WELCOME TO
ACCEPTING BEHAVIOUR
Supporting neurodivergent children and young people using acceptance based strategies.
The Acceptance-Based Curriculum offers a different way of engaging students back into learning.
An introduction to the Acceptance-Based Curriculum
Aaron Yorke wrote an earlier paper published in the GAP Journal in October 2021 where he gave details of The Accept Approach. He has continued to work on this approach with families and colleagues in local authorities and has now developed the Acceptance-Based Curriculum (ABC). In this paper, he describes this approach and uses two case studies of children who had stopped attending school and whose mental health was deteriorating.
There are access problems with the National Curriculum
There is reported to be a growing number of autistic students unable to access the National Curriculum (NC) (GOV, 2021).
A solution to the problem
The Acceptance-Based Curriculum (ABC) aims to engage autistic students who have not been able to access the NC by providing them with a more bespoke and student-led programme of learning
Supporting the four areas of SEN
The ABC supports the four main areas of special educational need: cognition and learning, communication and interaction, social-emotional mental health, sensory/physical
Adult suggested learning
Traditionally, the most common approach to teaching children is through taught and adult-led learning (Hammond, 2007). Adult-led learning is not the focus of ABC; instead, we use ‘adult-suggested learning’.