New Perspectives in Science Education
‘I Need That Completion’: Supervisory Communication and Special Needs Education for Autistic Postgraduate Students
Jeanette E Maritz, University of South Africa (South Africa)
Abstract
Special needs education in higher education is often associated with formal accommodation, disability services and access arrangements, while the everyday pedagogical work of postgraduate supervision receives less attention. This paper presents a reflexive qualitative single-case assemblage of an autistic postgraduate student’s account of supervision, feedback and academic participation. Drawing on interview data, e-mail correspondence and researcher reflexive notes, the analysis examines how supervision becomes more than an interpersonal relationship: it operates as a support infrastructure through which uncertainty, overwhelm, perfectionism, isolation and academic continuity are negotiated. Framed through neurodiversity-affirming scholarship and the double empathy problem [1], the paper shifts attention away from student deficit towards the relational, communicative and institutional conditions that make postgraduate study more or less possible. The findings suggest that special needs education at postgraduate level requires communicative clarity, predictable feedback, explicit expectations, written guidance, relational safety and recognition of neurodivergent ways of processing academic work. The paper argues that support for autistic postgraduate students should not be limited to accommodation after difficulty emerges but should be designed into supervisory practice as an anticipatory, relational and ethically responsive pedagogy. It contributes to inclusive higher education, postgraduate supervision and special needs education by showing how small supervisory design choices can materially shape academic participation.
Keywords: special needs education; autistic postgraduate students; neurodiversity; postgraduate supervision; inclusive higher education
REFERENCES
[1] Milton, D. E. M. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The ‘double empathy problem’. Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887.
[2] Botha, M. and Cage, E. (2022). ‘Autism research is in crisis’: A mixed method study of researcher’s constructions of autistic people and autism research. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1050897.
