Intersections, Interests, and Instruction: Pathways to Autistic Female Student Belonging

Autistic individuals assigned female at birth (AFAB) face compounded challenges due to intersecting sex and disability identities, often masking their traits and experiencing alienation and thwarted belonging in schools. Despite calls for intersectional research, participatory studies with autistic AFAB individuals focused on interventions remain limited. Focused interests, specific preferred topics or subjects, serve as a strength-based resource that facilitates identity formation for AFAB autistic individuals and represents a potential pathway for identity-affirming interventions. This qualitative dissertation employs interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA), informed by feminist disability studies, to understand the experiences and perspectives of autistic AFAB individuals on the practice of embedding their focused interests in instruction and its impact on their sense of belonging. This research aims to complicate disability analysis, broaden understanding of autistic experiences, and examine the lived experience of being a recipient of educational practices. The study’s methodological design offers a feasible and ethical model for autism research by combining the step-by-step IPA process with a novel, multi-method data collection plan consisting of interviews, drawings, and journaling. This approach challenges traditional neurotypical frameworks, accommodates diverse communication modalities and varying capacity for social interaction, and is specifically designed to minimize participant stress and anxiety. If the findings show that participants perceive embedding their focused interests in instruction as acceptable and beneficial, it will provide educators with the first community-supported strategy to enhance integration and belonging for autistic AFAB students.