The design of the “autistics in (educational) space: building our own futures” doctoral project

As an autistic researcher and doctoral candidate, I have designed my dissertation research in a way that values the lived experience of my four autistic participants. Using their responses to a series of material objects and a science fiction novel by, and about, an autistic person, I hope to find new and innovative ways to reconceptualize inclusive education in high school. This article explains my theoretical framework and methodology, as well as some preliminary results and discussion.Lay AbstractI am autistic and a PhD student and I look for ways to learn from other autistic people. I gave a group of 4 autistic participants 14 items and asked them to do something with each of them, then send me pictures of what they did. We also all read a science fiction novel written by an autistic author and talked about what we thought was interesting or that felt familiar to us. By using what they shared with me, I want to find ways to make high school more comfortable for autistic students. In this article, I describe how I came up with this plan, what I did, and some of the first things I discovered.