It is now ten years since the publication of the paper ‘Intensive Interaction in the mainstream classroom: evaluating staff attitudes towards an inclusive socio-communicative intervention’ by Eleanor M. Lloyd (2015) in Good Autism Practice.
This study evaluated a group intervention, which the author called ‘Communiplay’, which was designed to enable teaching staff to use Intensive Interaction daily within the classroom. ‘Communiplay’ was really Intensive Interaction carried out with small groups of children and structured around responsive play with LEGO. The project involved 6 classes of pupils aged 5-7, in an inner-city mainstream school. These classes included autistic children with identified special educational needs because of socio-communicative difficulties.
For this study, teaching staff were given a short training session on Intensive Interaction and how it would be used within the Communiplay sessions. Three Communiplay groups were formed in each class, consisting of one ‘focus pupil’ with special educational needs who was partnered with the adult for Intensive Interaction, and 2 other pupils matched as play partners. The teacher and/or teaching assistants (TAs) participated in one Communiplay group each day.
The findings of this study, collected via a range of questionnaires, logs and observation schedules, indicated ‘that Communiplay may be effective in strengthening positive staff-pupil relationships and the amount of pupil-initiated interaction with staff’. Also, ‘staff-pupil interactions in the class as a whole may have been positively influenced by the intervention, even though the majority of children did not participate in a Communiplay trio’.
In practical terms, the author also identified 10 elements that were seen as relevant to the quality of pupils’ school-time interactivity, these being: 1. An expectation of peer conversation; 2. Staff being approachable and interested; 3. A relaxed pace to arriving in class; 4. Staff deliberately giving attention to focus pupils; 5. Staff sitting at the child’s level and children interacting while standing; 6. Pupils having freedom to choose from a range of activities; 7. Mutual laughter; 8. Informal physical contact conveying connection; 9. Extended interactions; and, 10. Staff being available to relate, rather than being busy with tasks.
In drawing her conclusions, despite the fact that most staff were comfortable doing Communiplay in the classroom, the author acknowledged the difficulty the class teacher had in making Intensive Interaction available in a mainstream classroom. Such difficulties were related to practical issues like timetabling, but also to an unwillingness to prioritise Intensive Interaction over other, more instructional, teaching tasks.
To counter these difficulties, the author’s view was that radical shifts were needed in staff preparedness, deployment and practice. Also, she thought that a more individualised application of the National Curriculum was necessary to enable autistic pupils to better develop their socio-communicative abilities.
So, the big question is … have things changed 10 years on from the publication of this paper? It would be really interesting to hear mainstream teaching staff’s current experiences of using Intensive Interaction in similar mainstream classrooms!
So, please feel free to contribute your own more current experiences … and let’s hope things have moved forward in using ‘Intensive Interaction in the mainstream classroom‘.
Ref: Lloyd, E. M. (2015) ‘Intensive Interaction in the mainstream classroom: evaluating staff attitudes towards an inclusive socio-communicative intervention’, Good Autism Practice, Vol 16 (2), p.49-68.
Connecting with Intensive Interaction 