ABSTRACT
In my roles of educational consultant and teacher educator, I am often asked if a student is doing something like rocking because he has autism. Others ask if a student’s task avoidance is due to autism and share that they have been told by other professionals that children with autism are not intrinsically motivated. If we are going to change education for students with autism spectrum disorder, we must question teachers’ beliefs and the meanings they place on differences they see in these students. Likewise, we must be concerned with how these interpretations impact how students are educated (Baglieri et al. 2011; Cochran-Smith and Dudley-Marling 2012).
