Politically Incorrect Look at Evidence-Based Practices and Teaching Social Skills A Literature Review and Discussion

The concept of teaching social skills misrepresents the dynamic and complex process that is at the heart of social skill production. Before we can act socially, we need to be able to think socially. However, the fields related to education and counseling of school aged students have failed to study the complexity of teaching social learning. Instead, they have applied behavioral teachings in an attempt to tidy up inappropriate behavior without exploring whether, and to what extent, the behavior itself is caused by weak social thinking. Students who are challenged in the area of social thinking and social skills individuals diagnosed with autism, Aspergers Syndrome, PDD-NOS, Nonverbal Learning Disorders, and others struggle daily within an education system that is, at present, ill-suited to meet their needs. Our current education of children (both disabled and not) is based on the assumption that all students enter school with basic social thinking abilities in place. And therein do we fail our students before they even arrive at our classrooms. We assume students understand people have thoughts that may differ from our own. We assume students know how to learn by watching others. We assume students understand that knowledge can be gleaned from not just verbal communication and textbook content, but the vast realm of nuance, innuendo, nonverbal communication and environment that are integral parts of our social world. Furthermore, we assume not only that this social know-how is in place, but that students have learned how to use basic social thinking to regulate their own behavior in a group. Complicating matters is federal public educational policy (No Child Left Behind) which calls for schools to use evidence based practices in teaching all students. The reality of todays world is that strategies abound for teaching social thinking and related social skills, and many are resulting in significant gains for our students.