SJIE’s Sarah Parsons and colleague Sue Cobb, from the University of Nottingham, have published a research paper discussing the role of community partners (teachers and children on the autism spectrum) in the design and development of innovative educational technologies. The paper reflects on experiences from the COSPATIAL project which developed collaborative virtual environments to support children’s perspective taking, turn-taking, collaboration and social conversation skills. The project involved teachers in mainstream and special schools, and children on the autism spectrum, at different times and in different ways, and the paper reflects on the extent to which the team was able to capture and include the views from these groups effectively. The paper is to be published in the summer in a special issue on Inclusive Research of the International Journal of Research and Method in Education.
