Keeping possibilities open for the students: autism from the point of view of students and education professionals in two special educational contexts

This study aims to contribute with knowledge of how the autismspectrum diagnosis is used by education professionals and stu-dents in special educational environments in Sweden. Despitehaving been seen as focusing on inclusion, the Swedish schoolsystem offers various special and separate school contexts forstudents with autism. It is important to deepen our knowledgeon how an autism diagnosis informs the reasoning of bothstudents and education professionals, both as a matter of self-knowledge and as a tool to plan the students’ education. Thestudy reports data gathered through interviews (n = 23, withstudents) and open-ended questionnaires (n = 18, with educationstaff) and analyses the results using the MADIT methodology ofdiscourse analysis. The results show that the students are config-ured as individuals and that the diagnosis does not play a keyrole, despite the schools being special educational schools witha profile towards autism. At the same time, the schools useinteractive processes in which the diagnosis becomes a centralelement, especially to make ‘justifications’. The results are dis-cussed in relation to promoting the students’ development andkeeping possibilities open for them.