Autism and bilingualism: perceptions of general education and special education preschool teachers

Cases of autism and bilingualism are steadily increasing, resulting in thousands of children being both autistic and bilingual. Many current studies provide evidence against the widespread myths regarding bilingualism in autistic children that inaccurately claim that bilingualism can cause additional linguistic challenges and further delay the language skills of the autistic child while overlooking the social, emotional, and cognitive benefits of bilingualism. The present study aims to explore and compare the beliefs of General Education (GE) and Special Education (SE) Greek preschool teachers on the intersection of autism and Bilingualism and evaluate whether their beliefs agree with empirical evidence or unfounded misconceptions. To conduct this study, 30 GE and 30 SE completed an online questionnaire designed to explore the various aspects of the topic. In contrast to other studies, no statistically significant differences were found between the responses of GE and SE teachers. However, both groups shared similar misconceptions, hesitations and doubts regarding the bilingual upbringing of autistic children and the maintenance of the heritage language. These findings suggest that their attitudes are shaped more by common misconceptions than evidence-based research. The overall results highlight the need for topic-specific training to prevent the further spread of such misinformation.