Special Educational Needs Coordinators' knowledge and understanding of perception in preschool children with autism: A focus group study

Abstract It has been noted that children with autism seem to experience sensory stimuli in a way that differs from other children without autism; this significantly affects their everyday life in preschool in many ways. This study focuses on how Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) perceive, consider, and reason about perception in children with autism in preschool. As SENCOs guide preschool staff in their inclusive work, extending our knowledge about how perception may differ for children with and without autism is crucial. It is also important to understand how children with autism perceive and relate to their world. A lifeworld phenomenological approach guided the research. The empirical material was collected through two unstructured focus groups based on a topic guide. Eight SENCOs participated. The results showed that their interpretation of children's perception was mainly based on their pre‐understanding and past experiences of children's hyperreactions. The meaning of perception is multifaceted, but only parts were made visible in the participants' reasoning, and it was seldom linked to interaction, communication and teaching situations. This indicates that finding more knowledge and increasing our understanding of perception in children with autism is important, so children's perception and being in the world are better understood.