Jennifer Macko ’20MAT, an NC State College of Education doctoral student earning a Ph.D. in the Teacher Education and Learning Sciences educational psychology concentration, has been selected as one of 12 graduate students worldwide to receive an Organization for Autism Research (OAR) Graduate Research Grant.

The program provides funding to support autism-focused research. Macko will use this funding to support her dissertation, entitled “Intersections, Interests, and Instruction: Pathways to Autistic Female Student Belonging”

“Receiving this funding means I can conduct this research in true partnership with the autistic community,” Macko said. “Sharing lived experiences involves real emotional and cognitive labor, and adequate compensation honors that labor. That commitment reflects best practices in autism research and the ethical standards I want my research to model.”

Macko’s dissertation centers the voices of autistic females who face compounded challenges in school because of their intersecting identities and often spend their school years masking their autistic traits to fit in. The study asks autistic females to share through interviews, drawings and journal reflections how it felt when high school teachers embedded these students’ passionate interests into instruction and how that practice shaped their sense of belonging.

By allowing participants to share their lived experiences through a variety of communication styles, Macko said, participation in research will be made more accessible for autistic people.

“If participants find the practice acceptable and beneficial, the study will provide educators with the first community-supported strategy to enhance belonging among autistic female students,” Macko said.

Macko is a licensed special education teacher with two decades of experience in working with students with disabilities who is also the parent of an autistic adult. Through that combination of experiences, she has witnessed first-hand what happens when autistic females do not receive appropriate support at school and how the effects of that lack in support can impact students’ mental health, sense of belonging and wellbeing long after they leave school.

“Autistic females’ experiences are largely missing from educational and intervention research, so educators are left without the information they need to support these students before those consequences take hold,” she said. “I chose this [dissertation] focus because autistic females deserve research that starts from their own voices and builds on their strengths rather than treating their differences as deficits, and because their well-being depends on schools getting this right.”

This post was originally published in College of Education News.