties that students with ASD have to face, especially during the transition from primary to secondary school. It is expected to reach at least 170 people in a direct way. - Improved competences of the educational community on tackling with the needs of students with ASD. - Easy transferable outputs and products to different schools and contexts to cover the real needs and requirements of students with ASD, teachers and ASD people peers. - Increased teacher’s knowledge and competences by training them on how to interact with students with ASD to reduce their difficulties associated with the demands at school. Hence, at least 30 teachers will be trained in the pilot training actions. - Improved relationships between pupils with ASD and their classmates. At least two videos will be developed involving 2 people with ASD and 2 students without ASD. These video guidelines will be uploaded into the IPA2 e-learning platform permitting their visualization to a great quantity of people.
The IPA 2 project had two main goals and five specific objectives. The first one was to develop a training course for primary and secondary teachers, using co-creation methodologies, and the second one was to develop videos to show the main difficulties of students with ASD. Through achieving the aforementioned goals, the project IPA2 pretended also to address the following specific objectives: 1) Improvement relationships in school between students with ASD and their peers and classmates. 2) Training teachers from primary and secondary schools working with people with ASD in order to provide them with strategies to improve the academic performance of people with ASD and to reduce their anxiety/stress symptoms associated with scholar issues. 3) Taking advantage of the ASD families experience in order to develop tailored materials and training. 4) Promotion self-defence strategies in people with ASD to help them to deal with scholar issues. 5) Decrease early school leaving in students with ASD. Both general goals were met by the IPA 2 project as it will be explained in the following sections. With respect to specific objectives. IPA 2 project met the short –term objectives establish (2, 3), and has implemented actions to addressed long-term objectives such as 1, 4 and 5.
The IPA 2 project has been focused on the field of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in students from primary and secondary school. In particular, the project has pretended to improve the transition from primary to secondary school of students with ASD by developing several actions such as a training course for teachers and other actions focused on raising awareness. The main needs identified that the IPA 2 project has addressed were: 1) Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is a childhood neurodevelopmental disorders which have increased over time. This disorder can bring difficulties in social communication and interaction that can affect students in school. 2) At school level, students with ASD have specific needs in different educational stages since difficulties derived from the disorder itself are heightened by the demands at school. It is during the transition from primary to secondary school when the new school demands can produce more stress, depression and anxiety symptoms in students with ASD. These consequences can affect their academic performance leading to school failure or even school dropout or absenteeism. The IPA 2 project had two main objectives to address the aforementioned needs: 1) Developing a training course for primary and secondary school teachers, using co-creation methodologies. 2) Developing videos to show the main difficulties of students with ASD. To meet the aforementioned goals, the project was structured in three IOs: IO1- Design of a co-created curriculum and learning modules developed a training course about how to improve the school transition from primary to secondary school in students with ASD. With this course the project addressed the need that teachers, the school community and other professionals might have had when they have student with ASD in class. IO2- Guidelines for teachers and videos for students developed several videos and easy read guidelines that show ASD students testimonials about three problems that students considered most important in the transition from primary to secondary: bullying, the lack of structure and stimulus. The IPA 2 project pretended to show how students with ASD live these situations in order to raise awareness about their needs and to improve their relationships with their peers, teachers and others professionals. IO3 IPA2 e-learning Platform was a transversal IO meeting the needs detected in both IO1 and IO2. The idea of IO3 was to display all the results from IO1 and IO2 in a more interactive way to reach more potential users