Good intentions are not enough: Autistic perspectives on structural ableism within the walls of our classrooms.
Autistic students say school structures, not single teachers, block self-advocacy.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Nadwodny et al. (2026) asked autistic students what stops them from speaking up at school.
They talked with students across both general and special-ed classrooms.
The team used long interviews so students could name the real barriers in their own words.
What they found
Students did not blame one mean teacher. They blamed six built-in walls: erasure, forced conformity, isolation, oppression, hidden rules, and top-down authority.
These walls live in the schedule, the seating chart, and the unspoken "be normal" message.
Because the walls are structural, good intentions alone cannot remove them.
How this fits with other research
Zakai-Mashiach (2023) heard the same isolation theme, but only inside separate special-ed rooms. Nicole widens the lens and shows the walls exist everywhere in the building.
Bolourian et al. (2018) and Kim et al. (2021) moved the question to college. Hidden expectations and weak disability offices echo what younger students reported.
Meuret et al. (2001) surveyed teachers who admitted they felt unsure about autistic pupils. That teacher worry is an early snapshot of the same structures students now name as ableism.
Together the papers trace one story: the system stays rigid even as individuals try to help.
Why it matters
If you write behavior plans, run social-skills groups, or sit in IEP meetings, remember the walls students described. Pair your 1:1 targets with small system tweaks: clear daily agendas, optional quiet spaces, student-chosen seating, and real choices in assignments. When you model these changes, teachers see how to lower the walls without waiting for a new policy.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Add a student-choice item to your next session plan and log how often the learner uses it.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
This study aimed to examine how structural ableism affects autistic learners by collecting first-person perspectives of current and former autistic students about how their school experiences shaped their ability to self-advocate. In addition, the study aimed to further highlight autistic perspectives by incorporating a community-participatory research design, which consisted of a primarily autistic research team. Participants consisted of 19 autistic adolescents and adults who represented a wide array of intersectional sociodemographic identities. Participants were engaged in a 90-min semi-structured interview to discuss their school experiences. Interviews were analyzed qualitatively and inductively through a critical constructivist approach to grounded theory. Data analysis highlighted many structural barriers to autistic self-advocacy for our participants. These barriers were described within six distinct domains which emerged as themes in our analysis: erasure, conformity, isolation, oppression, hidden expectations, and authority. This qualitative, community-participatory research study exposes the degree to which systems-level ableism exists within US K-12 systems. Specifically, our participants emphasized ableism that went beyond the individual or interpersonal level. We conclude with a series of recommendations on how to combat these manifestations of ableism in schools.Lay summaryThe goal of this study was to ask current and former autistic students about their school experiences and self-advocacy. Self-advocacy means being able to ask for what you need and to make your own choices. Nineteen autistic students were interviewed about self-advocacy at school. These autistic students told the research team that schools often made it hard for them to self-advocate. They also told the research team that schools were ableist, meaning that they did not respect the rights of disabled people. This study is important because it shows ways in which schools do not support autistic people and recommends ways for schools to treat autistic people better. This study is also important because the research team was mostly autistic. The expertise of autistic researchers on our team helped us create research that highlights autistic people's voices.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2026 · doi:10.1177/13623613261426691