Supporting teacher trainees with Special Educational Needs

Oberholzer, L.

doi:10.15123/pub.7289

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…According to Brown et al (2021), UK policy in relation to disabled staff during lockdown and beyond has been "silent", unless presenting a regressive and "narrow, medicalised view" (p. 263), bordering on "a soft eugenics approach" (p. 264). Add to this, in the education context, the typical difficulties and prejudices disabled teachers experienced in pre-Covid times such as disablism (Aldakhil, 2020), a lack of resources and support (Neca et al, 2020), fear of stigma (Oberholzer, 2017), and limited representation and accommodations (Ware et al, 2021;Wood & Happé, 2021), the need to understand the impact of Covid-19 on the working practices of disabled teachers is reinforced. Importantly, consideration of issues outside of times of crisis can provide essential contextual comparisons in this endeavour.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning from autistic teachers: lessons about change in an era of COVID-19

et al. 2022

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The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in major upheavals in the school education sector, particularly during periods of "lockdown" and remote working. While the impact of these changes on pupils, parents and school staff, both nationally and internationally, has been well-documented, there has been scant consideration of the effects on disabled educators. In addition, the mixed nature of the existing research findings in the special education contextrevealing positives, as well as negatives from Covid-related adjustmentssuggests the need to learn broader lessons from the impact of these measures. In this article, we report on findings from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 21 autistic school staff working in a range of roles in schools in the UK. Using thematic analysis, participants' experiences of lockdown were analysed. Importantly, these were also compared with participants' experiences outside of the pandemic. The resulting five themessensory issues and the working environment; communication and social barriers and freedoms; stresses and strengths associated with technology; navigating home/school boundaries; and modalities of changerevealed some of the significant difficulties autistic school staff typically experience in their work, as well as the factors that intersect with these. Although periods of Covid-related measures created additional stresses for participants, they also provided a respite from the usual pressures, and indeed enabled their strengthsincluding an ability to manage changeto be more manifest. Valuable insights, which could benefit autistic school staff, pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, and the whole school community in the UK and beyond, are discussed.

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