On Wednesday 11 and Thursday 12, IRTIC hosts two meetings of participants in the Teacher Training and Attention in Autism (TTAA) project at its premises. In the afternoons, at the Benlliure high school in Valencia, members of the initiative offer as part of the Multiplier Events of the Erasmus+ program a training for special education teachers on the tool and methodologies developed.

The main objective of the TTAA project is to provide resources on autism-related attention skills for teachers and professionals supporting children with autism. These include the development of software for attention intervention and accompanying training materials to make these tools available to a wide range of professionals and users.

Specifically, at the end of the initiative, a freely accessible multiplatform version of CPAT, a successful care intervention programme, will be available along with a detailed implementation protocol that can be used by teachers and professionals across Europe. A report on best practice of attention in autism in the four participating countries is also envisaged.

TTAA will also offer a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) targeted at teacher professional development on the topic of attention in autism, which will be available in four languages.

In this sense, the capacity of non-social attention is an aspect that seems to be less researched in relation to autism, although it is usually atypical in people with this condition, and it is closely related in this population with academic performance. They can train it through technology-based tools, since they are considered an effective means in their case.

The initiative, coordinated by the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, includes Rookery School and Nasen from the same country, IRTIC and Autismo Ávila from Spain, the University of Western Macedonia and Ralleia Experimental School from Greece, and Tel Aviv University and Weizmann School from Israel.

This action is funded by the Erasmus+ programme and runs from September 2019 to August 2022.

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