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Anyone have any views or experience of S.L.A.N.T. teaching please?

NAS39266

Hello! newbie here. We are looking into schools, for our very recently diagnosed autistic child , and one of the schools seems very hot on the SLANT approach of teaching. It doesn't seem at all inclusive or beneficial to me. 

SLANT appears to stand for :

  1. Sit up straight  
  2. Listen - (Surely some children will find this much harder)
  3. Answer questions - (Some children have processing issues and need time to process the answer).
  4. Never interrupt (-hmm. good luck with that!)
  5. Track -keep eyes on the teacher-( I think some children might find it incredibly uncomfortable to keep eye contact. To the point that they are no longer absorbing any information. )

The brackets contain my initial thoughts. Does anyone here have any experience or views on it that they care to share? It's going to make a big difference to our decision, which we have to make very soon.  Thanks so much for taking the time to read this today. 

  • I'm a secondary school teacher, and I would be horrified if my school tried to implement this.

    I do ask pupils to "look this way" but I don't expect them to make eye contact with me. I do want them vaguely looking in the direction of the board when I'm pointing to stuff though!

  • in reply to NAS39266

    My gut feeling is that a school with a policy like this cares more about appealing to a particular kind of parent than about its pupils; possibly even with the intent of a subtle kind of bias in pupil selection for the benefit of SAT league tables. There is a problem generally with schools using detentions and exclusions to punish autistic behaviours, as highlighted by a recent court case, and these kind of draconian rules could easily play into that. The law is on your side in principle as far as redress goes, but if it gets that far, there will still be plenty of disruption for you and your child; ideally you want a school where they do these things out of concern for pupil well-being, not just because they're forced to.

    Unless by coincidence, the school head and teachers are no more likely to be SEND experts than you; they'll most likely just assure you in general terms that they obey the rules for pupils with special needs. If possible, you should arrange to speak to the school's SENCO (Special Educational Needs Co-Ordinator; all schools must appoint one), who will have a much better idea of what kind of supports the school is likely to provide and how much flexibility they allow with the usual school rules. If there's a local NAS branch which supports parents, I'd try that too, as you may be able to learn something from other parents with children at this school.

    I should point out that I'm not a parent and it's a long time since I was as school!  My impression has been gained mostly from friends with autistic children or who work as teachers or school support staff, including one who works supporting hearing-impaired children.

  • in reply to Trogluddite

    Thankyou so much for your insight, Trogluddite. And also to you, Graham. I really appreciate you both taking the time to reply, it helps immensely. I should emphasize that this is a main stream secondary school. They appear to want to apply a one-size-fits-all approach for all their pupils. It concerns me, because I'm pretty sure that a fair few children (including our autistic child) would struggle with this approach. Is there any redress when it comes to mainstream schools? Their school rules state that failure to SLANT will result in detention. It seems Dickensian. Is it worth me speaking to the Head about it, or will I just get brushed off? I'm just a concerned parent. I'm not a SEND expert by any means. Surely the Head and the school teachers are the experts. I don't feel it is my place to show them how to do their jobs, iyswim? But i'm not sure I can stand by and say nothing either? Surely penalising our autistic kids for just being themselves is wrong?! What would you do?!

  • That's a new one to me, and reading about it was rather interesting. For a start, I don't have much faith in techniques that can't even be consistent about their bullet points; the "L" is given as "lean forward" in some descriptions, the "A" is sometimes given as "ask questions", and the "N" is often given as "nod if you understand". It seems to me that a large part of the motivation for it isn't so much about better learning for the child, as for the teacher to have some super-simplistic signs that the pupils are paying attention (how about making the lessons more engaging?!)

    My main objection would be one of my big bug-bears about autism interventions in general; behaviourism. This is a branch of psychology which says that people's inner experience should be ignored, and only externally observable behaviour matters; it's very popular still in educational and workplace psychology, despite the fact that most psychologists are now much more aware of the importance of the inner processes of perception and cognition. Where autism is concerned, it fails to take into account that adjusting our behaviour takes a lot of self-control and conscious thinking, and that there is no way to teach autistic people to make these adjustments instinctive or intuitive - they will always take work, and can be extremely tiring and anxiety inducing.

    Taking my own autistic traits as an example (and note, I did well academically at school, though less so socially.)

    • Sit up straight. I have terrible proprioception (perception of body position), so I often lose touch with where parts of my body even are. To maintain the advised posture, I would have to distract myself from the lesson to consciously double-check that my body is in the position which I think it is.
    • Listen. Yes, I'm trying to, but I am easily distracted by quiet sounds which other people wouldn't even notice, and my processing of speech can be very slow sometimes. Sensory integration problems mean that listening and watching at the same time can be difficult; it's often better to just concentrate on the sound and blank out what I see. I often don't look like I'm paying attention when, in actual fact, I'm doing what I need to so that I can pay as much attention as possible.
    • Ask/answer questions. I saw this recommended with the old chestnut; "there are no stupid questions". To the teacher maybe, but if we have difficulty with speech, finding the right words, or anxiety about how the other children will react, we still have plenty of reasons not to speak up, and this brings plenty of anxiety. When I am too anxious, I simply can't always make words come out of my mouth and my comprehension of other people gets much worse.
    • Never interrupt. If I think I'm misunderstanding something, I need you to stop right now so that I can catch up; there's no point just listening to more detail that will be meaningless because I missed something at the start. You can imagine it as being like a YouTube video that stutters when the internet gets a bit slow; my input buffer becomes full and has to be cleared before I can take in any more.
    • Track. Like I said, I'm trying really hard to listen; watching as well is just an unnecessary distraction which can confuse my ability to listen effectively.
    The ultimate expression of this style of intervention is Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA), more popular in the USA than here, and about which many autistic people, including those who have experienced it, are extremely critical. It essentially just teaches us to fake "normal" behaviour, with no consideration for any negative consequence for our energy levels, self-esteem, etc., and can lead to the autistic person feeling that their innate instincts and behaviours make them "bad" or "defective" people. SLANT seems very much based on the same principles, and some of it's psychological claims are at the very least, controversial (e.g. some research has shown that doodling etc. increases, not decreases, attentiveness.)
    Autistic people often learn better through different learning styles than other children; for example, visual aids rather than speech, practical demonstration rather than reading, etc. SLANT seems like a formulaic, one-size-fits-all approach, which may work well for some children, but to me, it sounds too dogmatic to be effective for many kinds of developmental or learning conditions. Finding the best approach for any individual child requires adaptability, and this seems to be anything but adaptable.

  • Thanks so much for replying, Graham. I agree that it doesn't sound designed to allow for for the needs of an autistic child at all. I would go so far as to say that it does not sound like it is designed for the need of very many children at all, and doesn't appear to encourage inclusion or understanding of other children's issues by children themselves. (quite a few children who are affected by physical disabilities - i.e. sight and hearing impaired children, would also really struggle with a lot of these) Who is Roger Scruton, please?