Conference Agenda

With the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, children and young people were re-conceptualized as competent social actors and citizens, whose voices should be listened to. This global endorsement of children’s right to be included in decision-making in matters affecting their lives has since also been widely adopted by researchers and is reflected in the plethora of literature and theorizing on the topic as well as in the practice of doing research with children. A group that until recently has been invisible here are children with disabilities. Driven by a deficit discourse, having a disability has been implicitly assumed to imply impairment and, thus, incompetency and incapacity as regards participating in research (Curran and Runswick-Cole 2014), rendering children with disabilities unvalued research participants (Cocks 2008). Parents’ and teachers’ perspectives were taken as a proxy for disabled children’s perspectives, leaving children with disabilities unheard in the research (Stafford 2017).

The past decade, however, has seen an extension of this autonomy to the disabled child – a development that recognises the potential of the child with disabilities to make valid and valuable contributions in all aspects of life (e.g., Twomey and Carroll 2018). Spurring this change is the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006). While disabled children’s voices are gaining visibility in the research (Rannveig 2015), we know little about whose voices are being included.

The focus of this presentation is on two disabilities: autism and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Diagnostic rates for both these groups have seen a rapid increase in the last decades (Russell et al. 2022; Rydell et al. 2018). They have also both been central in school debates focussing on the challenges to inclusion and participation, particularly in the Global North (Pellicano, Bölte, and Stahmer 2018). Students with these diagnoses have been shown to perform worse academically, have higher rates of school dropout and lower levels of education than their non-disabled peers (Kent et al. 2011). Despite the fact that the number of children diagnosed with autism and ADHD is increasing and that research has highlighted the difficulties encountered by this group in school, many argue that they have been given limited opportunities to express their views about their own experiences of school (Humphrey and Parkinson 2006; Taneja Johansson 2021).

The purpose of the present scoping review is to critically examine empirical research that draws on the first-person school experiences of students with autism and ADHD as well as to map whose voices are being heard and where the current knowledge gaps are. More specifically, it aims to analyse the key characteristics of this body of research in relation to the publication context and research methodology. The following research questions are examined: 1) What type of journal is the article published in?; 2) Where is the research situated geographically?; 3) What sampling routes are used?; 4) What are the characteristics of participants are included in the research, specifically regarding disability type, school year, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic background?; 5) Which qualitative research designs and methods are used in the studies?

The intention of the present scoping review is not to provide a description of the summative research findings or to assess the quality of the studies in the field, but instead to identify which voices are being foregrounded in the research, the goal being to try to understand the sources of the current knowledge base and determine directions for future research (Pham et al., 2014).

Society is increasingly acknowledging diversity as a common aspect of humanity, in all its forms. This has been reflected in educational research too, where the interest in diversity has grown over time. However, the trend in researching diversity is still very much focused on doing research on certain groups, i.e. people with intellectual disabilities, rather than embracing such diversity in the research design itself (Walmsley, 2001). Over the past few decades, researchers in the field of inclusive education have started reshaping the research landscape by developing diverse forms of inclusive research approaches to increase the active engagement of certain groups in the research process (Walmsley et al., 2018).

This paper presents a participatory action research project on intellectually disabled students’ college experience. Sitting within the framework of inclusive research (Nind, 2020) and adopting a social model of disability, the project supports the empowerment of students as co-researchers around themes that they feel are relevant to their life as university students. The participants are students with intellectual disabilities attending a 2-year course at a major university in Ireland. Designed as part of a module on human rights, this project is based on principles of research-based teaching (Brew, 2012) and aims to bridge the applied learning of the UDHR article 26 ‘right to education’ with the experience of inclusive research using the photovoice method. The main aim of this project is to promote inclusivity at the institution level by responding to the continuous need for development or change (Mertler, 2019), creating knowledge for a further step in establishing a diversity-sensitive approach. Another aim is to explore how the combination of teaching and research can create a safe space for upcoming accounting student experiences and have a high awareness of unbalanced power relations in teaching/learning situations. This perspective should help to set up the project as a sustainable tool in inclusive postsecondary education.

The research objectives are:

• to strengthen students’ self-advocacy and promote self-determination, with an impact on their current education and other life areas.

• To voice students’ experiences with a wider impact on the wider college community and society

The research questions are as follows:

• How do students with intellectual disabilities experience university?

• What elements of photovoice are helpful to students in voicing their experience?

• Is inclusive research-based teaching effective in promoting applied learning of human rights?

The project uses a visual participatory method called photovoice to express and document students’ experiences in college. Based on eight weekly sessions (2h) held within a human rights module between January and April 2023, participants work with two lecturers/facilitators to explore what the right to education looks like in their college experience. During the sessions, participants agree on what themes they want to focus on and take photographs to help document, reflect upon, and communicate issues of concern while stimulating social change. The sessions provide guidance and support in developing some basic visual literacy and photography knowledge while leaving decision-making around the subjects of the photographs to each participant. Following the session, a photography exhibition is co-organised with participants to engage with the wider college community and create a space for understanding and dialogue around inclusion in the university. Full ethical approval has been obtained from the institution prior to the start of the project.

In this paper, the authors will discuss the different phases and highlights of the project and will present the main findings of the project contributing to the wider conference debates on diversity in educational research.

The global commitment to an inclusive school and consequent efforts by countries to implement inclusive policies has been followed by task forces investigating the factors that contribute to the successful implementation of this educational model, namely at the policies, schools and teachers’ levels (Connor & Cavendish, 2020). In this regard, the study of teachers' attitudes towards students with additional support needs, their self-efficacy and the variables that underlie the inclusive teacher profile has received increasing attention in the last two decades (e.g., Avramidis & Norwich, 2002). In addition, the social participation of students with support needs has also been under the focus of researchers, especially in the last decade (Koster et al., 2009; Bossaert et al., 2013; Avramidis et al., 2018), with several studies focusing mainly on the way they are accepted and the interactions they establish with their peers (Garrote et al., 2017; Hassani et al., 2022).

However, there are few studies that privilege the perspective of students with additional support needs (Connor & Cavendish, 2020). Listening to what students have to say about their school experience and inclusion is an essential source of information to increase the understanding of other educational actors about inclusive education (Keefe et al., 2006). Several studies refer to the power of the student's voice, not only to: 1) "enter" into their experience of inclusion and a sense of belonging within the school, but also to, 2) increase their involvement in their educational process, by promoting self-determination. Not involving students in decision-making about their learning can contribute to reducing their involvement (Dunleavy, 2008). However, little attention is paid to what these students have to say about their education, which seems to be an omission in the research (Schwab et al., 2018), considering the dominant discourse on the importance of student-centred education to value your voice.

This study aims to listen to the opinion of 3rd to 9th-grade students about their process of inclusion in the educational context. For this, we will study: a) the extent to which students participate in school activities, inside and outside the classroom; b) how they describe their social participation; c) how involved they feel in educational activities; c) the extent to which they feel that they are considered in decision-making about their educational process.