One of the characteristics of children with ASD, ADHD, learning disabilities and other neurodevelopmental disorders is social skills deficiency. Given the idiosyncratic difficulties in the social and emotional understanding of pupils with ASD, teachers may face considerable difficulties in managing their needs, thereby affecting the quality of the teachers’ relationship with these pupils (Emam and Farrell, 2009). Within this context, and considering how important learning social skills from an early age is, and the challenges teachers can face, we proposed a project with a target group of general preschool/primary school teachers that have in their mainstream classes children with ASD, with the following objectives: *To design, test and publish an innovative Educational Package on GBL for mainstream education teachers (primary school) *To design and create a variety of games- a VR game, and a booklet with a number of group classroom games that promote social skills development in children with autism but also in their neurotypical peers *To deliver a training course to train general primary teachers on GBL and how to use and create a variety of games to teach social skills to children with autism in the mainstream classroom
Schools in Denmark are obliged to differentiate education on the requirements of the children as a whole rather than sending them to special education. However, development has demonstrated that to effectively differentiate teaching strategies, curriculum, and instructional materials for kids with varying developmental, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds, schools must have access to certain resources. In Finland, inclusion is the official educational policy, and a systematic way of organizing support, a so-called three-tiered support model, has been implemented. Rehabilitation and new technology give more opportunities for early rehabilitation and Finland puts attention to new possibilities. For CZA and Miradas organisations, actively working with children with autism, the need to improve the quality of life of their students with ASD and fulfil one of the rights from Convention on the Rights of the Child which is related to achieving the fullest possible social integration and individual development. STANDO offers teacher training to teachers from all over Europe, therefore, this project will help them to bring together the skills of such a diverse set of partners in creating new curricula and expanding their training offer