Education Commons^™

Puzzled Representations: Popular Media And How Educators Come To Know Autism, Vanessa N. Keener

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

People learn about the world through popular culture. Popular culture media representations of autism can be found in TV, film, literature, Internet media, advertisements, and more. This study employed a quantitative correlational design to survey 273 Georgia educators regarding their perceptions of autism, including knowledge about autism, best practices for teaching students labeled as having autism, perceived positivity and accuracy of popular media representations of autism, as well as participant identification with popular media representations of autism and personal characteristics (i.e., age, sex, level of education, type of degree, years of teaching experience, professional and personal experiences). Six major findings …