Environment crucial for autistic children’s schooling in India – forskning.se

In her dissertation Shruti Taneja Johansson that the concept of inclusion has spread all over the world. Taking the example of India, she shows the complexity that surrounds the schooling of children with autism.

Through several trips to the country, observations and a number of interviews with parents, teachers, principals and other experts in the field, she brings the conditions of the autistic children’s education, a knowledge that so far the closest been non-existent. She believes that the child’s environment, particularly parents and teachers, are vital if school to work.

– Parental involvement was a key factor in child would have access to the education that they are entitled to. In many cases, parents are forced to withhold the diagnosis for the school to increase the child’s chance of being adopted, says Shruti Taneja Johansson.

If the child can fit in any school, it will likely have around forty classmates and a teacher who never heard of the disability of autism.

The study shows, however, that the teachers, despite no or very limited knowledge about autism, in many cases, could identify the child’s strengths and difficulties and based on these provide good support so that the school succeeded.

The school, which now came to turn out for children with autism in India, is often not so much with the individual child’s difficulties making. Greater importance had assumptions and perceptions about, for example, school assignments, the teacher’s role and approach to disability that are deeply embedded in the Indian education system and in society at large.

– There is a need to get away from the Western approach that most focus on what is not being done and instead create an understanding of the tensions, dilemmas and above all the complexity related to schooling for children with disabilities in countries like India. Only then can we identify strengths and obstacles and actually help children seriously, says Shruti Taneja Johansson.

Thesis
Shruti Taneja Johansson presented her thesis Autism-in-context. An Investigation of schooling of children with a diagnosis of autism in urban India at the Department of Education and Special Education Friday, October 30, at 13.00. Location: Kjell Härnqvistsalen, Pedagogen Building A, Västra Hamngatan 25, Gothenburg