Paper online! School-based interventions for social inclusion of autistic children

15 March 2024

My systematic review paper on school interventions for socially including autistic students is now online, openly accessible in Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

In this review study, we put together the evidence-based interventions available in the literature. Our goal was to understand which levels of school environment have been targeted (the autistic child, the peers, the staff, and/or the physical environment), and their effectiveness in increasing social inclusion of autistic students in primary and secondary mainstream schools.

Based on our review, most of the available interventions focus on giving social skill training to autistic children, whereas interventions targeting at the physical environment are limited. This study thus highlights the urgent need to develop more holistic interventions that address the environment surrounding children, rather than “fixing“ only the children. Likewise, to evaluate the interventions, we need measures that can reveal autistic students’ “lived“ experiences, and should consider environmental factors, such as peers’ responses and attitudes and school design.

Read the full paper here.

Download the poster presented at the Dutch Autism Congress 2024 here.

Presenting at the Dutch Autism Congress (Nationaal Autisme Congres), 15 March 2024