Conference Agenda

According to the United Nations Convention (2008) on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, individuals with disabilities are entitled to the same rights and freedoms as everyone else. It is the responsibility of states to take all necessary measures to ensure the full and equal enjoyment of these rights and freedoms. Article 27 of the Convention specifically addresses the issues faced by individuals with disabilities in relation to the right to work, outlining detailed regulations.

The employment participation of persons with visual impairments remains limited despite international policy frameworks emphasizing inclusive labor markets and equal access to vocational education (World Health Organization (WHO), 2011; United Nations, 2006). In many countries, including Türkiye, visually impaired individuals continue to face structural barriers related to inaccessible training programs, limited adaptive learning environments, and low employer awareness (Eurofound (2021). Vocational education tailored to disability-specific needs is therefore a critical mechanism for enhancing employability, self-efficacy, and social inclusion.

Clerical and administrative professions represent a potentially accessible employment field for visually impaired individuals, particularly with the support of assistive technologies, adaptive instructional strategies, and structured skills training (Hersh & Johnson, 2008). However, empirical evidence on how visually impaired participants perceive such training programs, and how their perceptions evolve through structured vocational education, remains scarce. Most existing studies focus on technological accessibility or policy-level analyses, rather than participant-centered evaluations of training effectiveness (Fichten et al., 2019).

This study aims to address this gap by examining the impact of a tailored clerical training program on the perceptions, expectations, and self-assessed competencies of visually impaired individuals. Specifically, the study investigates how participants’ views regarding occupational suitability, training accessibility, anticipated difficulties, and perceived personal and professional benefits change from pre-training to post-training. By focusing on participant perspectives, the study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how vocational programs can be designed to support sustainable employment pathways for visually impaired adults.

The study is underpinned by the social model of disability, which identifies environmental and institutional shortcomings—rather than individual impairments—as the primary causes of exclusion (Oliver, 1996). Furthermore, it utilizes self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1997) to examine how increased mastery of clerical skills influences the motivation and career persistence of the participants.

Preliminary evidence suggests that well-structured vocational interventions can positively influence disabled learners’ confidence, reduce perceived barriers, and clarify career goals (Hanif et al., 2018). In line with this literature, the present study hypothesizes that participation in an adaptive clerical training program will lead to more positive perceptions regarding occupational suitability, reduced expectations of disability-related difficulties, and increased clarity about future employment contexts.

By providing empirical data based on a pre-test–post-test design, this research offers practical implications for policymakers, vocational training providers, and public institutions seeking to expand inclusive employment opportunities. The findings are expected to inform the development of accessible vocational curricula, contribute to evidence-based disability employment strategies, and support the long-term integration of visually impaired individuals into clerical and administrative labor markets.

The participation of autistic students in higher education has increased internationally, yet many continue to encounter structural, social, and pedagogical barriers that affect access, participation, and well-being. Previous research has documented challenges related to transition, disclosure, mental health, social connection, and access to supports (Gormley, Feeney, & McNally, 2023). However, much of this work remains deficit-focused, concentrated within US and UK contexts, and limited in the extent to which autistic perspectives shape research questions, methods, and interpretation (Gormley et al., 2023). As a result, there remains a need for research that centres on autistic students’ accounts and examines how higher education institutions themselves contribute to experiences of inclusion and exclusion (Kenny, Neilson, O'Kelly, Doyle, and McDonald, 2024).

This co-produced qualitative study explores autistic students’ experiences of transitioning to, and engaging within, an Irish higher education institution (HEI). The focus is on how students describe belonging, acceptance, and support, and on the ways institutional structures, learning environments, and social spaces shape these experiences. The study responds to a gap in the existing literature, where relatively little qualitative research has examined autistic students' lived experiences of higher education using participatory or co-produced approaches (Gormley et al., 2023). Taken together, these experiences raise broader questions about how higher education institutions conceptualise transition, inclusion, and support, and whose needs are prioritised within prevailing educational structures. In doing so, the study also speaks to broader questions about how knowledge about inclusion is produced in education research, whose perspectives are prioritised, and how such knowledge impacts institutional practice (Kenny et al., 2024).

The study is situated within the neurodiversity paradigm, which understands autism as a natural form of human variation rather than a deficit requiring remediation (Walker, 2021). From this perspective, barriers to participation are located not within individuals but within environments, systems, and dominant norms. The analysis takes an interactionist perspective on inclusion, informed by autistic-led frameworks, including work on spatial belonging and the Autistic SPACE framework (Doherty, Cowan, & Shaw, 2023). The analysis is further informed by Wong’s (2023) Framework of Spatial Belonging, which conceptualises belonging as produced through interactions between individuals and the physical, social, and organisational spaces they inhabit. This perspective supports attention to how physical, digital, relational, and structural dimensions of university life interact to shape autistic students’ experiences.

The study addressed the following research questions:

1. What challenges and supports do autistic students experience during the transition to an Irish higher education institution?
2. How do autistic students describe the supports and barriers they encounter while enrolled in higher education?
3. What changes do autistic students identify as necessary to support engagement, inclusion, and flourishing in higher education?

This paper examines the transition from preschool to primary education, with particular attention to contexts in which institutional cooperation between preschools and primary schools is insufficient. It addresses situations characterized by the absence of a shared norms and framework for organizing the transition process and by a lack of established strategies for how educational institutions respond to children entering primary education with markedly heterogeneous levels of school readiness.

Contemporary scholarly literature suggests that such conditions are not exceptional but structurally embedded in the organization of early childhood and primary education systems. The transition from preschool to primary education is characterized by a set of persistent and interrelated challenges, most notably the misalignment of implicit institutional norms governing pedagogical practices, expectations, and forms of accountability across educational sectors. This normative incongruence constrains the adaptive capacity of educational systems and results in a systemic displacement of responsibility onto individual actors—teachers, parents, and children—who are expected to compensate for institutional discontinuities (Then & Pohlmann-Rother, 2024).

Furthermore, the prevalence of pervasive learning imperatives in education more broadly reflects normative pressures that shape curricular priorities and pedagogical practices across multiple levels of the system, yet may not align with local needs or relational dimensions of learning (learning imperatives as system-wide demands on teaching and learning) (Popa, 2024; cf. literature on partnership learning imperatives).

In response, an expanding body of research advocates a range of targeted interventions and programmatic approaches designed to empower children and families (cf. Veerman et al., 2023; Boyland et al., 2024), or foregrounds the strengthening of social and emotional learning (SEL) as a source of resilience facilitating children’s adjustment to school demands (Hosokawa et al., 2024), or support family-school relations (Tobin, 2022). However, these approaches tend to operate at a partial or compensatory level and therefore leave the underlying institutional configurations of educational practice largely intact.

A synthesis of the above-mentioned literature highlights two analytically significant premises. First, transitions between educational levels must be conceptualized as processes of systemic adaptation, in which not only individuals but entire institutional arrangements, professional cultures, and organizational logics are subject to change. Second, such adaptive processes are inherently interactional in nature, unfolding through patterned exchanges among individuals, groups, and systems across institutional boundaries. On this basis, the present paper adopts an interactionist perspective as its primary analytical framework for understanding and addressing.

We are building on the results of our three-year research on the Step-by-Step (SbS) program, with particular emphasis on the concept of Emotional-Cognitive Educational Infrastructure (ECEI) (Denglerová et al., 2024; Denglerová & Šíp, under review). The paper explicates the function of this infrastructure as a key systemic prerequisite for effective educational processes. These findings are subsequently applied to the context of educational transition. The main objective of this paper examines how teachers at the outset of formal schooling can actively shape and mediate the transition from preschool to primary education in ways that promote continuity and coherence, even under empirically documented conditions of institutional misalignment—namely, the absence of shared norms, the fragmented nature of existing strategies, and the pronounced heterogeneity of learners.