This is a study about how disability and social class intersect in the lives of young adults in higher education in Ireland to reveal complex inequality, oppression, privilege, and power. The overall aim of this study is to identify how disability and social class are constructed and enacted in education in Ireland, how they intersect to maintain, reproduce, and sustain inequality and privilege, and how they are shaped through individual agency. I locate this study within a social constructivist and an advocacy/participatory paradigm and the theoretical framework of intersectionality. This is a mixed methods study and uses quantitative data from the Disability Access Route to Education (DARE) and the Higher Education Access Route (HEAR), national access initiatives, and interviews with ten student participants, to analyse how disability and social class, as social identities, intersect to influence progression, retention, and the experience of higher education.

The findings from this research enhances our knowledge of complex educational inequality, identifying how working-class students with disabilities are currently falling through the cracks of national and institutional policy and practice. The voices of the participants are central and offer a quite different way of thinking about disability, about widening participation policy and practice, and about access to education in Ireland. Students identified multiple embedded barriers, inferior positioning, unequal resources, hardship and sacrifice, and the negative impact on their student identities. They also describe extraordinary resilience and activism supported by parents, individual teachers, and more inclusive schools. The study identifies how current understandings of disability and social class have created a powerful regime that is reproducing inequality in education and relegating all students with disabilities, particularly working-class students, to positions of inequality and inferiority. The study illustrates that what it means to have a disability depends on each individual’s simultaneous location in the social hierarchies of disability and social class.

Children with a diagnosis of Autism experience difficulties in social   communication and are vulnerable to bullying and social exclusion in mainstream schools. The importance of educating all children in an inclusive learning environment is enshrined in both national and international legislative policy (UNESCO, 1994; Department for Education, 2015). Yet, the numbers of children with Autism currently facing exclusion from their mainstream schools are disproportionate compared to children with other Special Educational Needs (SEN) (Department for Education, 2018; Ambitious about Autism, n.d.(a)). As a construct, ‘Inclusion’ is multi-dimensional and is expressed through full participation in the wider community, a sense of belonging and being part of a wider social group (Farrell, 2000). There is ambiguity regarding how this concept operates in practice. How children relate to others and the social repertoires they display are likely to be a core component to effective inclusion. Peer-Mediated Interventions (PMIs) have been used to promote the social skills of children with Autism. A systematic review of the literature was undertaken to examine the evidence from eighteen single-subject experimental designs (SSEDs). These studies examined the effectiveness of PMIs on improving the social outcomes of children with Autism. The review made an original contribution by using the ‘What Works Clearinghouse’ (WWC) Design Standards for evaluating SEDs (Kratochwill et al., 2010). All studies reviewed showed positive findings, yet conclusions drawn were tentative. There was considerable variability across the studies regarding the role of peers. Generalisability of findings were limited by a lack of long-term follow-up data. Outcome measures were focused on behavioural modification, and although helpful, over-simplified the complex nature of social interaction. The conclusions from the systematic review identified the need to further explore peers’ perceptions and the contextual environment in which inclusion is practiced. Chapter Two focused on exploring the experiences and perspectives of children with Autism, their peers and their teachers in the social environment of the school playground, and examined how inclusion operated in this context. Using a qualitative case study design and semi-structured interviews, children with autism, their peers and their teachers were interviewed in three different Primary Schools (n= 39). To capture peers’ perspectives of autistic behaviours, modified vignettes were used as a stimulus for discussion (Butler & Gillis, 2011; Matthews et al., 2015). Findings suggested that children’s experiences of playground inclusion were more alike than different for all child participants. Specific environmental barriers to inclusion were identified as lack of structure in the playground, and within-child factors such as difficulties in emotional regulation and social communication. Facilitators were identified as increased adult support and a wider range of play equipment for some children with autism, although the need to recognise the individuality of each child was highlighted. Peers’ understanding of autistic behaviours presented in the vignettes were variable and included hostile attributions (Dodge, 2006). Further research could explore the development of peer attributions of autistic behaviours and examine how these directly impact upon peer interaction in the playground. Implications for practice were highlighted, including the need to reflect about how EPs can support schools in educating children and staff about autism and how our attributions of difference can affect our behaviour towards others.

The impressive growth of antidiscrimination law in liberal democracies in the past few decades belies the inadequacy of the normative bases on which it has been sought to be justified. Popular ideals such as rationality, equality and dignity have been unsuccessful in providing a coherent liberal framework for the fundamental aspects of the practice of antidiscrimination law. In this thesis, I have argued that a unified normative framework comprising autonomy and dignity-as-autonomy does a markedly better job of justifying the most fundamental aspects of these laws. The ideal of personal autonomy is understood here as a principle that seeks to guarantee an adequate range of valuable options to individuals. Dignity-as-autonomy is understood to be an expressive norm, which forbids certain persons from expressing contempt for the autonomy of another. These ideals have different forms: autonomy is a non-action-regarding principle, while dignity-as-autonomy is action-regarding. They are also distinct substantively: it is often possible to violate one of them without affecting the other. When these ideals make incompatible demands, I argue that those made by autonomy should prevail. Mandating positive action and reasonable accommodation on the one hand, and prohibiting indirect discrimination and harassment on the other, are essential features of a model of antidiscrimination law based on this framework. Further, under this framework, antidiscrimination law is not vulnerable to objections such as ‘levelling down’ and responds well to claims of discrimination on ‘intersectional grounds’. Furthermore, it is not essential to find an ‘appropriate comparator’ in order to prove discrimination. This model also explains when, and under what conditions, can some forms of discrimination be ‘justified’. Finally, on an autonomy-based model, antidiscrimination law is only one of several complementary tools that should be employed to protect and promote personal autonomy.

This thesis is an ethnographic study of intercultural education discourses and everyday practices in an urban Greek-Cypriot primary school. The pupil population is comprised of Greek-Cypriots, Eastern European economic migrants and increasing numbers of newlyarrived Iraqi-Palestinian asylum-seekers. Despite the introduction of intercultural education policy in 2001, the education system prescribes a monoculturalist and nationalist ethos. At the same time, the limited opportunities for intercultural education training leave teachers uncertain as to how to respond to the increasing diversity. Informed by ethnographic, discursive and intersectional approaches, this study analyses data from fieldwork conducted in this school for a total of three months over a period of three years. The analysis identifies the discursive resources from which teachers draw to talk about diversity in Greek-Cypriot society and construct the Other, mainly in essentialist and negative ways. It also identifies teachers’ constructions of racism on a societal and educational level, including racism denials, minimizations and justifications. The thesis argues that teachers’ constructions of racism inhibit them from recognizing and challenging institutional racism and racialized incidents they observe among their pupils. The study also demonstrates how minoritized children become differentially racialized as groups and individuals through institutional, teachers’ and children’s discourses and practices, regardless of intentionality. As a result, many minoritized children experience school in an environment of harassment. The study discusses the experiences of an Iraqi-Palestinian boy as an example of how intercultural education is implemented. Some teachers’ resistance to the dominant discourses of colourblindness and racism denial, and minoritized children’s negotiation of their racialized positionings create the spaces of ambivalence that are necessary for change. The findings bear implications for policy and practice in terms of teacher training, development of antiracist policies and supportive networks for teachers, changes in the curriculum, and, structural transformations, so that educational opportunities are equally provided to all children.

The aim of this study was to explore how children with ASD predominately educated in special schools experience inclusion in mainstream schools. Method: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to explore interview data from four participants who were primarily educated in the boarding provision of a special school sixth form, but who spent some time each week included in mainstream settings. Results: From the analysis of the data, seven super-ordinate themes were developed. These were: Independence, Belonging, Comparisons, Managing Self Presentation, Sense of Self, ‘Who Knows?’ and External Factors. The different school contexts highlighted different aspects of these themes and all appeared to be affected by the participants’ differing levels of social understanding. Conclusion: The key findings were: 1) For most participants the move into a different setting appeared to result in an increased awareness of factors related to how they saw themselves and how others saw them; 2) The participant’s level of social understanding appeared to affect the extent to which the move into a new context prompted them to reevaluate themselves and manage how others saw them; 3) Participants valued the independence that mainstream settings provided and did not report bullying. This was unexpected as evidence suggests that bullying is a significant problem for autistic pupils included in mainstream education; 4) Problems were experienced regarding who should know about the participant’s diagnosis of autism; 5) The generally positive experiences of these participants add to the debate regarding the inclusion of autistic children in mainstream settings.