Executive functioning resources
Executive functioning skills are the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions and juggle multiple tasks successfully. They are essential for learning, behaviour, and development.
They include:
- Flexible thinking
- Working memory
- Self-monitoring
- Planning and prioritising
- Task initiation
- Organisation
- Impulse control
- Emotional regulation
These executive functions act as the brain’s self-management system, and they work together to help organise and act on information. Autistic people often have difficulty with executive functioning skills, and these can cause increasing challenges in school impacting on them academically, socially and emotionally.
In secondary school, these executive functioning skills are essential for students to manage their increased responsibilities such as their timetable, which books to bring to each class, meeting assignment deadlines, homework, social and emotional demands of school life. Teachers play an important role in helping students understand these components of self-management and to practice developing their executive functioning skills.
About Amaze’s executive functioning resources
Amaze has created a series of video and written resources on the topic of executive functioning. These resources provide valuable insights into the lived experiences and feelings of young Autistic people, as well as practical strategies young people can use to build their executive functioning skills. These resources would be useful for Autistic students, teachers, and parents.
Consultation was done with Autistic people, allied health professionals and education professionals and their input was included during the development of these resources. The creation of these resources was proudly funded by the Victorian Department of Education.
