Learn practical ways to identify barriers to learning, use accommodations and individualized supports, build on strengths and interests, promote generalization and independence, and set meaningful educational goals.
When a student with autism is struggling academically, it can be tempting to google “autism strategies.” If you do, you will see suggestions like maybe they need a visual schedule. Maybe the directions need to be shorter. Maybe they need more repetition. Maybe we need to incorporate a special interest.
Any of those things might help. But they also might not.
One of the most important things to understand about supporting autistic learners is that there is no single learning profile for learners with autism. Autism can affect learning in many different ways, and two autistic students sitting in the same classroom may have completely different academic strengths, challenges, and support needs.
So rather than asking, “How do children with autism learn best?” I think there is a much better question: “What does this student need in order to access, understand, demonstrate, and use what they are learning?” That small shift changes the way we approach academic support.
Academic Success is About More than Academic Ability
When a student is struggling in school, we usually look at academic skills first. Can they read the passage? Do they understand multiplication? Can they write a paragraph? Those things obviously matter. But academic performance depends on much more than reading, writing, and math ability. For an autistic learner, several different factors may affect what we see academically.
Executive Functioning
A student may understand exactly how to complete a math assignment but struggle to begin it independently. Another may complete the work but repeatedly forget to turn it in. And yet another may follow one direction easily but lose track when three or four steps are given at once. Planning, organization, working memory, cognitive flexibility, inhibition, and task initiation all fall under the umbrella of executive functioning. Although each individual is different, research has found correlations between executive functioning and academic achievement in school-aged children with autism (St. John et al., 2018). That means sometimes what looks like an academic problem is actually an access problem. The student may know how to do the work but need support organizing themselves enough to do it.
Communication and Language
Language demands are built into almost everything we do in school. Consider a seemingly simple direction: "When you finish the first three problems, put your paper in the blue tray, get your reading notebook, and meet me at the back table." A student could understand every individual part of that direction and still have difficulty processing, remembering, or carrying out the entire sequence. Other students may know an answer but have difficulty explaining their thinking verbally, asking for clarification, or communicating that they are confused. This is one reason it is important to separate what we're trying to teach from all of the additional skills required to demonstrate it.
Sensory Needs and the Learning Environment
Sometimes the work itself isn't the biggest problem. The fluorescent lights are buzzing. Someone is tapping a pencil. Students are talking across the room. Papers cover the walls. Chairs are scraping against the floor. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, we're asking a child to focus on long division. Sensory and attentional differences can affect a student's ability to access classroom instruction. Research suggests that changes such as reducing unnecessary visual clutter, considering classroom noise, providing quieter work areas, and making other appropriate environmental accommodations may improve access and participation for some students with autism (Howe & Stagg, 2016; Mallory & Keehn, 2021). That doesn't mean every autistic student needs a silent or bare classroom. It simply means environment matters, and it is worth considering when a student performs very differently across settings.
Motor Demands
Motor skills can also affect what academic performance looks like. Handwriting is a good example. Imagine a student who can verbally tell you a detailed, organized answer to a question but produces two short sentences when asked to write it. Does the student not understand the material? Maybe. Or perhaps handwriting, spelling, organization, motor planning, or the effort required to put those ideas onto paper is interfering with the student's ability to show what they know. That's a very different problem that requires a different solution.
Strengths Matter, Too
We also need to be careful that conversations about autism and academics don't become lists of everything autistic students may struggle to do. Autistic learners bring strengths to the classroom, too. One student may have an incredible memory for information that interests them. Another may notice details other students miss. A student may have advanced vocabulary, strong decoding skills, deep knowledge in a particular subject, creative problem-solving abilities, persistence, or a unique way of approaching a problem. But these aren't universal “autism strengths” any more than executive functioning or communication difficulties are universal weaknesses. The goal is to find the strengths of the student in front of you and use them. A student can also be highly skilled in one academic area while needing significant support in another. Uneven profiles are another reason broad assumptions based on a diagnosis aren't particularly helpful.
There Isn’t One “Best” Way to Teach Students With Autism
There are many evidence-based educational and behavioral practices that have been studied with autistic children and youth, including visual supports, task analysis, prompting, reinforcement, modeling, self-management, and technology-aided instruction (Hume et al., 2021). But “evidence based” doesn't mean every strategy should be used with every autistic student. A visual checklist can be extremely helpful for a student who loses track of a multi-step routine. For another student, it may add one more thing to look at. Breaking an assignment into smaller steps may make an overwhelming task manageable. Another student may find that unnecessarily tedious. Good teaching isn't about collecting as many autism strategies as possible. It's about matching the support to the barrier. Here are a few places I would start:
Make Expectations Clear
Don't make a student figure out something we could easily tell them. Instead of: "Work on this for a while and then we'll move on." Try: "Complete problems 1–5. Then bring your paper to me." Clear expectations can include concise directions, examples of finished work, checklists, written directions, visual supports, or simply explaining exactly what “finished” looks like.
Break Complex Tasks Into Manageable Pieces
Sometimes “Write a paragraph about the story” is technically one assignment but actually requires many different skills:
Remember the story.
Choose an idea.
Organize the idea.
Generate sentences.
Spell words.
Write legibly.
Use punctuation.
Stay focused long enough to finish.
That's a lot. Task analysis (breaking an activity into smaller, teachable steps) is among the evidence-based practices identified for autistic children and youth (Hume et al., 2021). It’s important to remember that breaking the task down isn't about lowering the expectation. Sometimes it's simply making the path to the expectation clearer.
Support the Barrier, Not Just the Academic Skill
When a student isn't completing work, ask why before deciding what they need. Are they struggling to understand the concept? Do they understand the directions? Do they know how to begin? Is the amount of work overwhelming? Are motor demands getting in the way? Is the environment distracting or uncomfortable? Do they need a way to communicate that they're confused? Are they having difficulty shifting from the previous activity? The answer determines the support. If a student understands multiplication but can't independently organize a multi-step worksheet, giving them easier multiplication problems doesn't address the actual problem.
Accommodations and Modifications
An accommodation changes how a student accesses learning or demonstrates knowledge without fundamentally changing the learning expectation. Depending on the student's needs, accommodations might include things such as:
extended time
reduced distractions
written or visual directions
assistive technology
an alternative way to respond
scheduled breaks
breaking work into smaller sections
A modification, on the other hand, changes what the student is expected to learn or demonstrate.
Both can be appropriate when they are based on an individual student's needs. But we shouldn't lower an academic expectation simply because the original way of accessing or demonstrating it isn't working.
First ask: Is the student struggling with the skill itself, or with the way we're asking them to access or show the skill?
“Can’t Show Me” Doesn’t Always Mean “Doesn’t Know”
This is one of the biggest things I want parents and educators to take away from this article. Performance and understanding aren't always the same thing. Before saying, “They can't do this,” ask a few questions:
Do they understand what I'm asking? The student may understand the academic concept but not the language used in the directions.
Can they get started? Knowing how to complete a task and independently initiating it are two different skills.
Can they show me what they know? If the response requires handwriting, speaking, organizing a long response, or another difficult skill, that demand may be masking the student's actual understanding.
Is something else getting in the way? Sensory demands, fatigue, attention, executive functioning, communication, anxiety, motor demands, or the environment may all affect performance.
This doesn't mean we should assume a student knows something when we have no evidence that they do. It means we should be careful about what we conclude from one way of asking them to show us.
Use Interests as a Bridge to Learning
A student's interests can be an incredibly useful teaching tool. If a child loves dinosaurs, weather, trains, maps, Minecraft, music, or baseball, there may be opportunities to connect that interest to reading, writing, math, research, or other academic skills. Research has explored motivational approaches for autistic children that incorporate variables such as choice and naturally reinforcing activities, with findings suggesting that motivation and academic engagement can improve when instruction is designed thoughtfully (Koegel et al., 2010). But there's an important distinction here. You don't need to turn every assignment into dinosaurs because a child likes dinosaurs. Interests are a bridge, not necessarily the entire road. You might use a preferred topic to introduce an unfamiliar skill, increase engagement with a challenging task, provide meaningful examples, or give a student an opportunity to demonstrate a skill using content they already know well. Then gradually expand. The goal is still learning.
Teach the Skill. Then Teach Where Else to Use It.
Sometimes a student learns a skill beautifully in one setting and then doesn't use it somewhere else. Maybe they learned to ask for help during tutoring but don't ask for help at school. They can solve a certain type of math problem on one worksheet but don't recognize the same concept when it appears in a word problem. They use a checklist with one teacher but don't think to use it independently somewhere else. We often assume that once a student has learned something, they will automatically recognize when and where else it applies. That isn't always true—for autistic or non-autistic learners.
Generalization deserves intentional attention. A systematic review of early social-communication interventions found evidence that autistic children can generalize learned skills across people, settings, or activities, but transfer was not consistent across every skill or study (Carruthers et al., 2020). So instead of assuming transfer will happen, teach for it. Change the materials. Practice with different people. Use the skill in different places. Change the wording of the question. Practice it during structured instruction and then in real life. A skill becomes much more useful when a student can recognize when to use it outside of the exact situation in which it was taught.
Build Toward Independence
Support is important. So is paying attention to what happens after the support works. If I give a student a verbal reminder every time they need to begin an assignment, the student may successfully begin every assignment. But I also need to ask: What happens when I'm not there to give the reminder?
Effective support shouldn't only help a student complete today's task. Whenever possible, it should help build skills that allow the student to do more independently over time. That might mean teaching a student to use a checklist rather than relying on an adult to tell them every step. It might mean teaching them how to ask for clarification. It might mean gradually reducing prompts. It might mean teaching them to recognize when they need a break and appropriately request one.
Evidence-based autism practices include strategies specifically related to increasing independence, such as self-management and systematic approaches to fading prompts (Hume et al., 2021).
The goal isn't no support. Independence can include knowing how to use tools, accommodations, technology, or other people effectively. The goal is for support to help the student gain greater access, agency, and independence—not simply become more dependent on an adult standing beside them.
What Should Educational Goals Look Like for Students With Autism?
There isn't a standard set of “autism goals.” And there shouldn't be. Educational goals should come from the individual student's present levels, needs, strengths, educational demands, and priorities—not simply from the diagnosis. Goals might address:
Academic skills: Reading, writing, math, spelling, or other areas of instruction.
Executive functioning: Planning, organization, task initiation, working memory strategies, or managing materials.
Communication and self-advocacy: Asking for help, requesting clarification, communicating a need, or expressing understanding.
Independence: Completing familiar routines with fewer adult prompts or independently using an established support.
Generalization: Using an academic, communication, or organizational skill with different people, materials, or settings.
Research in elementary schools has found that implementing individualized evidence-based practices with autistic students can improve goal attainment, which reinforces the importance of matching intervention to meaningful, student-specific targets rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all program (Sam et al., 2021). A goal should address something that meaningfully improves the student's learning, access, communication, independence, participation, or quality of life.
Start With the Learner, Not the Diagnosis
An autism diagnosis can give us useful information. But it cannot tell us exactly how a student learns. It doesn't tell us their reading level, whether handwriting is difficult, or if math fluency is a struggle. It doesn't tell us whether they need a visual schedule, if they understand multi-step verbal directions, or if they can independently organize their backpack. And it certainly doesn't tell us what they're capable of learning. Those answers come from assessment, observation, communication with the student and family, and actually getting to know the learner.
There are many strategies that can help autistic students succeed academically. Visual supports, clear instruction, accommodations, task analysis, interest-based learning, executive functioning supports, environmental changes, and explicit teaching for generalization can all be useful. But the most important strategy isn't on that list. It's being willing to ask: What is this student already capable of? What is getting in the way? What support would address that barrier? And how can we help this student become increasingly successful and independent?
References
Carruthers, S., Pickles, A., Slonims, V., Howlin, P., & Charman, T. (2020). Beyond intervention into daily life: A systematic review of generalisation following social communication interventions for young children with autism. Autism Research, 13(4), 506–522. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2264
Howe, F. E. J., & Stagg, S. D. (2016). How sensory experiences affect adolescents with an autistic spectrum condition within the classroom. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 46(5), 1656–1668. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-015-2693-1
Hume, K., Steinbrenner, J. R., Odom, S. L., Morin, K. L., Nowell, S. W., Tomaszewski, B., Szendrey, S., McIntyre, N. S., Yücesoy-Özkan, Ş., & Savage, M. N. (2021). Evidence-based practices for children, youth, and young adults with autism: Third generation review. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 51, 4013–4032. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04844-2
Koegel, L. K., Singh, A. K., & Koegel, R. L. (2010). Improving motivation for academics in children with autism. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40(9), 1057–1066. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-010-0962-6
Mallory, C., & Keehn, B. (2021). Implications of sensory processing and attentional differences associated with autism in academic settings: An integrative review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, 695825.
Sam, A. M., Odom, S. L., Tomaszewski, B., Perkins, Y., & Cox, A. W. (2021). Employing evidence-based practices for children with autism in elementary schools. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 51, 2308–2323. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04706-x
St. John, T., Dawson, G., & Estes, A. (2018). Executive function as a predictor of academic achievement in school-aged children with ASD. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 48(1), 276–283.
Additional Resources
Evidence-Based Practices Review