Academic help seeking in lower secondary school students with ASD and ensuing teachers’ answers

Résumé En

We analysed the participation of lower secondary school students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in classroom interactions. More precisely, we focused on with spontaneous academic help seeking addressed by these students to their teachers in an inclusive setting. Traditionally, research on academic help seeking refers to the notion of self-regulation (e.g., Nelson-Le Gall, 1981). However, it is also a situation of social interaction between (at least) two individuals, a student and an expert (Nelson-Le Gall, 1981). Furthermore, a high level of participation in social interaction reflects successful inclusion of students with ASD (Emam & Farrell, 2009). Within this context, we argue that it is particularly important to explore these students’ social behavior using data collected in ecological setting. The participants were 11 6th to 9th graders with ASD attending a mainstream lower secondary school in France (both in general and resource class) and 17 of their teachers. The students and the teachers were filmed during about 60 hours of class and interviewed about help in the classroom. The analyses showed that despite the students’ low level of adaptive and social behavior (cf. Vineland II scale), a majority of them sought help in the classroom. Moreover, coding of the video data allowed us to create new help-seeking categories in addition to existing ones (i.e., instrumental, executive, confirmatory). It also gave us the opportunity to identify the ensuing answers of the teachers that can be considered, in the light of existing literature, as generic pedagogical practices.