Inclusive education is advocated in school legislation in Sweden, Finland and England, and support for children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is generally provided within the mainstream classroom. As ASD prevalence has risen markedly worldwide, and currently stands at approximately 1 in 100 (Autism Europe, 2016), it is likely that student teachers will encounter pupils with ASD during their practical placement, and subsequently, in the profession.

Representations of ASD, such as difficulties in social interaction and communication, can entail challenges for the pupil in the mainstream context and for adults in the community (Shereen & Geuts, 2015) . For the teacher, ensuring the pupil’s inclusion requires knowledge about ASD and adequate support and intervention methods to meet the individual’s needs. Previous research has mainly examined teachers’ and student teachers’ attitudes towards inclusion of pupils with ASD (e.g.,McGregor & Campbell, 2001; Ross-Hill, 2009) and the accuracy of their knowledge and beliefs about ASD (e.g., Talib & Paulson, 2015).

Less attention has been paid to teachers’ attitudes towards ASD in general. Two recent studies have however examined student teachers’ (Park, Chitiyo, & Choi, 2010) and teacher’s attitudes (Park & Chitiyo, 2011) towards pupils with ASD. The studies found that both groups held positive attitudes towards children with ASD, yet women reported more positive attitudes than men. Further, in the student teacher group participants’ exposure to ASD and their academic major influenced their attitudes so that the students majoring in special education had more positive attitudes than students majoring in general education (Park et al., 2010). These studies have not however examined the mechanisms of attitude change (e.g., why does exposure lead to more positive attitudes), which the current study aims to explore.

Given that the majority of previous research has taken place in the USA, (e.g. Talib and Paulson, 2015);  there is an urgent  need to investigate student teachers’ attitudes towards ASD, particularly pupils with ASD,  in Europe, in order to ensure the continuing provision of high quality inclusive education in this context. Moreover, to our knowledge there are no previous studies clarifying whether differences exist in student teachers’ attitudes towards ASD across different European countries. This study aims to fill these gaps. The project represents a collaboration between psychology and special education faculty members at three European universities across Sweden, Finland and England. The purpose of this presentation is to present results of this ongoing interdisciplinary research project and obtain feedback and comments from the scientific community.

The research questions are:

1. What are the attitudes of student teachers towards pupils with ASD?
2. Are there differences in student teachers’ attitudes between Sweden, Finland, and England?
3.  Is there any relationship between the student teachers’ gender, course of study, knowledge of ASD, exposure to ASD and their attitudes?

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