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Centre for Neurodiversity & Development

Triple-A Project Overview 

Young child sat at a desk with a teacher looking on

Project start

The Triple-A online training tool project began in January 2021, with funding from the ESRC IAA and Research England.

Consultation Focus Groups (January 2021)

We ran a number of focus groups with parents of autistic children, teachers and educational psychologists to gather feedback on the Triple-A work and the usefulness of the proposed project and training tool. You can read a summary of the findings from these focus groups in the report document linked below.

Focus Group Report (pdf download)

Consultation Interviews (Summer 2021) 

We ran a number of interviews with autistic adolescents to ask them about their experiences of barriers in the classroom, and to get their feedback on whether the issues outlined in the Triple-A research were reflective of their school experiences. We also sought feedback on the usefulness of an online training tool approach to raise awareness. This was very helpful in shaping the direction of the training tool. You can find a summary of these interviews in the report document linked below.

Interview Report (pdf download)

Teacher Workshops (June 2021)

We ran online workshops with teachers to get their feedback on the kinds of content we thought would be useful to focus on for the Triple-A training. Here we wanted to see if this content was relevant to their experiences, useful and accessible.  Teachers provided us with feebdack to help shape the training tool. 

Advisory Group (Summer 2021-March 2022)

We established an advisory group who helped to co-design the training tool itself. Our group consisted of autistic people, parents of autistic children, teachers, and academic researchers .

The group contributed to drafts of the online tool  and helped to shape what was included and how it worked. Indeed, some members of the group provided us with contributions (e.g. audio clips, video clips, quotes) on their own experiences to be included in the training tool. This was enormously valuable. The stages of feedback from the advisory group are outlined below. 
  1. Advisory group input on written working draft 
  2. Work with web design company to incorporate feedback 
  3. Advisory group feedback on online  draft 
  4. Work with web design company to incorporate feedback

 

ESRC Festival of Social Science – Public Webinar

On Thursday the 18th November 2021 at 7 p.m. we held a public talk followed by a panel discussion about the Triple-A project. The title for the talk was:

‘Triple A in the Classroom: The impacts of attention, arousal and anxiety’

There were 464 registrants for the talk, with 158 live attendees on the night, and a further 254 views of the talk since then. 

Please see here to view the talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zOIaWIX5xw 

Working with our collaborative partners at Durham County Council

From the outset of this project, we have been working very closely with our collaborative partners in Durham Council, especially Dr Janet Crawford, Ms Liz Mulholland and Ms Helen Sellars, along with the rest of the Communication and Interaction. In particular, this team led on the development of the Triple-A Toolbox, which is the support strategies and guidance provided through the Triple-A training tool. 

Online Resource - Working with web design company (throughout project)

We have also worked with Curious 12, a web design company to develop the website. Most of this work was done from September 2021, after the working draft for the website was developed with the advisory group. 

Launch the Training tool (March 2022)

The Triple-A training tool was launched on the 24th of March 2022.

Collecting feedback on the tool (March 2022 onwards)

We continually collect data from users of the training, which allows us to analyse the impact the training is having. The summary of our last analysis of this data can be found here:

The data is overwhelmingly positive in terms of the impact of the training. We are currently conducting long-term follow-ups of impact with users too, and we will share these data in due course.