When coping is not inclusion: Practitioner assessment narratives and the sustainability of autistic participation in mainstream schools

Abstract

Inclusive education is often evaluated through visible indicators such as classroom engagement, behaviour, attendance and academic participation. For autistic learners, however, visible functioning may not fully reflect the accessibility of the educational environment or the regulatory effort required to sustain participation. This paper examines a purposively selected set of cases in which autistic learners were described as coping or participating in mainstream education while assessment documentation also recorded evidence of strain, environmental dependence or difficulty sustaining participation across contexts and time. Drawing on qualitative analysis of nine anonymised practitioner assessment narratives integrating school and family perspectives, the study explores how participation was represented within real‐world assessment documentation. Reflexive thematic analysis identified recurring patterns in which participation depended on environmental structuring, behavioural adaptation, adult mediation and sustained self‐regulation. Home‐school divergence, post‐school exhaustion and increased difficulty during transitions suggested that participation was often environmentally contingent rather than inherently secure. The study develops a distinction between observable participation and sustainable participation, arguing that inclusive environments should be evaluated not only by whether autistic learners appear to cope, but by how participation is achieved, what it costs and whether it can be sustained over time.