Visual Communication Analysis™ is the result of ten years of research and development and six years of field testing. VCA™ has been independently replicated and verified in several public schools. The program has also been approved and used in many other School Districts across the USA as well as several internationally.
VCA™ is one of a few teaching techniques that are considered evidence-based. The general definition of evidence-based learning is an approach that tries to specify the way in which professionals should make decisions by evaluating the evidence for a method and rating it according to how scientifically sound it may be. The idea behind evidence-based learning is to create a system that relies more on sound scientific principles rather than rules of thumb, folklore or traditions. No more "this is the way it has always been done."
VCA™adopts the scientific method to the whole learning process. No more theories of learning, rather individualized data driven teaching. For example, in VCA™ we teach words rather than letters. The reason we do that is based on the results of experiments with children with autism (even though there are scientific justifications for it). Teaching letters first is an example of "this is how it has always been done."
So what exactly is the scientific method? The scientific method is a method of investigation that is based on measurable evidence, or put another way it is a process in which we ask a question and then perform an experiment that has measurable results and based on the results we decide the answer to the question.
In education the process normally follows the following steps: The teacher teaches the material, the teacher tests the student and based on the results of the test decides if the student knows the material, and if the student does not know the material, the teacher teaches it again until the student gets it.
In VCA™ we approach the process differently. The first step is to prove that the student is able to learn. Once we know the student is able to learn we begin the process of determining whether the presentation of the material is the correct way to teach the student. Thus we teach the student and test if they mastered the material. If they did not, then we change the presentation of the material and try again. We know the student is able to learn so we just have to find the right way to teach them.
Countless Directors of Special Education, special education teachers, speech and language pathologists, occupational therapists, BCBAs and other behavioral experts have been trained in Visual Communication Analysis™. It is being used not only to teach individual students but to teach whole classes of special needs students simultaneously.