Beyond Placement: Stigma, Norms, and Autistic Student Identity in Inclusive Classrooms

Abstract

This paper examines how stigma and preconceived notions about behaviour and communication shape autistic student identity in inclusive classrooms. While inclusive education policy has expanded access to mainstream settings, the norms that structure classroom life remain organized around neurotypical expectations. Drawing on literature from inclusive education, disability studies, and autism research, and engaging reflexively with lived experience in Ontario schools, this paper argues that inclusive classrooms can function as sites where autistic students are positioned through deficit and managed through compliance. The analysis identifies a structural divide in the existing scholarship: critical disability studies work interrogates normalization at a theoretical level, while classroom-based research documents everyday practices without subjecting them to critical analysis. These two conversations have developed largely in parallel, leaving the identity implications of classroom norms under theorized. This paper bridges that gap by treating behaviour and communication norms as socially constructed expectations that carry consequences for how autistic students understand themselves. Recommendations include moving beyond compliance-based expectations, critically examining the hidden curriculum, shifting from individual accommodation to environmental redesign, and centring autistic student identity as a concern of inclusive education.