Labels Are Not Enough: What Parents, Teachers and Teens Say Schools Get Wrong About Autism

For autistic adolescents, the difference between a school that includes them and one that merely tolerates them often comes down to details so small they never appear in any policy document: a teacher calling a student’s name during roll call, a quiet entrance that avoids a crowded corridor, a group of classmates choosing a different activity so a wheelchair user can join in. That is the central message of a new qualitative study from the University of Galway, published in Discover Education, which asked parents, educators and non-autistic teenagers what inclusion actually means in Irish secondary schools. The answer, distilled from seven focus groups involving 23 participants, is both simple and demanding: inclusion is not a room, a resource or a diagnosis, but a living process built through everyday relationships.

The research team, led by Esther Mercado-Garrido together with Anne O’Connor and Aoife McTiernan, set out to capture a perspective that is often missing from inclusion research. While autistic students’ own voices have been documented in a companion study, the wider school community, the parents who advocate, the teachers and special needs assistants who deliver support, and the peers who share corridors and lunch tables, shapes the environment in which inclusion either flourishes or fails. Participants included seven parents of autistic adolescents aged 12 to 18, four teachers and six special needs assistants working in mainstream schools with autism classrooms, and six non-autistic adolescents. The researchers used reflexive thematic analysis, a method that treats the analyst’s own perspective as an interpretive resource rather than a source of bias, working through Braun and Clarke’s six phases from familiarisation to collaborative theme refinement, with NVivo software supporting data management.

Two dominant themes emerged, and both cut against the way schools typically frame autism. The first, which the researchers named Seeing the Label, not the Person, describes how diagnostic categories, when used rigidly, can eclipse the individual student. Parents reported that staff sometimes refused to believe their children were autistic at all because they did not match stereotypical expectations of what autism looks like. One parent described an annual battle with a teacher who could not reconcile a child’s excellence at history with her diagnosis. Others attributed this to heavy masking, in which students suppress autistic traits under school pressure, leaving staff to conclude the diagnosis was invalid. The consequences were concrete: support was denied, accommodations were withheld, and parents were left to fight, in one participant’s words, tooth and nail, chasing reports, teachers and principals with no feedback in return.

The problem ran in both directions. Teachers and assistants acknowledged that some mainstream colleagues, particularly those with little exposure to autistic students, actively feared the autism classroom. One staff member described colleagues as nervous, hesitant even to enter the space, because it was the unknown. Participants argued that this discomfort stems from a misunderstanding of the spectrum’s diversity, and that a one-size-fits-all approach built on a diagnosis rather than on individual needs inevitably becomes a barrier. Their prescription was specific: mandatory, updated training on neurodiversity and disability awareness for all staff, including principals, delivered not just in theory but experientially, with mainstream teachers meeting autistic students directly during the academic year. As one assistant put it, it is important for teachers to come down and meet the kids, and not be afraid of them.

The second theme, Inclusion as a Continually Evolving Process, reframes inclusion not as a fixed outcome but as a dynamic practice sustained through daily interactions. Non-autistic adolescents described how small gestures, sitting with a new student at lunch, showing someone around, inviting a classmate to join an activity, could transform an entire school experience. One teenager recounted how her group befriended a shy immigrant classmate, making sure she knew where to sit and never had to face the cafeteria alone. Staff described checking in with students, asking what they needed right now, using first names, and helping students organise materials before class as subtle but powerful acts that made students feel seen. These practices were not accidental; participants stressed they only flourish within a shared school ethos of empathy, acceptance and respect for difference, held collectively by staff, leadership and families.

Yet the study also exposes a troubling gap between the appearance of inclusion and its lived reality. Parents described schools that showcased autism classrooms, sensory rooms and glossy brochures as evidence of progressiveness, while these resources remained under-resourced and disconnected from daily practice. Some schools treated access to an autism classroom as the end goal of inclusion rather than one element of an ongoing process. The physical placement of these rooms emerged as a particularly charged issue: when integrated into the social heart of the school, they were described as safe havens that reduced stigma, but when pushed to the edges, they reinforced isolation. One staff member recalled a student who insisted on leaving through a particular door so his mainstream classmates would not see him visiting the autism classroom, a detail that captured how far the school community still had to travel.

Small structural details carried disproportionate weight. Noise levels, rigid seating plans, strict uniform codes, healthy eating policies that limited food options, and rigid bathroom access rules all undermined autistic students’ ability to regulate and participate. Architectural decisions mattered too: one school’s open access to a main road meant students considered flight risks could not be safely supported, a problem a simple barrier could have solved. Exclusion from everyday experiences, school trips, clubs, musicals, sent a message that some students mattered less. Participants proposed concrete, often low-cost solutions: adapted sports such as boccia, noise-friendly transport, separate quiet trips, movement breaks, visual cue cards that let students answer without being put on the spot verbally, and quieter entrances to avoid sensory overwhelm. In one striking example, non-autistic students on a school trip spontaneously chose an alternative activity when a wheelchair-using classmate could not join the bouncy castle, inclusion initiated by peers themselves.

The findings align with a broader theoretical shift in autism research. Traditional medical models framed autism as an individual deficit to be normalised, but the social model of disability locates the problem in structural, cultural and attitudinal barriers, while the neurodiversity paradigm conceptualises autism as natural variation in human cognition to be accepted and valued. From this standpoint, inclusion is the responsibility of the school context, not the individual student. The Galway study echoes earlier work showing that stigma arises not from diagnostic labels themselves but from how culture frames them, and that when educators and peers lack accurate knowledge, stereotypes lead to reduced expectations and exclusion. Peer-mediated programmes, such as the peer mentoring studied by Bradley, have been shown to increase autistic students’ self-esteem, reduce bullying, and cultivate social responsibility in the mentors themselves.

The researchers are careful about the study’s limits. The sample was small and specific to Irish post-primary schools; the non-autistic adolescents were asked about inclusion in general rather than about autistic peers specifically, following ethics committee guidance that students should not be required to assume classmates’ diagnostic status; and none of the participating parents had children with significant intellectual disabilities, so the findings may not capture the experiences of students with complex learning profiles. Social desirability bias among staff in focus groups is also possible. Future work, the authors suggest, should follow inclusive culture longitudinally, involve autistic adolescents as co-researchers, and conceptualise and evaluate the impact of those small-scale daily actions that policy rarely registers.

The practical implications, however, are already clear, and they are uncomfortable for schools that believe a sensory room settles the question. Genuine inclusion, the study argues, requires experiential staff training embedded in continuous professional development, neurodiversity education woven into the mainstream curriculum for all students rather than confined to awareness days, ongoing participatory evaluation of how inclusion is actually lived in relationships and routines, and genuine two-way partnerships with families, who currently shoulder enormous emotional and bureaucratic labour. The authors also issue a warning about diffused responsibility: when inclusion is everyone’s responsibility in principle, it can become no one’s in practice, allowing well-documented recommendations to go unimplemented for years. Without clear accountability, inclusion risks remaining an aspiration rather than an enforceable, lived reality. What the Galway findings ultimately offer is a different measuring stick, one that counts not autism classrooms built but names remembered, invitations extended, trips shared, and the quiet, cumulative evidence that every student in the building belongs.

Subject of Research: School community perspectives on inclusive secondary education for autistic adolescents

Article Title: School community perspectives on making schools more inclusive for autistic adolescents

Article References: Mercado-Garrido, E., O’Connor, A., & McTiernan, A. (2026). School community perspectives on making schools more inclusive for autistic adolescents. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 966. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02149-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02149-7

Keywords: autism, inclusive education, secondary school, neurodiversity, school community, thematic analysis, peer relationships, teacher training, parental advocacy, stigma, special needs assistants, Ireland