From the 13 to the 15 of September 2019, ASD-EAST partner Autism-Europe held the 12th edition of its triannual International Congress in Nice, hosted by Autisme France. The ASD-EAST project partners from the University of Northampton Dr David Preece and Dr Ivana Lessner Listiakova had the opportunity to present the following poster about the project during a session devoted to “Strategic planning and coordination of services”:
ASD-EAST: Identifying training needs of specialized teachers
I. Lessner Listiakova 1 , D. Preece 1 , J. Stošić 2 , N. Lisak 2 , J. Troshanska 3 ,A. Petkovska Nikolovska 3 , J. Kossewska 4 , T. Cierpiałowska 4 , A. Bombińska Domżał 4 , E. Lubińska Kościółek 4 , S. Niemiec 4 , M. Płoszaj 4
Here below you can find a short explanation of the poster, together with a video transcription:
Dr David Preece: I’m David Preece from the University of Northampton and I am here to talk just for two minutes about out project ASD EAST. What we are looking at in this project is the training needs of teachers, specialist teachers, in three Eastern European countries: Poland, Croatia and North Macedonia. And we are looking to develop specialist training for specialist teachers who are working with primary school-age children.
In order to develop our programme, what we have first of all done is carried out a mapping exercise to find out what teachers feel their skills are and what their training needs may be. To do that, we have surveyed a number of teachers in those countries, and Ivana will now talk about the initial findings we have about teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, and their feelings about their training needs.
Dr Ivana Lessner Listiakova: What we have actually found out was mainly, that teachers do not feel confident about teaching children with autism. They [teachers] do have some theoretical knowledge and they have received some initial training during their university studies. But, they felt they needed more practical skills, to feel confident in teaching. So, they [teachers] have some knowledge about the use of different methods but again they are using these methods without feeling confident, which may influence the practice. And, what was really good was that they expressed that they [teachers] would like more training. And that is what the overall focus is on in our ‘next steps’ of the project which is developing the training programme for teachers.
