On the 15th and 16th of February the TAC consortium hosted, online, the Kick-Off Meeting of the project.
The focus was first on sharing the theoretical starting point, current expertise, resources, and experiences of the project partners with school children with AD(H)D. With the aim of finding common ground and clarifying which conditional model in relation to ADHD we will start from in TAC the published symptoms/behaviours and assessment modes related to ADHD for diagnostic purposes of the most important features/areas, attention problems, hyperactivity and impulsivity, were jointly outlined with examples.
For the approach to the development of the initial and further training module for teachers, the following aspects were emphasized:
- We do not look at ADHD in categories, but rather in dimensions or as a continuum of demonstrated behaviours.
- The core goal of TAC is to equip primary and secondary teachers in dealing with students with AD(H)D in mainstream classrooms. As an important sub-goal we see the improvement of the relationship between pupils and teachers, e.g. by providing information about warmth, responsiveness, acceptance.
- “Quick fixes” do not exist; the reasons for the problem behaviour, including all factors of the condition model (risks and protective factors), must be identified. The idea would be to learn new methods using the example of an affected child and, in a second step, to transfer what has been learned to whole class management.
- There will be different situations in terms of availability of supportive psychologists, special education needs/disabilities teams, etc. in schools – the TAC module should provide a basis for contextualization.
- TAC should provide practical, evidence-based interventions, but for which a solid knowledge base should first be established, e.g., knowledge of how working memory works.
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