Learning from the experts: Evaluating a participatory autism and universal design training for university educators

Abstract

Autistic students experience strengths and challenges that can impact their full inclusion in higher education, including stigma. A participatory team of autistic and non-autistic scholars developed an autism and universal design (UD) training. This participatory approach centered the voices of autistic collaborators in training design and evaluation. Ninety-eight educators from 53 institutions across five countries completed assessments before training (pre-tests), 89 completed post-tests (after training), and 82 completed maintenance assessments (a month after post-test). Pre-test autism stigma was heightened among males, educators with less autism knowledge, and those who reported heightened social dominance orientation. Autism knowledge, autism stigma, and attitudes toward UD improved with training. Improvements remained apparent a month after post-test but were somewhat attenuated for knowledge and stigma. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first evidence of maintenance of benefits of an autism training over time. Participants’ main reason for enrolling in the study was to gain a better understanding about neurodiversity. Feedback indicates that this goal was reached by most with the added benefit of gaining understanding about UD. Results suggest that interest in one type of diversity (e.g. autism) can motivate faculty to learn UD-aligned teaching strategies that benefit diverse students more generally. Lay abstract Autistic university students have many strengths. They also go through difficulties that professors may not understand. Professors may not understand what college life is like for autistic students. They might judge autistic students. A team of autistic and non-autistic researchers made a training to help professors understand autistic students better. This training also gave professors ideas to help them teach all of their students. Ninety-eight professors did an online survey before the autism training. They shared how they felt about autism and teaching. Before our training, professors who knew more about autism appreciated autism more. Professors who thought people should be equal and women also appreciated autism more. Then, 89 of the professors did our training and another survey after the training. This helped us see what they learned from the training. They did one more survey a month later. This helped us see what they remembered. Our training helped professors understand and value autism. It also helped them understand how they can teach all students better. The professors remembered a lot of what we taught them. This study shows that a training that autistic people helped make can help professors understand their autistic students better.

Explicit stigma and implicit biases toward autism in South Korea versus the United States

“…SDO, which was associated with explicit autism stigma in the study by Waisman et al (2022), suggestively predicted implicit biases among Koreans. Kteily et al (2011) contended that SDO may generate prejudice and discrimination that legitimizes group-based dominance hierarchies.…”

“…Vertical individualism and horizontal collectivism are also associated with social dominance orientation (SDO), or preferring inequalities favoring some social groups over others (Pratto et al, 1994; Strunk & Chang, 1999). People with high levels of SDO tend to express heightened stigma toward many types of marginalized people, including autistic people (Waisman et al, 2022), people with schizophrenia (Lampropoulos & Apostolidis, 2018), gender minorities (Puckett et al, 2020), and racial and ethnic outgroups (Kteily et al, 2011). According to the dual-process model, SDO is specifically associated with forms of discrimination that serve to keep oppressed people down (Pratto et al, 1994).…”

Evaluating the Impact of an Online Autism Training on Employers’ Autism Knowledge and Commitment to Inclusion in the Workplace

“…pre-training) scores. For example, country, gender, prior contact with autistic people, type of university major/degree, higher social dominance orientation and less implicit bias were all related to pre-training autism stigma and knowledge scores (Gillespie-Lynch et al, 2015Obeid et al, 2015;Saade et al, 2021;Someki et al, 2018;Waisman et al, 2023). To our knowledge, no research has conducted individual-level analyses to examine the extent of change in scores per participant pre-to post-training.…”

“…Beyond university students, online autism training has also been shown to have an impact on professional groups. Training improved autism knowledge and autism screening and diagnosis rates in medical physicians (see review by Clarke & Fung, 2022), and improved post-secondary educators' autism knowledge and reduced stigmachanges that were maintained (albeit with some attenuation) one month after online training (Waisman et al, 2023). Such training was also more effective at increasing autism knowledge compared to an active control training, or compared to groups who received no training (Ha et al, 2022;Jones et al, 2021).…”

“…Drawing from this, autistic involvement may be a valuable component of effective autism training, especially considering the importance of autistic representation in autism related topics to promote empowerment and ensure "nothing about us without us" (Charlton, 1998), and autistic people's expertise about autism due to their lived experience (Gillespie-Lynch et al, 2017). Indeed, some effective online trainings were developed in collaboration with autistic people, and/or have included autistic people (e.g., autistic university students, PhD candidates, and academics) featuring in the training via videos and reciting person-first narratives (Gillespie-Lynch et al, 2015;Jones et al, 2021;Waisman et al, 2023), andGillespie-Lynch et al (2022) found autism training developed in a participatory way (i.e., working autistic collaborators to edit content and add videos of topics) was more effective at improving autism knowledge and reducing stigma than training developed with non-autistic people. Qualitative feedback from this study's non-autistic university student participants suggested the participatory training's effectiveness was due to having an (inter)personal element, better accessibility, and superior clarity of information.…”