While some research reports positive experiences in mainstream education for autistic students, other work documents substantial difficulties. Despite growing attention, their experiences in mainstream settings remain insufficiently understood. This study explores retrospective schooling experiences of autistic adults in Malta to inform inclusive practice. We aimed to identify challenges during compulsory education and highlight supports that facilitated learning. Five participants completed semi-structured Zoom interviews. Data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis with resulting superordinate and subordinate themes. Findings show that, alongside moments of joy in learning and genuine care, negative experiences such as sensory overwhelm, bullying and social exclusion had a lasting impact. Differences were frequently misread as misbehaviour, leading to reprimands and reduced access to support. School spaces triggered sensory overload with social fallout. Participation relied on labour-intensive masking, including scripted performance and tone monitoring. Over time, self-understanding enabled personalised supports that reduced strain. The study underscores the need for neurodiversity affirming environments, greater autism awareness in schools, and targeted teacher learning that recognise and nurture autistic students' strengths and needs in Maltese mainstream classrooms and wider educational systems.
This study aims to deeply examine the challenges faced by child development specialists with visual impairments during their educational journeys and professional practices, and to identify the strategies they develop to cope with these challenges. Designed within a qualitative research model, the study was conducted using the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) method. Snowball sampling, one of the purposive sampling techniques, was used for participant selection. Data were collected through voice messages via WhatsApp using a semi-structured interview form with six participants. The research findings are presented under three main themes: (1) Experienced challenges, (2) Perspectives on professional processes, and (3) Adaptations and recommendations. The results demonstrate that the barriers to access in the education and professional practice of specialists with visual impairments can be overcome through enhancing physical and digital accessibility, promoting inclusive attitudes, and restructuring curricula in line with the principles of inclusivity.
Preparing pre-service teachers to address barriers to learning and participation in mainstream classrooms is a central concern in inclusive education. In T & uuml;rkiye, however, further evidence is needed on how specific course-based interventions in teacher education contribute to this preparation. This study investigated the effects of a dedicated elective course on inclusive education within teacher training in T & uuml;rkiye on pre-service teachers' empathic tendencies, teaching motivation, and self-efficacy beliefs regarding differentiated instruction. The study involved 124 pre-service teachers who are preparing to teach in mainstream schools. Using a one-group pre-test-post-test design complemented by qualitative interview data, data were collected before and after a 14-week course-based intervention totaling 28 h. The results indicated that the inclusive education course significantly and positively affected the pre-service teachers' perceptions of efficacy in recognising students, planning differentiation, differentiating the teaching process, and differentiating assessment. Although changes in empathic tendency and teaching motivation were not statistically significant, the interview data suggested that the course increased pre-service teachers' awareness of learners' needs, sensitivity to barriers to learning and participation, and readiness to consider differentiated practices in their future classrooms.
School placement is a key site where commitments to disability-inclusive initial teacher education (ITE) are tested in practice. This article examines how stakeholders understand and enact reasonable accommodation (RA) for disabled student teachers on placement, and why inclusive policies do not reliably translate into consistent practice. The study forms part of the cross-border EKARA project ('Exploring Knowledge and Awareness of Reasonable Accommodation/Adjustments for ITE Students with Disabilities on the Island of Ireland'). A sequential mixed-methods design combined an online survey of staff involved in placement with two focus groups. Survey items were interpreted through the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB); qualitative analysis drew on EKARA themes, read through TPB, governmentality and doxa. Quantitatively, a minority of respondents reported having requested or provided RA, in a context of limited training, uneven knowledge and mid-range confidence and exploratory bivariate tests did not yield statistically robust predictors of RA practice. Qualitatively, seven themes showed how RA decisions are shaped by eligibility and recognition regimes, informal and relational practices, structural constraints, placement vulnerabilities, trust-based collaboration and staff uncertainty about roles and risk. The study reframes RA on placement as a governed practice, with implications for partnership protocols, staff development and disclosure-safe cultures.
The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) in education is frequently presented as a means of enhancing accessibility, efficiency, and personalisation. Yet its implications for educating inclusively remain conceptually underexplored. This article addresses how AI-driven logics of standardisation, optimisation, and prediction reconfigure the ethical, epistemological, and professional foundations of inclusive educational practices. Adopting a critical-interpretive conceptual approach, the analysis draws on international policy discourses, peer-reviewed academic literature, and ethical debates at the intersection of inclusive education and digital governance. Through an iterative analytical process, the paper identifies three structural paradoxes that emerge when AI is mobilised in inclusive contexts: tensions between universality and singularity, control and uncertainty, and professional reflexivity and managerial constraint. The findings show how these paradoxes reshape policy rationales and educational practices, increasingly reframing inclusive education as a technocratic process of optimisation rather than an ethical and relational endeavour. The article argues that engaging AI in inclusive educational contexts requires sustained critical reflexivity rather than adaptation to algorithmic rationalities. It concludes by outlining implications for teacher education, ethical governance, and educational technology design, emphasising the need to preserve professional agency, epistemic plurality, and uncertainty as conditions for democratic educational futures.
