In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Dr Neil Kenny from the School of Inclusive and Special Education at the Institute of Education, Dublin City University. He is Programme Chair of the Master of Education and Autism, which is a programme for teachers working with autistic students. Before joining DCU, Dr Kenny worked in Teacher Education in the University of Limerick. Dr Kenny gives listeners an overview of his recently published paper titled ‘Transformative Inclusion: Differentiating Qualitative Research Methods to Support Participation for Individuals With Complex Communication or Cognitive Profiles’. The overarching issue the paper addresses is inclusivity and collaborative research involving people from different backgrounds and with different motivations or intentions. The idea for the paper emerged from Dr Kenny’s experience using qualitative research methods in inclusive education research. The field has moved towards capturing qualitative data from a variety of participants, including those with different communication profiles such as those with neurodevelopmental differences. However, many researchers spend much of their time adapting these qualitative methods to suit their audiences. Neil and his colleagues set out to address this gap by outlining their approach to adapting research methods to suit participants from a variety of contexts, with diverse profiles. The paper begins by outlining the implications of the current situation, for example the challenges for individuals with intellectual disabilities or complex neurodevelopmental conditions providing their views and experiences using traditional qualitative tools. The paper then draws on existing literature and practical experience to present readers with a framework to guide researchers in the use of qualitative methods with diverse populations. Dr Kenny is keen to collaborate with colleagues in the area both nationally and internationally. He also launched a website for the Accessible and Collaborative Research Network (ACORN) to encourage collaboration in this domain.

ACORN website is available here: https://sites.google.com/dcu.ie/acrn/home

You can read Dr Kenny’s paper titled “Transformative Inclusion: Differentiating Qualitative Research Methods, with Dr Neil Kenny” here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/16094069221146992

To find out more about Dr Kenny and his work, you can view his academic profile here: https://www.dcu.ie/inclusive-and-special-education/people/neil-kenny

You can also find Neil on Twitter @NeilKenny0