Education professionals' views on assessing and teaching attention skills in autistic pupils: a cross-national study

Although attention is not a diagnostic characteristic of autism, a growing body of research has identified attention and cognitive difficulties among autistic individuals. Consequently, the role of attention in supporting learning in autistic children has received increasing interest. However, it remains unclear whether this knowledge has been translated into practice in educational settings. Moreover, given the considerable variation in educational practices across countries, it is also unclear to what extent the importance of attention skills in autism is shared. The current study sought to address these questions by examining education professionals' views on attention in autism in four countries: the UK, Greece, Israel, and Spain. A cohort of 674 education professionals working with autistic children completed an online survey. The results revealed that, across all four countries, education professionals considered attention skills to be highly important for the learning of autistic children, ranking them just below communication and social difficulties in terms of perceived importance. Overall, education professionals reported using similar ways, but to varying degrees, to assess and teach attention skills in autistic children. Importantly, however, professionals across all four countries expressed low levels of confidence in their knowledge of attention difficulties in autism.