Can sharing education between home and school benefit the child with autism?

This qualitative research exploration uses interpretative phenomenological analysis of case studies to investigate the diversity and congruity of the lived experiences of families sharing education between home and school for children with autism. Using semi-structured interview and follow-up questionnaire it examines the perspectives of five mothers, and includes further input from wider family members and professionals. Findings are presented as idiographic cases, examined through the ‘lens’ of nine research propositions to have emerged through the researcher’s complete-member orientation, and further presented in cross-case synthesis under three super-ordinate themes to have emerged: that shared education is a response to need; that it is a response to both perceived positives and perceived negatives in the school experience; and that it is used by parents as a ‘bridge’. Findings are considered in the light of similar studies (Kidd and Kaczmarek, 2010; Hurlbutt, 2011) into the experience of parents homeeducating their children with autism, together with a study (McDonald and Lopes,2014) into parents sharing the education of their autistic children between home and the Schools of Isolated and Distance Education in Western Australia. Findings suggest that there is considerable agreement on the challenges faced by the child with autism in school, on the parents’ motivations for intervening and on the parents' endorsement of the literature-supported report on the importance of parental involvement in a child's education. Participants agree that sharing education between home and school can lead to benefit for their child, although the heterogeneity of the autistic population and the diversity of individual participant circumstances lead to a lack of congruity as to the form that this benefit may take.