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Essentially, there are two primary ways to address the socialization skill deficits for students with ASD.  The traditional paradigm is to utilize a social skills curriculum to teach isolated social skills in isolated settings and then practice those skills in a generalized setting.  The LINK program is unique in that it focuses on providing general education students with information about students with ASD and building tolerance, understanding, and acceptance of students with ASD within the general education population.  Students with ASD then have multiple opportunities to practice age-appropriate social skills in all settings across their day; thus, gaining social competency  in natural environments.

The LINK program involves having general education peers function as peer supports for students with ASD throughout the school day. Students with ASD observe and learn typical social, communication, behavior, and academic skills through the modeling and participation of general education peers. The LINK curriculum, founded in the Michigan Curriculum Framework, forms the academic foundation of such planned student-to-student interactions, and benefits typical students and students with ASD in a reciprocal manner.  The LINK student learns, through participation in the curriculum, to act as an advocate and mentor for a student with a disability as they master content standards.  The interactive nature of instruction enables the LINK student to consistently broaden the range of opportunities for the student who has a disability as well. The LINK program also focuses on integration opportunities for students with ASD.  Two concepts outlined by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments of 1997, Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) and access to the general education curriculum, have important implications for inclusion practices for student with disabilities (Turnbull et al., 2003).  LRE refers to provisions requiring that students with disabilities are appropriately supported in settings with non-disabled peers to the “maximum extent appropriate,” a subject that has met with intensive debate (Howard, 2004).  More recently, mandates from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (20 U.S.C. 1400), have further encouraged the inclusion of students with disabilities in general education settings.  Collectively then, legal support for inclusion is quite strong.  
The empirical literature also provides compelling support for inclusion as an educational practice. There exists a large body of literature that documents the benefits of inclusion for students with a variety of disabilities, including, learning, cognitive, developmental, speech, language, physical, emotional, and behavioral disabilities.  Some reported benefits include improved academic performance (Daniel & King, 2001; Hunt, Soto, Maier, & Doering; Waldron & McLeskey, 1998), improved communication skills (Hunt, Staub, Alwell, & Goetz, 1994; Rundak, Downing, Jacqueline, & Morrison, 1995), and increased independence (Downing, Spencer, & Cavallaro, 2004; Fisher & Meyer, 2002). The majority of research, however, has focused on positive changes in social competence associated with inclusion (Carter, Cushing, Clark, & Kennedy, 2005; Downing, Spencer, & Cavallaro, 2004; Fisher & Meyer, 2002; Hunt, Farron-Davis, Beckstead, Curtis, & Goetz, 1994; Hunt, Soto, Maier, & Doering, 2003; Kennedy, Cushing, & Itkonen, 1997). This is critical in that educational programming for students with ASD should include goals for improving social skills since such skills deficits is a hallmark feature of ASD (National Research Council, 2001).  Skills targeted to improve social interactions include being able to respond to instructions, express needs and wants, and ask for assistance, social initiations, peer imitation, social-communication skills, and spontaneous and sustained social interaction. Efforts to successfully teach social skills to students with ASD can be undermined, however, by problems with generalization.  Individuals with ASD often show difficulty generalizing learned skills to new settings, people, and materials (Parsons & Mitchell, 2002; Zager & Shamow, 2005). Thus, students taught social skills during pull-out groups, or in non-natural teaching environments may be unable to demonstrate those skills when in more natural contexts.  Consequently, in 2001, the National Research Council recommended that students with ASD be taught skills in the natural contexts in which they would be used.  This recommendation provided further support for the emerging practice of inclusion for students with ASD.  
In addition, inclusion not only provides opportunities for improved outcomes for students with ASD, but can also impact a number of outcomes for typical peers. Several studies have described benefits for students without disabilities who serve as peer supports, such as improvements in academic competence (Cushing & Kennedy, 1997; Hunt, Staub, Alwell, & Goetz, 1994) increased awareness and greater understanding of disabilities (Carter, Hughes, Copeland, & Breen, 2001; Copeland et al., 2004; Downing, Eichinger, & Williams, 1997) and the development of new skills (Alper & Ryndak, 1992).  Furthermore, researchers have generally shown that peers adopt accepting and positive attitudes toward their peers with disabilities (Farrell, 1997; York et al., 1992), and positive responses toward students with disabilities as contact increases (Maras & Brown, 1996). These findings, along with research summarized by Rogers (2000) indicate an important shift in the field of autism, from an emphasis on adult-directed instructional strategies, to peer-mediated interventions. 
Numerous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of peer-mediated strategies to facilitate social interactions in students with ASD, including the development of peer networks (Kamps, Potucek, Lopez, Kravits, & Kemmerer, 1997; Kamps et al. 1998), integrated play groups (Roeyers, 1996; Wolfberg & Schuler, 1993) and general peer training interventions (Gonzalez-Lopez & Kamps, 1997; Lee & Odom, 1996; McGee, Almeida, Sulzer-Azaroff, & Feldman, 1992; Morrison, Kamps, Garcia, & Parker, 2001).  The LINK program, then, is well supported as a strategy for supporting students with ASD.
In this session, participants will leave the presentation with the fundamental design of the LINK Program including recruitment, training, and maintenance of peers as well as information regarding the sequential steps needed to construct this program design as well as successful strategies that allow all students opportunities to learn in the least restrictive environment.