Identifying initiatives by children with ASD: Exemplified by two cases.

The purpose of this poster presentation is to discuss how different research methods can be used to identify initiatives by children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) during interaction with teaching staff. The ideas presented originate from two ongoing PhD projects in two countries using different methods. The Finnish case comes from an analysis of video recordings using conversation analysis conducted to understand triadic interaction of children with ASD in a technology-enhanced school environment. The Canadian case comes from an interview study conducted in ethnographic fieldwork, in both home and educational environments, regarding the meaning of music for First Nations children in British Columbia diagnosed with ASD. These two cases are used to illustrate how the children’s initiatives could be missed or misinterpreted in these specific educational settings. By identifying such initiatives we could build educational interventions on the foundation of the children’s strengths instead of reproducing the deficit model of disability. This could in a life perspective help a child with ASD reach his or her full potential