Educational research and the autistic student: an ‘inside-out’ approach

The educational challenges faced by people with a diagnosis of an Autistic Spectrum Condition (ASC) are well documented (Sainsbury, 2000; Jones et al., 2008). Despite many years of research into autism however, little evidence has been collated on the discourses of autistic people themselves regarding educational practices. The purpose of this paper, is to present an overview of a post-graduate research project, early in its development, that will be examining the autistic „voice? in educational discourse, using social constructivist ontology to analyse how autistic people construct their own educational narratives and how their lives are shaped by dominant discourses from the non-autistic viewpoint.