Kleeman, Caroline Hornig. "See amazing" in the classroom: evaluating opportunities for educating about autism in early childhood classrooms. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-qvty-2952
DescriptionIn 2015, Sesame Workshop released See Amazing in All Children, an initiative designed to reduce stigma about autism with resources for young children and their caregivers. This paper explores early childhood teachers’ impressions of materials from this initiative, focusing on its potential use in the classroom. Twelve teachers, stratified by teaching position (general education or special education) and experience with autism (low level of experience or high level of experience), participated in interviews and viewed materials from See Amazing. As the project was designed as an exploratory needs assessment, a grounded theory approach was used to investigate common themes among participants. Participants believed that teaching young children about autism was a valuable practice and identified developmental traits that make early childhood a prime opportunity for doing so. Teachers were enthusiastic about the See Amazing materials and praised the way See Amazing presented autism to young students in a developmentally appropriate way. They generally expressed interest in integrating components into their classrooms and indicated the types of support they would require. Teachers also identified potential challenges or barriers to implementation. Special education teachers and those with more than three years of experience demonstrated deeper pre-existing knowledge and were more likely to have previous experience teaching their students about autism. Teachers with less experience, especially those in general education settings, showed foundational knowledge, but were less confident about teaching their students about autism without further guidance. Overall, this study provides preliminary support for the expansion of See Amazing and related teacher support materials for greater use in early childhood classrooms to teach typical students about autism.