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Improving recognition of autistic young people’s stress behaviours in mainstream and specialist Nottingham schools 

    Cohort 2025 PhD Project

    About The Project

    Autism is the fastest-growing category of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) in Nottingham. As the number of autistic young people increases, education services are struggling to meet their needs. While Nottingham has several specialist schools for autistic young people, such as Sutherland House School, Nottingham City Council recently reported that almost all specialist provision is at full capacity. Therefore, significant numbers of autistic young people need to be educated in mainstream schools.  

    Including SEND pupils in mainstream schools has many potential benefits in relation to societal integration and acceptance. However, it also raises challenges for educators who need to meet the varied needs of all students. A challenge specific to autism is the distinctive way in which autistic people express their inner states and emotions. Recent research demonstrated that non-autistic people have difficulty interpreting the expressive behaviour of autistic people. This is likely to create barriers for teachers in relation to meeting the needs of their autistic students, which may be felt most acutely in mainstream settings where autistic students are still a minority. 

    This project will focus on autistic young people’s expressive behaviour when experiencing stress and anxiety and how this manifests in contrasting school contexts (mainstream and specialist) within Nottingham. Autistic young people are known to experience higher levels of stress and anxiety than their non-autistic peers, including within school settings; stress/anxiety is known to be a precursor for behaviour that is deemed to be “challenging”.   

    The project will establish which behaviours are associated with stress/anxiety in autistic young people, how they differ from non-autistic young people, and how education professionals interpret these behaviours. Finally, a toolkit will be co-created to share essential new knowledge with local educators about behavioural signs of stress/anxiety in young people.  

    Project Aims 

     The overall aims of the project are:     

    1. Determine which behaviours signal stress in autistic adolescents compared to non-autistic adolescents, and to understand the range and variability of these behaviours in autism, and which factors this might relate to.   
    1. Understand to what extent teachers, can reliably detect stress behaviours in autistic adolescents. Does this differ between educators in mainstream versus specialist schooling?  
    2. Based on the findings, co-create a toolkit to support teachers in identifying stress signals in autistic and non-autistic adolescents. 

    Project Team