Autism is a frequently articulated category in the current debate on inclusive education, in inclusion research as in school practice. Not only did it rise to become a buzz-word in the discourse around difference, it also hints at fundamental mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in educational contexts. For example, it reveals a tension between identification, diagnosis and needs-based support on the one hand – and a marketized autism regime on the other, which requires a deficit-based production of difference first to then introduce the marker 'autism' as a legitimacy figure to initiate intervention programs (Broderick & Roscigno, 2022; Runswick-Cole, 2014). However, the extent to which the category ‘autism spectrum’ and its contextualizing practices are involved in processes of inclusion and exclusion is an empirical question. Surprisingly, there is limited discourse on methodological issues in the context of inclusion-oriented autism research so far. In light of the fact that autism is defined differently and consequently captured differently in empirical studies, we see the need to discuss methodological issues related to autism studies.

To do so, we draw on perspectives from the Critical Autism Studies (e.g., Davidson & Orsini, 2013), which move away from essentialist conceptions of autism (Begon & Billington, 2019). Against this backdrop, we ask how methodological approaches should be constituted that can empirically capture the production and processing of autism spectrum on the one hand, and the (marginalized) voices on the other. Hence, the focus is on methodological questions such as how to deal with categories, who the relevant actors are, and how contextual (and cultural) settings can be taken into account in the research.

The symposium intends to initiate an international and at the same time methodological discussion on autism and autism research. For this purpose, the symposium is organized and structured in such a way that first, in an introductory paper, basic and traditional methodological questions of autism studies will be challenged and discussed. Based on this, in the second and third paper alternative forms of analyzing autism and their practice will be presented along exemplary methods. Three different country contexts are dealt with: While the first paper focuses on UK-based Anglo-American discourses, the following papers will present empirical examples from the German-speaking context and from the Ukraine.

The overall aim of the symposium is to challenge existing notions and approaches to autism research and to point out potential academic injustice. In doing so, we will distance ourselves from understandings that conceptualize autism as a purely person-related characteristic - and accordingly research it in this simplicity or assume that a direct comparison is possible. Rather, we see autism as a situationally embedded and complex phenomenon, which requires complex methodological approaches. These will be presented in this symposium as examples to create first approaches to necessary international comparisons and to stimulate discussions. Furthermore, the methodological reflections on empirical research on autism suggest that inclusion and exclusion in educational settings cannot be considered without an analytical view of the powerful (national, cultural, organizational) context and their impact on the students' subjectivity process (Pluquailec, 2018).

Rob Begon & Tom Billington (2019) Between category and experience: constructing autism, constructing critical practice, Educational Psychology in Practice, 35:2, 184-196. Broderick, A. A. & Roscigno, R. (2021). Autism, Inc.: The Autism Industrial Complex. Journal of Disability Studies in Education, 2(1), 77-101. Davidson, J., & Orsini, M. (Eds.). (2013). Worlds of Autism: Across the Spectrum of Neurological Difference. University of Minnesota Press. Pluquailec, Jill (2018). Affective economies, autism, and ‘challenging behaviour’: socio-spatial emotions in disabled children’s education. Emotion, Space and Society. Runswick-Cole, K. (2014). ‘Us’ and ‘them’: the limits and possibilities of a ‘politics of neurodiversity’ in neoliberal times, Disability & Society, 29:7, 1117-1129.