Social Thinking Skills and Cooperative Learning for Students with Autism

The purpose of this article is to describe how cooperative learning (CL) can be used in conjunction with social-thinking skills to address the learning needs of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Cooperative learning is a pedagogical model in which students work together to solve a problem and complete a task. It is designed to maximize each student's learning experiences. Social thinking encourages students to navigate CL by framing activities through perspective taking and understanding the actions of their peers. Teachers can use social thinking strategies to assist students to attain the desired goals by breaking down the skills so they can work in their CL groups. Strategies for introducing social thinking skills within the CL structure will be presented via a case scenario.