Group Work and Learning

One of the more significant challenges that autistic girls and autistic gender diverse young people experience in the school setting is the requirement for consistent and almost continuous social interactions with their teachers and peers during learning times. In sessions where students are expected to cooperate and collaborate, autistic girls may need to be provided with additional support or alternative approaches. It is important to recognise the additional mental, sensory and cognitive load autistic students experience in managing the complex social interactions that take place during group learning. Reducing this load can have a significant positive impact on the wellbeing and engagement of autistic young people.

Views from Teacher, Practitioner and Autistic Adult

Teacher - We need to remember that if autistic students are anxious about the social expectations involved in group work, and they're spending extra energy on masking in those situations, they are also likely dysregulated, which means they are not learning. We need to make group work something that is safe and comfortable by remembering that group work is a skill we need to teach. We can have clearly defined roles to talk through, and we can have tasks and structure. I like to provide brief dot points of what each group member is expected to do and how to do it.

Practitioner - I work with autistic teens who have shown me how their heart rate increases when they do group work. They tell me that 'peopling' is exhausting - it takes so much energy.

Autistic Adult - I preferred to work alone, and when I was put in groups, I was often placed in a role I was not comfortable with. I would have happily been the note taker or timekeeper, but being asked to present to the class was not ideal and caused immense anxiety.