Teacher-student interactions of autistic adolescents: Relationships between teacher autonomy support, structure, involvement and student engagement

The extent to which autistic students are provided with autonomy-support, structure and involvement during the teacher-student interaction has been under-researched. Few studies have focused on autistic secondary school students and even fewer have used observations to analyze their interactions. In this research, we aimed to understand the interaction dynamics between autistic students and their teachers in the Netherlands and Mexico; two countries committed to inclusive education. Six teacher-student dyads from five mainstream secondary schools in the Netherlands and seven teacher-student dyads from one school in Mexico participated. We used a fine-grained observational method to describe the classroom interactions, systematically coded from the lens of Self-Determination Theory. To study the interaction as a whole and co-occurring teacher and student behaviors (rather than breaking it down into separate parts), we used State Space Grids. Teacher-student interactions varied widely. In general, Dutch and Mexican teachers provided much structure in the classroom, which (in many cases) coincided with the active engagement of autistic students. At the same time, autistic students in both countries received little autonomy-support. However, when these students received autonomy-support, they responded with more engagement. In contrast, both engaged and disengaged student behaviors occurred when the teacher showed involvement. The desired patterns of interaction were not observed in all teacher-student pairs. Our findings indicate that teachers in both countries are missing opportunities to be autonomy-supportive. This contextual factor was minimally observed in the teacher-student interactions, particularly when compared to the levels of structure and involvement provided during lessons.