Description
This project explored the use of Bibliotherapy to provide preschool-aged children a better understanding of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Peer relationships are central to a child’s development by aiding them socially, emotionally, and cognitively and unfortunately for many children with ASD, relational skills are often challenging, allowing for some unique difficulties in meeting those demands in school environments. Bibliotherapy has provided a way to use literature to help children facilitate an understanding of difficult concepts and provide them with opportunities to explore emotions, thoughts and feelings. This provided a unique opportunity to teach typically developing children about a more difficult concept such as ASD with the goal of improving peer experiences for individuals with ASD. Based on Bibliotherapy guidelines and popular children’s stories, an illustrated book was created with the goal of encouraging kindness and fostering a better understanding of children with ASD amongst all of the children in the classroom. Input from two teachers supporting inclusion classrooms (children with ASD and typically developing children, together) was gathered before writing to inform the content of the book. These teachers as well as a parent of a child with ASD provided quantitative and qualitative feedback on an early draft of the story. The book was read on two occasions in an inclusion preschool classroom across three weeks. A running record observation was collected on students’ reaction to the book and their apparent understanding of the message. Overall, students appeared interested in the book and actively answered questions related to the message while the story was being read. Potential areas for improvement to increase students’ understanding and further application of Bibliotherapy for the purpose of supporting peer relationships for children with ASD are discussed.
