Autism Across the Lifespan Paper

Autism Across the Lifespan Paper

This assignment is designed to encourage you to apply what you have learned in this class to social environments such as work/career, family, social networks, community settings, etc. as an approach to autism across the lifespan. The goal of the integration paper assignment is to help you see how concepts we have discussed in class might interconnect and be implemented across various social environments to improve supports for individuals on the autism spectrum at various stages of the lifecourse. Another goal of the assignment is to help you review and integrate the class material. This is a 5000-level course, and we expect you to read, process and understand the readings which relate to what we discussed in class. Show us that you have read them in your paper by referring to specific ideas in the articles (and cite the articles).

Write a 4-5 page paper about autism that integrates assigned readings from the course. Your paper should 1) have a strengths-based perspective of autism, 2) take an ecological approach (discussed on Friday – taking environment and interactions into account – see graphic below), and3) cover autism across the lifespan. Your paper must cite at least 5 course readings. You can discuss what you learned about how to best support an individual on the autism spectrum at each stage of the lifecourse. You can integrate information from the readings as well as from our field trips, guest speakers and lecture.

Please cite your references in the text of your paper (please paraphrase, do NOT use direct quotations) and provide a reference list at the end of your paper. See below for information on citing:

You need to weave specific course materials throughout the paper and make references such as “In Professor Kirby’s lecture… or reference: lecture 5/8/19 so that it is obvious the information came from the class or reading materials which can also be referenced. You should also reference the assigned readings to show that you have read them and know how the information applies to the issues at hand. Use APA format to cite the articles in the text of the paper:

To do so, put (last name of authors, year published) in parentheses at the end of the sentence you wish to cite.

For example:

The medical model of autism implies that our goal should be to “cure” autism (Robison, 2017).

We will expect that you will need at least 4 pages to thoroughly integrate and to apply class material. Longer is not necessarily better, so please do not exceed 7 typed pages (double space, use 12 pt. Font and 1 inch margins).