If you want to develop an effective autism training, ask autistic students to help you.
Autistic students co-creating autism trainings yields bigger knowledge and acceptance gains than professor-only trainings.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Muller et al. (2022) tested two autism trainings for university students.
One training was built only by professors. The other was co-created with autistic students.
Both groups took the same pre- and post-tests on autism knowledge and acceptance.
What they found
The co-created training beat the professor-only version on every score.
Students learned more facts and showed warmer attitudes toward autistic peers.
The autistic students’ input made the lessons stick better.
How this fits with other research
Griffith et al. (2012) ran a short professor-only workshop for special-ed staff. Knowledge rose, but staff willingness to help actually dropped. Kristen’s co-created model shows why: autistic voices prevent that backlash.
Green et al. (2020) surveyed autistic adults who said, “Bring us into police training.” Kristen proves this works in universities and points the way for police trainers too.
Cascio et al. (2020) wrote ethical guidelines for autism research co-created with autistic adults. Kristen applies the same idea to training, showing the principle works beyond research.
Why it matters
If you design any autism training, invite autistic people to build it with you. One meeting to plan slides and stories can turn a flat lecture into a session that truly changes minds.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Autistic university students are often left out because people do not understand autism. We wanted to help people understand autism. Most autism trainings are not made by autistic people. Autistic people know what it is like to be autistic. So autistic people may be the best teachers when it comes to teaching about autism. Autistic students and non-autistic professors made an autism training. The students made videos for the training. They also helped make questions to see what people learned from the trainings. Professors who are not autistic made a training on their own. Students in New York City tried out the trainings. After they answered questions, they did either the training the autistic students helped make or the training made by only professors. Then, they answered questions again. We learned from the students how to make our trainings better. Then, students from two universities in the United States and one university in Lebanon did our trainings and questions. Both trainings made hidden feelings about autism better. The training autistic students helped make taught students more than the training professors made on their own. The autistic-led training also helped students accept autism more. These studies show that autistic students can make autism research and trainings better. At the end of this article, autistic students share their ideas for how to make autism trainings even better in the future.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2022 · doi:10.1177/13623613211041006