Rethinking how Initial Teacher Education programmes can be better informed about and improve their ASD offer to student teachers form more inclusive,

The conceptualisation of the autistic experience in education, specifically in Initial Teacher Education (ITE), is not widely considered beyond sessions that focus on inclusive education (Sarrett, 2018). Driven by the Teachers' Standards (DfE, 2021), ITE programmes are largely concerned with the trainee's developing awareness of the needs of all pupils, including those who fall into categories identified as special educational needs or disabilities, of which Autism is one (Smith et al., 2006). The epistemological orientation of teacher training is predominantly constructed around normative, Eurocentric mantras around the 'standard child' (Curran and Runswick-Cole, 2014) emanating from the universality of developmentalism. Barker and Mills (2018) notes the growing psy-trends also infiltrating ITE based on the psychiatrization, medicalization and psychologization of children and childhood, together with the associated processes of identification, assessment and labelling, typically used in schools and by educators.
Goodley et al. (2014) describe how the bodies of those who fail to make linear progress via prescribed stages and ages are pathologised. Watson (2022) recognises how such psy-developmentalism produces a sense of 'normal' in the classroom that sanctions comparisons and positions children falling into SEND categories such as Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as somehow lacking, or too profuse (Bohlmann, 2017). Under such conditions, Autistic pupils are often stripped of their sense of agency and voice, instead rendered objects of curiosity and knowledge, discouraged from self-expression (Scott-Barrett et al. 2022). This study will focus on how ITE programmes can better accommodate education about ASD to transform student teachers' more inclusive, future classroom practice.