Imagining Educational Inclusion for Autistic Students

Over the past ten years in the United States, there has been a significant increase in early identification of disabilities that may impact the educational needs of children. One positive impact of increased early identification is that more students are accessing their federal right to an IEP. Autistic kids in particular are recieving this needed educational support in greater numbers. Unfortuately, increased access may not be enough. How can we better meet the needs of autistic children in our public school system?

One method in current practice is placing autistic children in inclusive, general education classrooms. For all members and facets of society, inclusion is a vital human right. It can be difficult at times, however, to conceptualize valuing educational inclusion of disabled students the same way we value other forms of inclusion, because it seems to exist at odds with the educational needs of all students, both disabled and nondisabled. It’s crucial that we imagine and innovate fresh, creative designs and methods for inclusive classrooms that provide equal educational benefit to all children.

Autistic children learn differently than their allistic peers. Often, autistic students benefit from learning components prior to process, multi-modal presentation of material, and opportunities for implicit learning. Flexibility in teaching modalities can help all students reach their individual potentials. Peer mediated teaching, and creating classroom curriculum that draws from an autistic student’s area(s) of interest can both support autistic students in learning the material and provide opportunities for social inclusion. Sensory regulation benefits everyone, and many sensory supports can be pushed in for spontanious use by all students, abandoning assigned desk seating and adopting freedom of movement to meet sensory needs classroom-wide. Direct, general education about sensory regulation and forms of sensory input can significantly decrease behavioral difficulties for all students, autistic or not, and promote inclusion rather than singling an autistic student out. All teachers need and deserve training for these types of strategies.

Consideration of a classroom aide instead of a 1:1 para may be appropriate in many IEPs. A classroom aide mitigates the profiling experienced by some disabled students because of the presense of a 1:1. A classroom aide can facilitate inclusion in a much more generalized way than a 1:1 para. Development of the position “Classroom Inclusion Aide”, with defined training and continuing education on the implementation of new methods of inclusion—particularly those developed by autistic and other neurodivergent people—would be the best use of that resource.
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Autistic students can be placed in inclusive classrooms even if they are not demonstating the same kind of knowledge on the same subjects as their typically developing peers. Autistic learning is most often compartmentalized instead of linear, with long incubations before skill mastery is demonstrated. Very often, progress is internal. Presumption of competence and information presentation using multiple modes benefit all students. As we are all sadly aware, many nondisabled students are not making sufficient educational progress either, and nondisabled students are also communicating unmet needs with behaviors. Stratagy shifts that show promise for better student support across abilities must be prioritized. Increasing multi-modal teaching and decreasing testing—instead measuring progress by observation over a long data collection period—would allow autistic students to be placed in classrooms with their same age allistic peers more often, with greater success for all students.

There is an adage that goes, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”. It’s time to accept the idea that inserting a special ed classroom of one into a general education classroom is not inclusion. It’s preformance of inclusion, and it’s not working well for anyone. The truly inclusive public school classroom may yet need to be invented. I have shared just a handful of possible inclusion stratagies; there are many more to be imagined. The inclusive classroom, by definition, will equaly meet the needs of all students, leaving no one behind.