7 Themes In Higher Education: Exploring Higher Education for the Autistic Adult

1. 7 Themes In Higher Education: Exploring Higher Education for the Autistic Adult From Their Point of View Dr. Fleur Wiorkowski fwiorkowski@sbcglobal.net

2. What do you think? • What would be the major challenges to a student with an ASD in today’s higher education system? • How much would the degree of their ASD effect their challenges? • How similar or different would their challenges be to those of typical college students?

3. Quick Definitions (and why you should care about them) • This was a qualitative study • Allowed me to keep the participant’s individual voices in the study without relying on statistics to conglomerate data • This is important because the experience of each person with an ASD is different

4. Overall Themes • Interacting with Academic Subjects • Social Experiences • Personal Growth • Learning About Learning • Issues Caused by Disability • Learning About and Understanding the Future • Feeling Proud and Positive

5. Theme #1: Interacting with Academic Subjects • Some subjects were really enjoyed and some were not enjoyed at all • Part of the fun is having the chance to explore different subjects of study • One of the best outcomes of this exploration is finding an area of intense interest

6. Theme #2: Social Experiences • Who believes that people with ASDs do not want to be social? • Participants did experience negative social situations and even overt prejudice • Learning to be social occurred more in college than high school (maybe due to diversity) • Some degree of solitude is necessary to be social • Ultimately culminated in wanting to give back to others

7. Theme #3: Personal Growth • Being in a new environment results in having to change the way a person behaves – and college is a very new environment • Sometimes personal strengths are discovered in a new situation • This combination of learning resulted in having to rethink the world view/clarify personal values and this has to result in personal growth

8. Theme #4–Learning about Learning • This theme is all about discovering personal learning styles and preferences • People study in different ways and part of the college experience is discovering the best ways to learn and study • Examples almost always preferred • Learning was not universally positive – some aspects of learning were not as fun

9. Theme #5: Issues caused by Disability • Accommodations can be a real mixed blessing (hidden disability) • Feeling academically behind because of previous learning experiences (or lack thereof) • Finally understanding how having an ASD impacts education, both past and present

10. Theme #6: The Future • really the theme is ‘learning about and understanding the future’ but that wouldn’t fit on the heading • Realizing that there is a future to consider and plan for • Being excited about prospects for the future/feeling in control • Being afraid of the future/feeling out of control • Seeing the way the past impacts the future

11. Theme #7: Feeling Proud and Positive • This is my favorite theme to be honest – I enjoyed hearing about other people in the Autism community being successful • Focused on feeling accepted and supported • Enjoying aspects of learning experience • Pride in accomplishments and achievements

12. Applications: What does this all mean? • Attending college changes lives • Not everything is positive • Not every college is a good fit for every person (don’t let one college dissuade a person from college overall) • Classes should be taken with personal goals/pace in mind • College is both social and academic • Finding area of intense interest is one of the best outcomes of college