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The prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) appears to be increasing globally due to the complex interaction of multiple biopsychosocial and environmental factors. Mobile phones, tablets, and other electronic gadgets have transformed our means of communication, and have also changed both healthcare and how we learn. These technological enhancements may have a positive impact on the lives of children, but there is currently a global scarcity of information on how information technology influences the education of children with ASD.
This study was conducted in Rwandan schools and communities, and aimed to understand the perceptions of students with ASD, their parents, and their teachers, on the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the education of those with ASD.
This qualitative descriptive study was conducted from December 2017 to July 2018. Researchers conducted four focus group discussions (FGDs) with 54 participants from different backgrounds: teachers, parents, and students with ASD. Each of the FGDs took approximately two and a half hours. A predefined set of open-ended questions were selected to discover people’s perceptions regarding assistive technologies used in ASD, their effectiveness, the scope of using them in their context, and upcoming challenges during implementation. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed.
The findings of the study revealed seven key themes: (1) the use of ICT for the education of children with ASD; (2) existing augmentative facilities for learning; (3) current patterns of use of ICT in education; (4) preferred areas of learning for ASD students; (5) integration of ICT into educational programs; (6) areas of interest outside the classroom; and (7) future opportunities and challenges in Rwanda. We found most of the study participants assumed that appropriate technology and related innovations might solve the challenges faced by learners with ASD in classrooms. Moreover, they thought that children with ASD more so enjoyed watching television, playing digital games, and drawing objects using gadgets than interacting with people or playing with other children.
The use of various low-cost technical devices can aid with teaching and the education of children with autism in Rwanda. However, this area requires further research to discover the impact ICT can have on the education of children with ASD, so this study may become a starting point for further research in the area.
Like any other child, those children with Autism have an equal right to education and all other basic rights [
Information communication technologies and modern education techniques can assist with the education of a person with disabilities by mitigating their challenges in different domains [
This qualitative descriptive study was conducted from December 2017 to July 2018, with the objective of understanding how ICT can support the education of children with ASD. The educational institutions chosen for focus group discussions were selected based on data from the National Commission of Persons with Disabilities and the Ministry of Education in Rwanda [
Within the parents’ group there were four fathers and eight mothers. Children with standard intellectual capacity from each school participated solely in observational sessions.
Number of participants in focus group discussion (N=54).
| Participants | Groupe Scolaire Jabana | Heroes Day Care Center | Autism center (Autisme Rwanda) | College des Amies de la Paix du Christ Roix Janja | Total |
| Teachers | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 20 |
| Parents | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 12 |
| Students with ASDa | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 16 |
| Children with average intelligence | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 6 |
| Total | 15 | 12 | 12 | 15 | 54 |
aASD: Autism Spectrum Disorder
The mobile apps chosen to support the education of children with ASD, such as
The answers from the interviews and results from the observational sessions were analyzed and transcribed using Word (Microsoft, Redmond, Washington). To clean the data, a coding scheme was developed with codes serving as groups of teachers, parents, and children with ASD in light of their knowledge, experiences, and perspectives. We refer to teachers, parents, and children using the following notation: T1 refers to teacher 1, P1 refers to parent 1, C1 refers to child 1, and so on.
The data were collected by recognized researchers from the University of Rwanda who have been trained on qualitative data collection, and the research project passed through the collegial ethical process. To maintain ethical standards, the researchers took formal informed consent from parents and teachers using approved consent form (
The findings of the study revealed seven key themes: 1) the use of ICT for the education of children with ASD; (2) existing augmentative facilities for learning; (3) current patterns of use of ICT in education; (4) preferred areas of learning for ASD students; (5) integration of ICT into educational programs; (6) areas of interest outside the classroom; and (7) future opportunities and challenges in Rwanda.
Despite the financial barriers and lack of robust funding, schools and parents were provided digital tools for children with ASD. Rwandan financial leadership in education encouraged promoting facilities and increasing the capacity of ICT at the school level:
I encourage the government of Rwanda to provide technical support to develop their learning abilities as well as including them into general education system.
However, technological innovations such as educational software applications and videos need to be culturally relevant to both support students with ASD and improve their attention when they are studying. A teacher from APAX-Janja said
Special Software Applications and videos are essential in the class to help students paying attention as most of my students with ASD enjoy watching the video. When they are left alone watching, they are more focused and finally imitate what they have seen through media.
The advanced technology integrated well into teaching children with ASD, and the provision of an abundance of new tools to educators to use in their instruction helped them be more efficient. This was especially evident when the emphasis was on symbolic notation and how children might learn from them, as supported by most of the teachers during the interview.
The teachers from the four schools reported that only a few of them had a computer or tablet with special software applications for a person with ASD, such as games like
It has been thought that cognitive software applications can have a positive effect on the education of a person with Autism, with one of the interviewed teachers saying:
I find the students with ASD and related disabilities are more interested in the use of mobile telephones and tablets which we are using to improve their communication at the school. They can search the application from tablet by themselves and start using it.
Despite these positive intentions, teachers reported difficulties in the use of new technologies with children with ASD. Teachers at Heroes Day Care Center said:
What we do here is that we try all means to get some tools to support our children, but all of them are in English or French language which is a new language and difficult for them to learn as they have difficulty in communicating in our local language.
More teachers and parents suggested an increase of use of ICT tools with specific software applications installed, as well as training in teaching of and caring for children with ASD in an inclusive environment.
In response to the question of interests of students with ASD, teachers said that the students were interested in subjects which involved vision and hearing. They said that many students with ASD liked the subjects that involved drawing and creative performance (eg, singing and dancing), while a few of them had unknown interests. This was supported by a teacher at Groupe Scolaire Jabana who said:
in my class, those children most like geometry, but when I teach algebra, they do not follow, I sometimes find them drawing the faces of their colleagues and teachers. They are also able to see some objects which other children considered as having normal intellectual capacity are not interested in.
From the researchers’ observations, students who participated in the observational session demonstrated different individual capabilities, such as drawing the objects that they saw, reproducing specific images, and memorizing songs and voices that they heard.
Parents stated that their children liked to use digital devices and recommended the provision of access to particular ICT tools. One father of a child with ASD said:
My son is very good at playing games on my smartphone, and he is the one who usually open a TV for me and forces me to watch a channel of cartoons. If the government provide ICT tools for children like mine at school, it will be better.
Teachers and parents thought that the integration of ICT and the provision of cost-effective assistive technology devices would be helpful. A teacher from APAX Janja said:
If we can provide the low-cost tablet or smartphone with special applications for each of the children customized with their interest, and provide the teaching with that, I am confident that they will be more successful in their specific domains.
This statement was supported by teachers who used ICT tools to support teaching their children in class, with all of them saying that ICT could improve both teaching and learning activities for children with ASD in inclusive settings.
Parents from urban areas said that their children liked watching television and playing digital games, while those from rural areas said that their children liked drawing objects they saw around and imitating the sounds and voices of animals and people. The parents also said that their children demonstrated a deficit in socialization with others in their families, but they were seen engaging in different activities. Another father of children with ASD said:
I have never seen my son talking about his interests or get engaged in activities I gave him. It took me a long time in observing him and I surprisingly saw him get engaged in different activities while I thought he is not able to do anything.
This testimony was also supported by a Teacher at APAX Janja who said:
I remember when I was doing my academic research, I met one man who was diagnosed as having Autism in Kigali who can imitate most of the voices of animals like, dog, cow, bird, lion, and others. If digital tools like Television is available to young children, they can imitate what they are watching.
The parents also said that their children could perform some house activities independently. From observations in the workshop room, children with ASD demonstrated a good level of skill in tailoring sweaters and performing other creative activities.
The disruptive behavior of students in the inclusive classroom may be a barrier to the effective implementation of the proposed competence-based curriculum. This was supported by teachers who said:
The behaviors of children are very challenging, and it is not easy to teach them with others regardless of the policy of the government emphasizing their inclusion in schools. It will only happen if we have two or three teachers in one classroom to support them.
In this study, most teachers in the schools and centers suggested that the presence of two teachers in an inclusive classroom could help with overcoming the challenging behaviors of children with ASD.
Parents also reported a lack of awareness of ASD as a factor which supported the stigmatization of their autistic children among different families, and it also seemed to encourage them to drop out of the schools.
My family failed to accept the behavior of my daughter, and the cost of caring for her. They always ask me where I got her and I am afraid of her future when I will not be alive. But I believe in that with the help of ICT like Television broadcasts and Radio talks, they can change their beliefs within the time.
Using digital technologies to increase awareness of the disorder is thought to be a solution for reducing stigma among families.
In addition, the participants also said that a combination of a lack of materials, qualified teachers, awareness, and teachers’ motivation was a significant challenge to including children with ASD into the Rwandan education system.
This study revealed the use of ICT was acceptable among both teachers and parents of children with Autism. The triangulation of themes developed in the findings shows that the participants in the study thought that ICT had the potential to improve the education of children with ASD in class regardless of the problem of an insufficient number of tools that have been developed [
These findings are supported by previous studies [
To support previous research [
As a developing country, Rwanda has a lack of digital infrastructure that is a challenge and can lead to reduced support for people with ASD [
This study used only focus group discussions and observational sessions, which could have made the results prone to selection biases, resulted in inequal engagement of the participants, and could have been influenced by the person who conducted the FGDs. However, the participants were selected randomly based on data from a recognized National Commission of Persons with Disabilities in Rwanda, which minimizes the bias, and careful monitoring was done to ensure everyone participated and shared their opinions during the FGDs. Our results may be conservative and underestimate the full education and health benefits of children with ASD, as in the selected schools only two are currently implementing the competence-based curriculum while others are using a special curriculum to improve the lives of children with ASD. In addition, among the five selected schools only one was from a rural district of Rwanda, which may have resulted in a deficit of required study information in the rural area. Third, we based our study only on children with ASD enrolled in the school system and in caring centres, but there are others who do not attend schools or specialized centres because their education is expensive. Finally, parents who participated in the study were only those who had children enrolled in the school system or centres, but some research has found that some parents do not allow their children to attend school due to the stigma associated with ASD.
We did not include teaching models and methodologies, as this study only focused on the use of ICT for teaching children with ASD. Our results cannot replace the evidence of other existing methods and tools which are used to support the education of children with ASD, as this should be guided by different studies from multiple domains accompanied by robust independent assessment.
Based on these findings, the integration of ICT into the Rwandan educational system is essential to support and build the competency of children with ASD. Increasing societal awareness of ASD and enhancing the motivation of Rwandan teachers would help to reduce the stigma of ASD for families and within communities. This study will help future researchers in this domain in looking at the use of ICT for people with ASD, with program implementation, and completing a similar evaluation in a larger population sample. Recommendations also include new education-based ICT research in resource-limited settings with the general population as compared to ICT-based education within the ASD student population.
Consent form.
Predefined question.
College des Amies de la Paix du Christ Roix
Autism Spectrum Disorder
focus group discussion
Information and Communication Technology
low- and middle-income countries
United Nations
This work would not have been possible without the financial support of the University of Rwanda, and the Swedish International Development Agency. The different parts of the work has been presented as a poster in various scientific conferences: in the World Psychiatric Association Thematic Congress, Melbourne 2018, the Autism Spectrum Disorders, Kigali 2018 and the 25th World Congress on Neurology & Neuroscience in 2018.
None declared.