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Findings, Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2024
Autistic university students said they were left to educate their own lecturers
In short
Research reported at the 2024 Sydney education panel found stigma, discrimination and outdated knowledge among university staff. The proposed next study would question the staff instead of the students.
Read it instead, 4 minutesThe transcript
The story
When autistic students at university were asked about their experience, one of the biggest issues to come up was that the people teaching them did not understand autism. That was the finding a panellist reported to the education panel at the Autistic Pride Day Symposium in Sydney in June 2024, drawing on research with university students. The panellist said “a lot of the lecturers just don’t know what autism is at all”.
The panellist described the problem at three levels. Some staff had no knowledge of autism, others made judgements, and others had knowledge so old it no longer applied, because they had not kept up with it. Each, the panellist said, made university a real challenge for autistic students, whose experience depended on the staff they dealt with.
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Sources the story draws on
- 'It's a symbolic violence': Autistic people's experiences of discrimination at universities in Australia (opens in a new tab), Autism (SAGE), vol. 28, no. 6, pp. 1344 to 1356
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