Exploring Educational Psychology

There is a lot of controversy around a therapy called ABA. This m ainly comes from those in the autistic community. There are other scenarios where ABA is used where people are crying out for those interventions. But in the autistic community, it is seen as a form of conversion therapy.    The reason people dislike it, is that it is b lamed for being punitive and controlling in a way where identity and idiosyncrasies are not accepted.  For example, ABA is famous for the saying "quiet hands," where students are expected hand flapping. However, advocates argue, this is not socially relevant for them because it is actually a self-regulation strategy. Just because it might be uncomfortable for others, doesn't make it wrong.     There is a m isconception around ABA, that it is jsut for kids with autism. This is actually just an applied arm of ABA. There are many other settings where ABA is used without any controversy at all and has been proven to be effective....

When I was working as a teacher aide, one of the greatest challenges was trying a huge number of strategies to try and help a struggling learner never feeling like progress was being made. This happened all the time with the neurodiverse learners I was working with. Occassionally you would have a small breakthrough and find a way to get a concept across to a learner, or succeed in setting up a positive behaviour change.   So often as a reaction, I would end up blaming the students. This came from a feeling of inadequacy and hopelessness. After long meetings with specialists and the families, management and other aides, there was always a feeling of frustration as the conversations hardly ever led us to meaningful solutions.  Then, it became much easier to blame a 'problem child' than admit that we are incompetent in some way and that our best efforts have not been effective. I've been learning about something called "The Gap Analysis" framework. This is a evidence...