A Collaborative Decision Tree System for Designing a Sensory Diet Curriculum for Children with Autism in the Classroom Setting

This article is an account of how a research proposal is conceptualized and designed to investigate whether the addition of an integrated “sensory diet curriculum” at regular transition intervals throughout the school day would increase students' ability to profit from their educational experience for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. This procedural account identifies several important research benchmarks and serves as an example of how to make our “thinking” visible for others. The entire project was developed over a 2-year period, in part to provide a group of occupational therapy pre-professional students with a hands-on research experience. The students completed a small pilot study that contributed to the formation of a values-based decision tree model that respects full inclusion, team collaboration, parent participation, mentor-mentee relationships, and evidence-based practice.