University as Perceived by Neurodiverse Individuals: A Photovoice Study

This is a part of paper series developed by neurodiversity and learning lab researchers. Special needs individuals’ perceptions and definitions of financial literacy, money use, friendship are among the research focus of the lab. The lab researchers believe neurodiversity approach to autism and focus on how neurodiverse people make meaning of their everyday experiences. Therefore, this paper examines four young boys’, three autistic and one with down syndrome, perceptions of university with photovoice method. Photovoice is a way of communication by pictures. At the very beginning of the research, all participants attended to a 1-hour workshop in which they learned basic principles of taking pictures. One of the researchers was leading the workshop and she let participants practice picture taking with mobile phones. The research was designed as two consecutive sessions. In the first session, the participants were asked to explain their perceptions about university by taking pictures. Each of the participants took at least 10 pictures and they were asked to choose the best 4 ones to explain what university is. Then the researchers interviewed each participant in an unstructured form. In the second session, the researchers used the pictures of different old universities like İstanbul and Bogazici Universities along with the picture of FSMVU, where all participants attended, and asked them to look at the pictures and define what university is. Data collected through two sessions were analyzed by coding pictures and transcripts of interviews. Data displays that although participants highlighted different aspects of the university, mostly social aspects and spatial properties of it were visible in their photographs.