Methodology

The study comprised a flexible mixed-methods design (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 2003), which generated qualitative and quantitative primary data (survey, discussion groups, diaries, videos and interviews), as well as drawing on secondary sources (previous teacher surveys, pupil assessment data). Flexibility in the research design was important in order to be able to respond to and incorporate the views and ideas of these participants in a constructivist manner as the project progressed.

Although to my knowledge there have been no previously published studies on home- school reading for children with autism, there have been a number of studies on the impact of involving parents in reading with their children in mainstream and other special school settings (e.g., Hewison and Tizard, 1980; Kelly-Vance and Schreck, 2002; Loveday and Simmons, 1988). These studies each took a cohort of children of primary- school age (a class of approximately 30 children at a time) and invited parents to participate in home-school reading activities. Although study participation was self- selected rather than enforced, the study children were matched as far as possible with a control group of other similar children in the school. For those involved in the studies, they followed similar patterns of initial parent training, the supply of materials (books and/or reading games) by the school, regular communication between parents and school staff throughout a specified period and pre- and post-testing of the pupils, to measure impact on pupil progress in reading attainment. These kinds of studies have universally shown a positive correlation between parent involvement in home-school reading and pupil progress.

The present study borrowed some aspects of methodology and methods from this previous work (e.g. sharing information with parents at the start of the project,

45 demonstrating teaching activities and use of resources, regular communication between parents and teachers throughout the programme period). However, this study differed in significant aspects since the context and aims were entirely new. The aforementioned studies were largely positivist in design, involving a pre-test, a specified intervention programme and a post-test, the results of which were compared with those of a control group of similarly matched children in the same class/year and parents. Whilst these studies enabled the clear positive impact of parent involvement to be demonstrated, they relied on similar measures being equally applicable to all children in the study cohorts. They also required parent participants to be able to learn to use and adhere to similar teaching strategies and activities with their children throughout the various study programmes.

Given the overwhelming positive findings of previous studies in relation to parental involvement in home-school reading, there were no obvious reasons to suspect that a similar positive impact would not be found in the present study setting. From an ethical point of view, I considered that all families in the school should be invited to take part in this study since there was reason to believe that all children might potentially benefit. However, a positive impact on pupil progress would not be discernible using the same methods as other studies. The uniqueness of the present study was largely related to the children at the school representing the ‘wide heterogeneity of the autistic population’ (Charman, 2007); that is to say the children varied greatly in their autism symptoms, reading abilities and learning styles. Although the impact of the home-school reading on pupil progress was considered as a part of this study (related to my fourth Research Question regarding the impact of home-school reading partnerships), it was not the main focus and could not be measured with standardized pre-testing and post- testing because no standard test would be appropriate for every child. It was also considered that parents’ ideas of progress may be different to those of teachers (Billington, McNally and McNally, 2000; Ivey, 2004; Valle, 2009). This study used school assessment data alongside ‘softer’ progress measures such as teacher and parents comments relating to positive changes they have noticed during the programme, which I describe later in Section 3.4.

No standard teaching strategies, activities or interventions were prescribed or tested for efficacy in this study. Instead, the flexible study design acknowledged that children with

46 autism need a variety of specialist teaching strategies to engage them and help them learn (Jordan, Jones and Murray, 1998; MacKenzie, 2008). Children with autism do not easily generalise skills across different settings and may work in one way at school and another way at home (Winner, 2011). This study enabled parents to see a range of engagement strategies and activities, pitched at similar levels to where their child was working, and gave them flexibility to explore and decide what might work for them. This built-in flexibility was particularly important to the learning and development of the children because their performance and comprehension across different settings and with different partners can be so inconsistent (Cowan and Allen, 2007; Hudry et al, 2010). Furthermore, it has been suggested that the type of reading work which parents do with their children (e.g. using books or games) does not matter, and that a variety of reading-related activities can have a positive impact (Loveday and Simmons, 1988). It would have been inappropriate and unethical to insist on a specific way of teaching reading. Parents and teachers who participated in the 12-week programme, discussed the individual needs of the child, the parent’s skills and the home environment. They worked collaboratively to agree, try and refine tailored teaching and learning strategies and activities suitable for the home.

In this study, it could not be taken for granted that parents would know how to read with their children. As one mother explained, ‘You have this idea of how a child’s meant

to read but when you have an autistic child, all of that goes out the window.’ The

engagement strategies and teaching approaches for children with autism could be very different to those that parents experienced themselves when at school, or to those they had been using with non-autistic siblings. Additionally, it could not be assumed that teachers would know how to support parents in home-school reading. The teachers were used to using specialist techniques and resources within a specialist school environment but not necessarily familiar with training other adults or thinking about how teaching and learning approaches might be transferred to the home environment. There was a strong case for this methodology to incorporate a constructivist approach in which teachers and parents worked together to learn and develop strategies for home use, constructing their own methods of working.

47