Autism CRC Knowledge Centre

Structured Teaching

This is part of our Resources for teachers series

Students on the autism spectrum may demonstrate challenges in executive functioning which present as difficulties in transitioning between tasks, commencing a new task, and completing complex tasks that need to be broken down into steps. These students often require more support to successfully cope with changes during the school day when transitioning from one activity to another.

Structured Teaching resources such as visual schedules and work systems have been found to enhance the capacity of these students to stay on task and transition between tasks. The majority of previous studies have, however, focused on the use of these strategies within special education or autism specific contexts.

This project aimed to develop an eLearning package based on the results of Autism CRC Project 2.011RC: Helping students to stay on task and move between tasks. The project demonstrated that the use of visual schedules and work systems in mainstream classrooms led to improvements in the on-task behaviours of students on the autism spectrum.

You can find more resources on Structured Teaching and related practices on inclusionED, an online learning platform that provides evidence-based practices, resources and professional-development tools for teachers and educators to support diverse learners.