Inclusion is a feeling, not a place: a qualitative study exploring autistic young people’s conceptualisations of inclusion

‘There is more flexibility to meet my needs’: Educational experiences of autistic young people in Mainstream and Alternative Education Provision

“…Aspects such as smaller class sizes and flexibility, discussed by the participants, are found within the extant literature (Mills and McGregor, 2016;McGregor et al, 2017;Tate and Greatbatch, 2017). Further, challenging elements of mainstream school for these young people are consistent with what is discussed in the literature above: issues such as bullying, inflexible pedagogy, feeling unsupported, not being understood by teachers and finding it difficult to manage within the overwhelming social and sensory mainstream environment (see for example, Lewis, 2008a, 2008b;Humphrey and Symes, 2011;Hebron and Humphrey, 2014;Poon et al, 2014;Sreckovic et al, 2014;Brede et al, 2017;Sproston et al, 2017;Goodall, 2018b).…”

“…Wing (, p. 32) notes that ‘even the most able children with autistic disorders may find mainstream school intolerable’. It is unsurprising therefore that autistic young people themselves also question mainstream for all (see Goodall, ). Difficulties with mainstream inclusion arise from the interaction between the autistic child’s intrinsic characteristics and factors within the school environment, including teacher understanding, teacher knowledge, and the sensory, social and geographical aspects of the school environment (Eldar, Talmor and Wolf‐Zukerman, ; Keane et al , ).…”

The dream school: Mind‐changing perspectives of people with intellectual disabilities

“…Previous studies have focused exclusively on aspects such as the evaluation of the contents (Datta & Talukdar, 2017), classroom methodology (Carter et al, 2011;Fajardo et al, 2014), interpersonal relations (Pham & Murray, 2016) or the feeling of belonging in schools (Goodall, 2018;Stiefel et al, 2018). However, such objectives constitute a long path that cannot afford to fall into utopia.…”

“…However, the architectural and environmental aspects are not enough to ensure the inclusion of students with disabilities in the schools (Davis & Watson, 2001). Goodall (2018), in a flexible qualitative participatory study, states that educational inclusion is rather a feeling and not a place. Therefore, it is important not only to change the structural aspects of the schools, but also to reflect on the values that are transmitted in them (Van Mieghem, Verschueren, Petry, & Struyf, 2019).…”

“…Published for the British Institute of Learning Disabilities NIETO aNd MORIÑa (Carter et al, 2011;Fajardo et al, 2014), interpersonal relations (Pham & Murray, 2016) or the feeling of belonging in schools (Goodall, 2018;Stiefel et al, 2018). The participants of these works were people with disabilities, with a low number of studies focused on people with intellectual disabilities (Carter et al, 2011;Fajardo et al, 2014).…”