Alex Newsom, PhD

Project:

Double Burnout? Exploring Experiences of Autistic and Educator Burnout Among Autistic Educators

Institution: University of Oregon
Twitter: @alex_newson_
Bluesky: @alexnewson.bsky.social 

Project Overview

The proposed study will use an participatory-social justice design integrating community based participatory research (CBPR) approaches. Phase one will include semi-structured interviews with 10-30 autistic educators focusing on questions such as “Describe your experiences with burnout as an autistic educator”, and “When do you feel most effective/engaged as an educator? What was happening for you, the environment, and who were you with?”. With the assistance of Autism Community Partners, the team will use reflexive thematic analysis to create themes from the interviews.

The themes will be used as a foundation to codevelop a survey with ACPs in a Community of Practice (CoP) model. The Phase 2 survey will be sent to Autistic Educators’s via Qualtrics with Likert and open-ended responses. AEs will be asked to carefully review the themes found in Phase 1 interviews as well as provide specific recommendations to address the barriers and enhance the facilitators to autistic mental health. The goal will be to create a list of recommendations, in laymens terms, that can be distributed and disseminated to the Autistic community, educators, school districts, and educational centers.

Collaborating Institutions

University of Alberta
George Mason University
Bowling Green State University

Project Mentors and Contributors

Dr. Heather Brown, Dr. Jodi Duke, Dr. Victoria Van Uitert, Kieran Rose, and Dr. Jackie Ryan