The purpose of this research is to confirm the content related to executive function for ASD (autism spectrum disorder) children with intellectual disabilities, focusing on the teachers’description in the teaching goals for individualized education plans for the self-reliance activities.
The teachers’ descriptions of the teaching goals for 99 students in the elementary school, junior high, and high schools for special needs education for intellectual disabilities were extracted by sentence, and a total of 247 sentences were analyzed. Because the description of executive function was complex, we extracted the descriptions as units (with phrases recognized as units), and analyzed the content and quantity of each phase from the perspective of the four components of the executive function. Content related to teaching goals was most frequently related to communication (41.1%) followed by content on executive function (33.6%). One component, “carrying out activity”, was significantly higher and two components in combination were significantly lower than the others in the elementary school section, and the two components of “planning” and “carrying out activity” in combination were significantly higher in the high school section.
These results suggest that the teacher should focus on executive function to improve the adaptive behavior of ASD children with intellectual disabilities, and the task becomes harder with the student’s progress over their time in school.