“Watching the loo door swing slowly open”: using visual metaphors to explore autistic experience through the medium of PGCE school placement

This study uses images to explore the experience of an autistic trainee maths teacher struggling to navigate the school placement environment. The use of ‘illustrations of meaning’ supports autistic communication of the experience and aims to enable a nuanced articulation of autistic viewpoint. As such it may elucidate the perspective of one autistic (purported) teacher, but also that more widely of autistic teachers and pupils and of autistic people in other employment and life situations. The paper was co-created by an autistic participant and an autistic researcher as a joint endeavour using participatory methodologies and exploring imagery and metaphor as vehicles of communication to share autistic lived experience. Suggestions for future professional support that emerge are shared.