Designing learning contexts to include students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. An exploratory survey about the opinions of future support teachers

Abstract

The Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030 underlines the need of taking essential measures to avoid all forms of exclusion, inequality, eliminating all kind of disparities in education and ensuring equal access to all levels of education. Hence, it is crucial to reflect on how to design contexts which are sensitive to individual differences and able to guarantee equal access assuming an ecosystemic and sustainable perspective, since accessibility is configured as a complex con­ceptual construction. It results from the interaction between different dimensions of analysis: the individual, his potential and possibilities but also the environment; so, it seems relevant to reflect on the design of inclusive context not only considering the environmental factors that may support students’ participation, but also the subjective dimension of teachers, their opinions, perceptions and values on inclusion. Thus, this contribution aims to present preliminary results of a study aimed at investigating the opinions of future support teachers on how the context may affect the degree of participation of the student with Autism Spectrum Disorder.