Abstract:

At the turn of the 21st Century, school inclusion has become the philosophy at the basis of educational school reform. The presence of pupils with disability in mainstream schools is now current practice in many of the European countries (EADSNE, 2010). Among the fundamental objectives of inclusive education is providing all children the possibility to interact and bond with their peers. Literature has shown that teachers’ beliefs and attitudes towards pupils with disability impinges on the pupils’ perceptions and may actually hinder this natural process of socialisation. Such process becomes even more complex in the case of pupils with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Reciprocal social interaction and communication in children with ASD are manifested in ways that are not in line with what is considered to be the norm (WHO, 2018; Wing and Gould, 1979, Kanner, 1943). This is due to the lack of intersubjectivity (Hobson, 1993, 1999), defined as the inability to recognize the other and the self as agents of an interaction. Other examples of deficits include the inability to imitate other peoples’ actions, share emotions and affect attunement, maintain joint attention, coordinate gestures, and take turns. As Watzlawick and colleagues (1967) state, the interpersonal systems can be considered as feedback loops because every person’s behaviour influences the behaviours of others and the systems within which they act. DeJaegher and Di Paolo (2007) add that interactional processes cannot take place on an individual level. Rather, as postulated by enactivists (Maturana & Varela, 1990), the agents involved reciprocally participate and influence one another. The concept of social interaction is therefore hereby presented as a dynamic process where agentic systems dynamically interact and coordinate their actions to achieve a common goal. Similarly, in educational contexts two systems, in this case the teacher and the pupil, interact with each other and the surrounding environment (Sibilio, 2013). Maturana and Varela (1990) suggest that learning is a reorganizational process where systems (animate and inanimate) are stimulated by external inputs to reorganize themselves or be reorganised. Applying this to the educational context, the interaction during teaching-learning processes is created only when teachers and pupils manage to perturbate each other’s systems respectively (Rossi, 2011), thus leading to learning. A prevailing issue that needs to be highlighted is the fact that, when a person does not receive feedback when trying to interact with another person, the former tends to reduce the effort to try and communicate. This could also be the case for teachers who may lose heart due to the lack of awareness with regards to intersubjectivity and knowledge on strategies to establish some form of communication. Based on this premise, the aim of this research is that of increasing awareness among nursery school teachers on the significant role intersubjectivity plays in the development of social interaction skills of pupils with Autism Spectrum Disorders, considered to be pivotal for the promotion of inclusive practices. Currently, the research is in its designing phases. Following an in-depth literature review on autism spectrum disorders and the process of intersubjectivity, in the next phase data will be collected to explore the teachers’ levels of awareness regarding intersubjectivity and their attitudes towards ASD.

Keywords:

Intersubjectity, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Teaching and learning process.