Exploring the impact of educating students about autism in a secondary school

Abstract

Aims: This research aims to further our understanding of the impacts of educating secondary school students about autism. Of note, AsIAm’s Autism Awareness Workshop is not evidence-based. This study is not evaluating or recommending the programme, only exploring student’s experiences of the programme in one school. The key research questions are outlined below. 1. What is the impact of AsIAm’s autism awareness workshop on student’s knowledge, attitudes and behavioural intentions towards autistic students? 2. What are students’ perspectives on taking part in the autism awareness workshop? 3. What are students’ perceptions of inclusion in school? Methodology: A pre-post, within-between groups mixed methods design was employed to explore the impacts of the autism awareness workshop as an intervention strategy within one mainstream secondary school. A total of 57 students in 1st and 2nd year were assigned to control and experimental groups. The experimental group attended AsIAm’s autism awareness workshop in their school. The control group received a waitlist intervention. The perceptions of students were accessed via pre- and post- intervention questionnaires. These results were analysed using two-way mixed ANOVAs. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four autistic students and four non-autistic peers to gain a deeper insight into students’ perspectives and experiences. Thematic analysis was utilised to analyse the qualitative data. Results: The themes included, peer dynamics, impacts of the autism awareness workshop, feedback on the workshop and student’s perceptions of inclusion. Findings indicated the workshop had a positive influence on student’s knowledge, attitudes and behavioural intentions towards autistic individuals and increased students’ sense of inclusion in school. Conclusion: This thesis addresses a gap in the research by adopting a mixed-methods design in exploring the impacts of educating students about autism. The voices of autistic students and their peers are listened to so their valuable experiences can be understood.