The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

This workshop will explore how students with autism spectrum disorders can be taught to generalize their skills and their legal rights to receive services to promote generalization. All students with disabilities are entitled under the law to receive a “free appropriate public education.” Above all, this means that students must be provided with educational programs and services that will allow them to garner benefit from the education they receive. This benefit must be meaningful and significant. They must promote the development of skills necessary for independence, self-sufficiency, and success as an adult.

In order to garner these benefits, students must be able to generalize skills learned in their educational placement to non-training situations and real life situations.

It is well known that students on the Autism spectrum often have great difficulty generalizing skills taught to them. These students may show progress within the structured confines of the school or classroom setting, but, once removed, they are unable to transfer these skills. The students and their families receive no real benefit from teaching if these skills are not transferred to the world beyond the school building.

One of the most challenging issues in the education of students with Autism spectrum disorders is how to ensure that skills taught are being generalized. This often requires specialized instruction and training. Specific goal planning and scheduling strategies must be implemented to address generalization.

The legal ramifications of the difficulty with generalization that students with autism spectrum disorders have include the rights of parents and the responsibility of schools to provide assistance with generalization training. In recent years, there have been many legal decisions surrounding the area of generalization. These decisions have broadened the scope of what is thought of as generalization opportunities and increased the responsibility of the education system to provide generalization opportunities, beyond previous standards. In addition to the teaching that goes on in the classroom, generalization opportunities must occur outside of the classroom walls in order to fulfill the promise of a “free appropriate public education.” After-school programs and extended school year programs can and should be viewed as viable generalization activities.

Generalization is particularly crucial for this population, as entitlement to a free appropriate public education lasts for a limited period of time, during the school years, and must prepare the student for the post-21 world.

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