Autism Genetic Testing - a Qualitative Study of Awareness, Attitudes, and Experiences Among Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism genetic Testing: A Qualitative
Study of Awareness, Attitudes, and Experiences among Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Shonta Carter

University of St. Thomas

EDUC/COUN 6327

Instructor: Catherine Barber

Autism genetic Testing: A Qualitative
Study of Awareness, Attitudes, and Experiences among Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a disorder that has become common to see within the school system.  Early intervention is essential in order to assist students with developing habits in order to be able to be successful socially, emotionally, and educationally. There are many students who have learning disorders and those students severely struggle in a classroom setting. Several researchers steered a study in which the classroom setting was observed to obtain data to discover the classroom practices of special education teachers and his or her ability to engage students in the learning process. Since the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2001) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA, 2004) obtaining feedback and knowledge on how to be more effective in the classroom to ensure that the needs of all students are being met, has been an important factor. In order to receive feedback, an observation had to take place before any recommendation on how to stimulate the learning environment could begin. Qualitative studies were performed on the awareness, attitudes, and experiences among parents of children with autism spectrum disorder.  This is beneficial to students with this disorder, as well as other disorders, however emphasis was put on Autism. Observation was made in other articles referencing to the four themes related to instructional agreement that differentiated the teachers and whether or not the teachers were most engaging, highly engaging, moderately engaging, or low engaging.  The four themes were the quality of the instruction, responsiveness to student needs, socio-emotional climate of the classroom, and the student autonomy. These are all important factors that should be reviewed, however with early intervention in reference to autism spectrum disorder will assist the teachers in implementing strategies that will help teachers and parents implement what the child needs as well as, the teachers teaching effectively, and in order to gauge the effectiveness of the teacher. In order to receive appropriate data on what the children are doing and how the students are growing, there must be data to back up and track the growth of the student.

Current Study and Hypothesis

This study gives insight into perspectives regarding ASD genetic testing among parents of autistic children, which felt the need to conduct a qualitative study approach. Parents with at least on child diagnosed with ASD were eligible to participate. A snowball sampling technique was used to recruit a diverse sample of socio-demographic characteristics. An emergent design was adopted to permit refinement of the interview questions throughout various stages of data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Many times early intervention can give teachers the opportunity to come up with a strategic intervention in order to assist the student in his or her learning environment. Early intervention means better planning on the parents, as well as school part so that the student could develop positive patterns instead of negative ones that may impede on his or her learning development. More information on this topic will improve social justice because more and more students are being diagnosed with Autism. As previously stated early intervention is the key. Autistic student also have issues with social skills, therefore with early intervention, and positive role play the student can develop positively. For years there has been completed research, editing to policies and procedures as well as curriculum training, on how to service students with learning disabilities in the classroom. Seok, DaCosta, Kinsell, Poggio and Meyen performed research to see of computer mediated Inter-sensory learning model for students with learning disabilities would be effective.

Method

Participant

There are many identifiers of the students with learning disabilities. By becoming familiar with these identifiers of the disorder successful intervention and prevention strategies can be put into place to assist with classroom management skills and enhancement in the learning process.  Many times when research is done emphasis is put on subject areas. Darrow began a research including a classroom of teachers who taught music, and how all music educators at some point in time will have a student with a learning disability. Darrow’s research puts emphasis on how students with learning disabilities may have a variety of problems that may or may not limit their academic and social achievement in the music classroom. The degree of the disability may impede on how fast the student learns, or how difficult the learning process is for the student. This particular study was conducted in-depth, individual, and semi structured interviews with 42 parents of autistic children with diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds. All interviews were audio-taped, transcribed, and coded into major themes and subthemes. Approximately one-quarter of participants had two or more autistic children, and about half of them were ethnic/racial minorities. On the basis of previous literature a semi-structured interview guide was created. Six experts in ASD, genetics/genomics, public health, special education, and/or qualitative research reviewed and revised the interview question.  This was done to establish a rapport with participants and understand their background, interviews started with a general question asking parents to describe their experiences with their autistic children. Interviewees were asked to elicit in-depth responses regarding five topics: