Autistic university students’ accounts of interactions with nonautistic and autistic individuals: a rhetorical genre studies perspective

Jacquie Ballantine,Natasha Artemeva

doi:10.18309/anp.v51i2.1406

Abstract

Increasing numbers of autistic students are enrolling in universities worldwide. These students are taught by mostly nonautistic instructors who try to support them in their learning of academic literacies, without always fully understanding this emerging group of neurodiverse students. Most research on the development of academic literacies, including academic writing, to date has not explored the lived experience of being an autistic student at university. In this small-scale qualitative exploratory pilot study, we draw on Rhetorical Genre Studies (RGS) to probe into the accounts of 12 autistic students from two Canadian universities regarding their interactions with nonautistic and autistic individuals at university. By analyzing the data from the RGS perspective, we have been able to establish and unpack the rhetorical nature of such social interactions. Understanding the rhetorical nature of these interactions provides a first step towards developing effective supports for autistic students learning to speak and write academically in the predominantly nonautistic contexts of universities.

Highlights

For researchers who investigate the development of academic literacies in autistic students in higher education, the interactions between such students and their autistic and nonautistic instructors and peers are seen as sites of critical importance
Autistic academics and their allies1 either argue that pedagogical strategies useful for all students, including autistic ones, have been developed already (Heilker & Yergeau, 2011), or question the dominant ways of communicating academically and call for greater flexibility in speaking and writing practices at university (Prince, 2013). These authors usually align themselves with an emerging view of autism known as the neurodiversity movement (Silberman, 2015) which holds that autistic individuals are part of the full range of human diversity, and should be celebrated for who they are (e.g., Clare, 2017; McGuire, 2016)
The objective of a small-scale qualitative exploratory pilot study presented in this paper is to develop a theoretically-informed understanding of autistic students’ lived social interaction experiences at university

Summary

Introduction

For researchers who investigate the development of academic literacies in autistic students in higher education, the interactions between such students and their autistic and nonautistic instructors and peers are seen as sites of critical importance. Spending time reading or being internally focused likely led to even less practice with recognizing and participating in different kinds of rhetorical situations typical in nonautistic interactions.

Results

Conclusion