Today I will share with you my setbacks, due to work and family commitments, in my Educational Doctorate journey. In addition to my progress with my ethics submission, my dissemination at the University of Greenwich University and The Waltham Forest Dyslexia Association presentation on the above topic. Lastly, I will cover my next steps

Over the last few months, I have been extremely busy working, which involves supporting students with Autism at university who are awarded government support via Disabled Students Allowance (DSA) for study skills, mentoring and assistive technology. I can and do support them with all of these aspects. I have also been supporting a family member with Autism. This period has had a dramatic effect on my abilities to study especially since I have also had COVID, but I am improving and now I feel I have the capacity to move forward.

However, engaging with my supervisors supports me on my journey, with guidance, advice and resources. Recently they have supported me to complete and send my Ethics application to the University of Greenwich Faculty Research Ethics Committee (FREC) for consideration. The application includes the title and overview of the project, the methods and methodology, in addition to how I propose to address the ethical issues involved in my research, whilst abiding by the British Educational Research Association (BERA) ethical guidelines and the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) which protects the participants and their data respectively. After the committee meeting, I will be notified of the outcome. I expect there to be some amendments, but hope overall this will be positive. In the meantime, I am reviewing the literature on my topic and disseminating my research.

My recent dissemination was undertaken at the University of Greenwich Educational Doctorate Saturday. This was well received with a face to face presentation and online guests via Microsoft Teams and one of my supervisors was present to see this, which he commented went well. Further to this, I had been invited to disseminate at the Waltham Forest Dyslexia Association, “Dyslexia and Neurodivergent Adult Meetups” as I am dyslexic too.

Below is my presentation to be disseminated giving background and outline of my research.

Lastly, I will be posting a link, in my next post, to my questionnaire for my research on “Autism and Disclosure for Employment” as soon as I have the approval to do so. Please take part if this applies to you.

Thank you for reading, it’s time for a coffee!