The purpose of this study is to explore the perceptions of teachers’ experiences as they work with students who have the label of autism and ED in the same self-contained classroom. For this study, three main theoretical perspectives guided the researcher’s approach to understanding participant perceptions. This study used social constructivism, self-efficacy, and attribution theory to explore special education teachers’ perceptions. Study design included semi-structured interviews, multiple observations, and examination of artifacts of four participants working within self-contained classrooms. Both within case analysis and cross-case analysis was utilized to examine perceptions and attributions. These methods gave a voice to study participants by illustrating how they made meaning of teaching their students. Portraiture, as a tool, presented rich and thick descriptions of the participants as well as methodological approach for data collection. This study revealed obvious distinctions in how participants perceived causes of behavior, how participants described behaviors, and how they responded to student behaviors. Findings suggest participants attribute external factors to negative behaviors displayed by students with a label of ED. Findings suggest participants attribute the same negative behaviors to internal facts for students with a label of autism. Responses were driven by participants understanding of disability. Participant responses suggested participants used their perceptions of what external factors caused behaviors to rationalize negative student behaviors and used the same external factors to drive a therapeutic lens to address and move past these behaviors for students with labels of ED. Participants response to behaviors for students with autism were not attributed to external factors. Individual portraits highlighted how participants expressed student behaviors differently for students with an ED label in comparison to an autism label. There is little research on the experience of teachers who work with students with an ED label and autistic label in the same classroom. This research provided unique insight on how participants perceive these students and how they attribute aggressive behaviors to these disability categories. This study serves as a platform for future research exploring teacher perceptions of students with labels of ED and autism and how to support them in the classroom.

Youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities (ID/DD) face significant barriers to social inclusion (Hill, Davis, Prout, & Tisdall, 2004; Koller, Pouesard, & Rummens, 2018; Simplican, Leader, Kosciulek, & Leahy, 2015) that are counter to their fundamental rights (Browne & Millar, 2016) and associated with negative social and emotional outcomes (e.g., Koller et al., 2018). It is therefore critical that research uncover strategies for removing these barriers. Extracurricular activities provide an important context for fostering social inclusion of youth with ID/DD, and federal law has language specific to ensuring students with disabilities access to extracurricular activities (Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, 2004, § 614[d][1][A][i]; U.S. Department of Education, 2011). However, relatively few students with ID/DD participate in extracurricular activities compared to students with other disabilities and students without disabilities (e.g., Lipscomb et al., 2017). States hold increasingly significant power and autonomy over the implementation of federal educational policy (Knackstedt, Leko, & Siuty, 2018). Yet, heretofore there has been no systematic, state-level analysis of policies related to social inclusion for youth with ID/DD in extracurricular activities. This study provides a state-level analysis of policies related to social inclusion of youth with ID/DD in extracurricular activities. Directed content analysis found that states varied widely in their number and content of policies regarding inclusion of students with disabilities in extracurricular activities. No states used the terms inclusion or social inclusion in their policies, highlighting the divide between academia and policy in defining and examining special education issues. There was no finding of a formal, regular mechanism federally or by states to measure and report extracurricular activity participation for students with disabilities. Through the lens of a rights-based, leisure justice, socio-ecological framework, several areas for potential research were identified and recommendations are provided for researchers, federal and state policymakers, school districts, extracurricular program staff, students, and families. These results can inform stakeholders of potential avenues for increasing participation of youth with ID/DD in extracurricular activities, and in turn can help to optimize the social inclusion of youth with ID/DD.