Editorial. Schools at the centre of educational research in autism: possibilities, practices and promises

A challenge for current intervention developers is the transfer of positive interventions into everyday school settings. Most efficacy studies continue to be tested in controlled laboratory or clinical settings and very rarely in schools where children spend most of their time. We have limited knowledge of how laboratory-based studies would fare in a school setting, or whether studies that are tested first in schools can be sustained in these settings. The goal of increasing school-based intervention studies for children with an autism spectrum disorder was the primary aim of a special session at the 2011 International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) conference,1 a meeting that led directly to this special issue. The meeting reflected a growing awareness in the autism field that there remains a substantial gap between research and practice in real-world classrooms (Reichow et al., 2008) and a considerable lack of involvement from teachers and practitioners in intervention research generally (Parsons et al., 2011). Beyond the obvious advantages of implementing effective interventions into the school settings where children spend their time, thus increasing the likely exposure to any given intervention, schools also offer great diversity. Schools may be the perfect laboratory as nearly all children go to school; therefore, conducting research in school settings can increase research samples …