Sensibilisation interactive versus informative concernant les besoins scolaires des élèves avec autisme en collège : modifier les représentations et les pratiques inclusives des pairs, étude préliminaire

Abstract

Because handicap is the result of how the environments of a person and his/her disorders interact (Chamak, 2018; Poutoux, 2011), the question of supporting this person with disabilities becomes an unavoidable thematic. This study focusses on the scholarship of pupils with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) whose prevalence amounts to one birth on hundred (APA, 2015 – DSM-5), and especially on a kind of support towards their human environment, the less studied. It deals with the sensitization of the school classmates of a pupil with ASD, aged 14. The pupils’ sensitization allows us to measure the changes in representations and inclusive actions after sensitization. This question seems to be sensitive because too many pupils leaving school aged 15 years old have an ASD . As part of a preliminary study, we submitted two kinds of sensitization (informative vs. interactive) to two groups of neurotypic pupils aged 14 years old (who have a classmate with ASD in their classroom). A survey has been filled before and after the sensitization in order to assess the changes in representation and inclusive actions to engage with their ASD classmate to foster his/her apprenticeship. The pupils who benefitted from the interactive sensitization evolve the most: both in the understanding of the special needs of the ASD classmate and in the supportive actions to help their classmate in the classroom. The pupils who received the informative sensitization evolve only in their representations of the special needs of the ASD classmate. The results, which have yet to be confirmed in larger studies, are discussed in the light of inclusive politics and the needs to assess the different kinds of sensitizations towards the human school environment.