Children, and especially autistic children, need a \u201chook” to hang their focus on, in learning processes. Otherwise, we perceive them as being unfocused, unengaged, and interrupting, and, often, these are the children that end up with school dissatisfaction, have a challenging behavior and\/or become more absent from school activities because of a lack of meaning and relations. By taking the special profile of autistic children as a starting point, we have learned a lot about how we can organize learning environments that accommodate diversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\r\n\r\n
Based on autistic children, we have investigated and developed our material with the purpose of providing inspiration to design playful learning environments that allows all children to hang their attention on and enable them to participate in social communities. From research and practice, we know that crucial factors that allows the well-being, learning, and development of autistic people are: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Autistic children need that these factors are part of the learning environment, although all children will benefit from them likewise. On the basis of this, we have obtained an approach to learning that enables us to design learning environments that meet the needs and prerequisites of the children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Learning is best supported through motivating learning environments that make the children want to engage in and reflect on their learning with others. For teaching, this entails the following changes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our hope is that others will also see the children’s curiosity as a source for deep learning processes. We believe that an increased focus on motivation, exploration, and ownership in the primary school’s learning activities will create better learning conditions for all children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n