Proceedings of the 7th World Conference on Future of Education
Year: 2023
DOI:
[PDF]
A Systematic Review of Augmented Reality-aided Reading Interventions for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
Dr. Farah El Zein
ABSTRACT:
With the recent rise in inclusive education, students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are in great need for targeted intervention support to achieve desired academic, social, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive outcomes. Out of the many academic outcomes, levels of reading performance for students with ASD have been reported to be significantly lower than their typically developing peers. Despite this well-documented challenge, the majority of intervention research surrounding ASD have focused primarily on social and communication outcomes. Given the unique challenges that students with ASD present with, there is a need for specialized evidence-based reading interventions to support students with ASD in the inclusive educational contexts. The most recent report on evidence-based practices (EBP) has identifies technologyaided instruction as an effective intervention for teaching students with ASD. Merging the real and virtual worlds, augmented reality (AR) technology has gained considerable recent attention by educators and researchers as a potentially effective tool to improve reading skills in students with ASD. The purpose of this research synthesis was to evaluate the evidence of effectiveness for AR-aided interventions to improve reading skills and collateral academic readiness skills in students with ASD across K-12 grades. Findings revealed that, even though supported by a scarce body of literature, AR-aided technology is a promising tool that may be used by teachers to positively engage students with ASD in inclusive reading activities. Recommendations are made on ways teachers can use AR-aided tools to improve reading skills of students with ASD.
keywords: assistive technology (AT), augmented reality (AR), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), inclusive education, reading intervention