Group Support Anne Dempsey speaks to the two founders of Ireland's first online provider of special needs education courses
"We saw the need when working as health board psychologists. People were contacting us all the time looking for information and we couldn't cope with the demand. Even if we could, providing information was not enough, people needed to learn how to apply it," says Dr Moya O'Brien, co-founder with psychologist Dr Deirdre McIntyre of Profexcel.net, Ireland's only online provider of special needs education courses.
Its latest course, Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), is the first geared primarily for parents of children and teens with special needs, while also relevant for professionals.
ABA is a precise, systematic and measurable method of teaching people with developmental disabilities to learn. It is founded on sound behavioural principles and evidence-based research and practice.
In Ireland, it has been associated primarily with parents of children with autism who have lobbied the Department of Education & Science to provide ABA teachers for their children.
But ABA is neither new nor applicable only to autism, being developed early in the last century by behaviourists Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner. "ABA is a natural part of all learning. It has been used for many years in medical and educational settings to reinforce positive learning and as a response to challenging behaviour. A number of parenting courses use aspects of ABA.
"The recent smoking ban is a successful example of ABA in that it defined a behaviour needing changing, then devised a measurable method of changing it," says O'Brien.
The online course teaches a method of learning which can be applied to a range of situations such as teaching a child to dress, wash their hands, be less aggressive, sit in a supermarket trolley or other self-selected circumstance unique to each child.
"For example, a parent may decide they want their child to smile and say 'hullo' when they enter the room. The first step would be to measure when this behaviour occurs at present.
"The next is to design an intervention to increase this behaviour and apply it in a systematic way using ABA techniques which include positive reinforcement, graduated prompting, repetition and teaching tasks.
"There is scope if the programme is not working to go back to the drawing board and modify as needed.
"People fail to learn because they are skills deficient or motivation deficient. ABA helps you design and write learning programmes to respond to both, and to motivate children with profound disabilities to learn new skills.
"It gives you a precise method of working. Normal children learn by absorbing information fully over time. Children with special needs learn differently, they may focus on a particular aspect and not see the whole. This programme helps you see the gaps and fill them. It works because we are not just hoping and praying."
There are five modules. The first introduces ABA, explains how behaviour can be defined, measured and observed. Modules two and three demonstrate how to motivate and increase positive behaviour, decrease negative behaviour. The fourth module teaches parents how to shape learning, breaking tasks down into component parts. The fifth module explains how to collect data and develop systems of generalised learning.
The course costs €690, runs from May 10th to June 18th and takes 20-30 hours of self-paced study to complete. Students completing online assessment will receive feedback on progress, questions will be replied to within 24 hours, and there are discussion forums. Teachers signing on for Profexcel.net courses on dyslexia, autism, ADHD, inclusion and positive behaviour may be eligible for part-funding by the special Education Support Services of the Department of Education of Science.
For more information, contact Profexcel, Clane Business Park, Clane, Co Kildare, tel: 045-982628, e-mail info@profexcel.net www.Profexcel.net