# *The Lens and the Mirror*: A Philosophical Review of O'Neill and Kenny, 2023 #Autism #Neurodiversity *Note: I wrote this as as assignment[^1] for an M-level module, "Philosophy of social science research". The brief was to pick a piece of research, then analyse and critique its philosophical position, overt or implicit. I picked this article back when I was considering picking Neurodivergent teachers as a PhD topic, and was reading about autistic teachers specifically. I chose this piece for its overt philosophical position, and only subsequently realised it was a first piece of research by a ND teacher doing a PhD herself (with whom I developed a certain parasocial relationship last Christmas, NGL. I really recommend the [textbook chapter](https://ideas.repec.org/h/elg/eechap/21655_3.html) she co-authored.* # Introduction Our conception of autism has evolved considerably in the last decades. Ever since the introduction of the term in the 1910s, the dominant model of disability, being the medical one, manifested, for autism, as the *pathology paradigm*. A counter narrative has emerged, using the social model of disability (Oliver, 1983, 2013), or, in the case of autism, the *neurodiversity paradigm* (White, O’Neill and Griffin, 2024). Each have been underpinned by different research methodologies (respectively quantitative and qualitative) and implicitly framed with different epistemologies (respectively positivist and interpretativist). Claire O'Neill and Neil Kenny write of this "shifting paradigm" in the object of this review, their article ['*“I Saw Things through a Different Lens . . . ”: An Interpretative Phenomenological Study of the Experiences of Autistic Teachers in the Irish Education System*'](https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/13/7/670) (in *Disability and Society*, 2023) - herein after simply *'Lens'* . Beyond its topic, its explicit (it features in its title) choice of a particular methodology, itself explicit (it features in its name) about the epistemology in which it is grounded, makes the article ostensibly well-suited to a philosophical analysis. # The study Claire O'Neill is an Autistic teacher, school leader, educational consultant and, by her publication record, a nascent researcher: she (too) is doing a PhD in this research area (something I only found out after choosing the paper!) in Cork. This is her first published study: she designed the protocol and lead the research, under the supervision of Neil Kenny, a neurotypical Assistant Professor specialised in autism research, in Dublin. Our reading of *Lens* must thus be informed by those key characteristics: it is Autistic-led research, by a novice researcher, in the context of the Irish education system. The article starts with its two research questions: finding out about the lived experience of Autistic Irish teachers (positive and/or negative), and the phenomenology of their relationships, at school, with peers and students. The study itself is best summed up in the abstract: > *"Semi-structured interviews with four Autistic participants followed by systematic, qualitative data analysis were presented in narrative interpretation"* (O’Neill and Kenny, 2023, p. 1) In equally concise terms, the results find, as to the first question, monotropism as a fundamental characteristic of the Autistic identity of the participants - a positive in some aspects, a negative in others; as well as their Autistic experience being highly embodied - this in overwhelmingly negative terms. As to the second research question, relationships with colleagues are made complex, for lack of "double empathy" (Milton, 2012) and often happen *behind the "mask that eats the face"* (White, O’Neill, and Griffin, 2024); however, relationships with neurodivergent pupils are marked by tremendous empathy, support, and advocacy (q.v. Lawrence, 2019). I have kept this section deliberately short, addressing details of the study alongside their philosophical analysis. # Lens's Philosophical Position The authors make their philosophical approach explicit: the methodology, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), appears in the title, and this choice brings with it epistemic and ontological implications, made explicit in the "Materials and Method" section of the text: > “The study is influenced by a research paradigm based on a constructivist epistemology. The ontological understanding is that beliefs and values are created by the individual in context and that subjective and multiple realities exist." > (O’Neill and Kenny, 2023, p. 5) The existence of "subjective and multiple realities", must, of course, be understood to refer to *social* realities, not physical ones, which would truly be "transgressing the boundaries" (Sokal, 1996). My entry point for this review, too, will be the methodology, IPA, and its constituent parts: phenomenology, hermeneutics and interpretativism. This will provide philosophical framing for the text, and, in contrasting a close reading of *Lens* to the texts it explicitly cites, texts farther up its philosophical genealogy, as well as comparable studies, open up areas for criticism. Before considering IPA itself, let us look at the rationale for this choice of methodology. ## Theoretical framing O'Neill and Kenny use Urie Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory (EST) as their theoretical frame. Stemming from Bronfenbrenner's frustration in the state of research in childhood development, which he described, derisively but not inaccurately, as “the study of the strange behavior of children in strange situations for the briefest possible period of time” (Bronfenbrenner, 1974), EST posits a child's development to be the result of their interaction with their environment, modelled as a set of nesting, interconnected systems (micro-, meso-, exo-, macro-, and later chrono-) (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). EST was very much Bronfenbrenner's lifework, culminating in his "bioecological model" (Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2007). Whilst child development was the starting point, and Bronfenbrenner's own focus, the model has broader applicability to human development at large, and has been successfully used to frame research on teachers in particular (Tissington, 2008; Cross and Hong, 2012; Price and McCallum, 2015). O'Neill and Kenny build on this by proposing their model of ecological system as they relate to Autistic teachers (in Ireland): > ![[EST Diagram O'Neill Kenny 2023.png]] > Ecological Systems surrounding Autistic teachers in Ireland (O'Neill and Kenny, 2023, p. 2) The choice of EST broadens the focus from the sole Autistic teacher to the bioecological systems surrounding them. In this respect, it fits within what O'Neill and Kenny call the "Shifting Paradigm" (2023, p.2) of Autism. They refer to the broadening of the understanding of autism from the "Pathology Paradigm" to the "Neurodiversity Paradigm", each rooted in the medical and social models of disability, respectively (White, O’Neill, and Griffin, 2024 p. 54). This has philosophical implication as these models proceed forth from different epistemic positions: the positivism of quantitative medicine, and the social constructionism of qualitative, humanist social sciences. O'Neill's endeavour fits within the latter: instead of looking at the Autistic individual from the outside, based on behavioural characteristics (largely based on how inconvenient their behaviour is to neurotypical society), understanding their lived experience, from their first-person perspective, in the social environment of Irish schools. In this light, the connection to EST, and choice of IPA arise naturally, though the particular choices made in the implementation of both are open to critique. ![[EST and Themes.png]] (O'Neill and Kenny, 2023 p.9) EST systems connect to themes in *Lens*'s results, yet whilst the macro- system is listed in the diagram, it does not emerge as a theme. The conception and views of autism in Irish society and its education sector have a non-trivial bearing on the experience of Autistic teachers, both directly on their identity, and via the school microsystem. Exploring this would have spoken to the shifting paradigm, and situated the study firmly in its national context. # Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis IPA is a research methodology, originally developed in psychology over the 1990s and first formalised in Smith, Flower, and Larkin's eponymous book (\[2009\]2022). IPA seeks to understand how individuals, in their social context, make sense of their specific experience - the *phenomenology* of the 'Phenomenological' part of IPA. As such, IPA studies generate no *nomothetic* findings, only *idiographic* ones (q.v. Windelband, [1894] 1998). That is, it makes no claims that its findings are generalisable, seek to predict, or explain; its findings instead seek to *understand* (*'verstehen'*, q.v. Dilthey, [1883] 1989) the meaning-making of the participants, in their social context, as it concerns the experience. This is the 'Interpretative' part of IPA. As to the 'Analysis', IPA proceed by *hermeneutics*: the interpretation of texts. Whilst as a practice, it has been done for as long as there have been texts, first religious, then historical and literary, modern hermeneutics emerged in the early 1800 with Schleiermacher (Grimm, 2024), then developed, at the turn of the twentieth century, contemporaneously to, and sharing a number of thinkers with, both phenomenology and interpretative social sciences (Rosenberg, \[1980\] 2015). # Phenomenology Neither an ontology not an epistemology, Phenomenology is a distinct discipline of Philosophy that intersects with both, along with logic and ethics (Smith, 2018). Smith, Flowers, and Larkin (\[2009\] 2022) start with Husserl, who, although he based the term on the use Brentano and Mach made of it, is founding philosopher of the modern discipline. Husserl's phenomenology sought to reduce the subjective, lived experience phenomenon, to its shared, objective essence by (somewhat esoteric) subjective mental methods; it is Heidegger, with his *dasein* ('being-in-time'), then Merlau-Ponty, with its focus on *embodied* experience, that Phenomenology grows into the conception on which IPA is founded. IPA's phenomenology include that of Sartre, for his concepts of *nothingness*, in which *existence of absence is not absence of existence*, and *becoming* - his core existentialist thesis that "existence precedes essence" - that values and meaning are constructed by the individual as they proceed with the complicated business of existing (Sartre, 1943). O'Neill and Kenny (2023) reference those same philosophers in the IPA sub-section of their "methods" section, linking each to specific methodological techniques (op. cit. p. 5). In the "results" section, they link experience of one of their participants to Sartre's phenomenology of observation (op. cit. p. 10). The Sartrean *regard* ("gaze", often mistranslated as "look") is an intersubjective process of identity construction - we exist to others as they gaze upon us, but, in doing so, we exist to ourselves (Stack and Plant, 1982; Dolezal, 2012). This is particularly salient to autism, whereby the masked identity, constructed through, and for the benefit of, the neurotypical gaze, overtakes the Autistic individual's own subjective sense of self (Cage, Di Monaco and Newell, 2018; Fletcher-Watson and Happé, 2019; Perry _et al._, 2022; White, O’Neill and Griffin, 2024). The theme of "the embodied experiences of Autistic teachers" is explicitly anchored in Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology (op cit. p. 11), or more precisely the reading Smith, Flowers and Larkin make of his *Phenomenology of Perception* ([1945] 2013): "the body shapes the fundamental character of our knowing about the world" (\[2009\] 2022 p. 15). This is manifest in the use of somatic and kinaesthetic metaphors by the participants. O'Neill and Kenny (2023) also make a link between Sartre's existential *becoming* and one of the participants' growth in self-awareness: her getting better at pre-empting meltdowns by paying attention to her embodied needs. Whilst *technically* valid (if the scope of Sartre's becoming is widened to encompass all self-growth), it is the most tenuous of all philosophical connections explicitly drawn in the article. Further iterations of the collection/analysis/review loop (see next) could have probed on *existential* personal growth: both becoming a teacher and realising one's autism are rich with existentialist *becoming*. # Hermeneutics IPA is at its core a hermeneutical endeavour, underpinned by the *hermeneutic circle*: the interpretation of text giving meaning that informs the interpretation of context, giving meaning that contextualise a new interpretation of the text. Elegantly, this applies at all scales Word/Sentence, Extract/Text, etc. (George, 2021). IPA fully acknowledges the subjectivity of the researcher, and, instead of seeing it at needing neutralised, it becomes another context from the text, with which the same interpretive back-and-forth occur (Eatough and Smith, 2017). IPA thus uses a *double hermeneutic*: “The researcher is trying to make sense of the participant trying to make sense of what is happening to them.” (Smith, Flowers, and Larkin, 2022 p. 3). Here again, O'Neill and Kenny reference the same hermeneutic philosophers as Smith, Flowers, and Larkin (2022): Schleiermacher, Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur, linking again all four to a set of methodological tools (2023, p. 5). Later in the same section on methods, tools of enquiry attributed to Schleiermacher and Gadamer get their place in the (wider) hermeneutic circle: >![[Hermeneutic Circle.png]] (ibid. p. 6). Whilst Heidegger's hermeneutics may be too abstract to offer meaningful method to a novice researcher, not so Ricoeur's. He coined the terms *'hermeneutics of suspicion'* ( 1974), referring to the critical interpretation of Nietzche, Marx, then Freud, in contrast to the *hermeneutics of empathy* of interpretational social sciences. For Ricoeur, "There is no unmediated self-understanding" and his method "mediates and negotiates rather than removes the conflict of interpretation" (Pellauer and Dauenhauer, 2024). This is made very explicit in Eatough and Smith (2017), one of the three sources on method O'Neill and Kenny cite: they illustrate with an example how the double hermeneutic in the dialogic sense (participant/researcher) should also be double in the dialectic sense (empathy/suspicion). Smith, Flower and Larkin, however, differ, stating "our questioning hermeneutics is clearly different from Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of suspicion" (2022, p. 30), which they equate to a "importing a reading from without \[the terms of the text produced by the participant\]" (ibid. p. 31). For Eatough and Smith, hermeneutics of suspicion "\[retain\] a focus on experience and subjective understanding but broadens the context to include the political sphere and extends analysis to include aspects of social theory." (2017 p. 25). They cite, as example, Langdrige's study on Gay fathers, which notablyoesn't identify as IPA, merely had transcripts "subjected to a hermeneutic phenomenological analysis" (2013) going back to van Mannen's pre-IPA methods ([1990] 2016). *Lens*, whilst it shines by the amount of (single-) empathy that its Autistic researcher brings to data collection and analysis, is entirely devoid of suspicion. Whilst supervision by Kenny notionally mitigate the risk of interpretive bias, this should have taken place via a dialectic process that, if it took place at all, is absent from the final text Indeed the *structural* incentives (for O'Neill to establish herself as an Autistic researcher of the autistic experience, for both to see their text published and cited...) may have unintentionally fostered a one-sided view. This is a painful point to make, as the lived experience of Autistic people, under the medical model and pathology paradigm, has long been regarded, if not *with suspicion*, certainly *without empathy* (Milton, 2012; Cage, Di Monaco and Newell, 2018; Fletcher-Watson and Happé, 2019; Botha, 2021; Perry _et al._, 2022; White, O’Neill and Griffin, 2024). Still, it is disappointing, maybe even *suspicious*, that O'Neill and Kenny didn't include Eatough and Smith's take on Ricoeurian hermeneutics in their analysis method. O'Neill herself will go on to compare the experience of autistic masking to African-American double-consciousness (Du Bois, [1903] 2019) and self-division (Fanon [1952] 2008), and liken disclosure of Autistic identity to coming out as LGBTQ+ (White, O’Neill and Griffin, 2024). As in race, gender and sexuality, autism as a field of study has roots and ramifications in the political sphere: it should, too, warrant suspicion in its hermeneutics. # (further) Methodological Critique It is good practice for research to acknowledge their philosophical grounding, but all the more so in IPA, which has little prescription for specific method, and leaves a great deal of latitude as long as its core principles (more philosophical than methodological) are abided by. As Eatough and Smith put it: > “ IPA encourages researchers to be imaginative and *flexible in the design and execution of a research study within the parameters of some clearly accessible guidelines.* [...]This means using tried-and-tested principles alongside a willingness to adapt these in the face of what research throws up– so *neither a rule-bound rigidity nor a methodological free-for-all.*” \[emphasis added\] (2017 p. 31) They note further that "This both/and position *speaks to the* *novice* as well as the more experienced researcher" \[emphasis added\] (ibid. p. 31); as such a novice, O'Neill was careful to preempt accusations of methodological free-for-all by dedicated a large portion of the published text to methods, citing and synthesising frameworks of validity for qualitative research (Yardley, 2008; Tracy, 2010). In O'Neill and Kenny's words, “Transparency and reflexivity rather than objectivity provide rigour to this process." (2023 p.6). When it comes to reflexivity, O'Neill and Kenny's analysis process is linear, not circular, with a single reflection step, at the very end. With such a process, reflections have less opportunity to feed back into the analysis. ![[IPA Analysis Chart.png]] (O'Neill and Kenny, 2023 p. 7) Contrast this with the IPA of the likes of Gillespie, whose reflective research diaries become part of the hermeneutic corpus (2019 p. 332): this section a good example of transparency *about* reflectivity, that clearly showcase the double hermeneutics without disclosing the content of private reflections. # Interpretativism The English term 'Interpret(at)ive' is a translation of the German *'Verstehende'*, from 'Verstehen' 'to understand'. *Verstehen* was first introduced, in History, by Johann Droysen, contrasting its method of 'understanding' to the 'explanation' ('*Erklarek*') of the natural sciences; but if the term has a 'father', it is perhaps Willhelm Dithley. For him, *Verstehen* is an hermeneutic exercise: that of interpretation; but he broadens the scope of hermeneutics, from theology, history, and literature, to all 'human sciences' (Dilthey, [1900] 1976). Hermeneutics are thus "the only necessary approach for studying and *understanding* the human world" [emphasis added] (Liashenko, 2018, p. 168). This model of the social world has three levels: Experience, Expression, Comprehension ('_Erlebnis_, _Ausdruck_, _Verstehen_') (Palmer, 1969; Tappan, 1997). Individuals will express their experiences, but it is hermeneutics that elevates those to comprehension (or miscomprehension). This is an explicit rejection of the positivism of Mills, Comte and Durkheim, for whom social reality is seen as the manifestation of impersonal, structural forces, that social sciences should seek to *explain* (Hewa and Herva, 1988). Dithley's *Verstehen* influenced many of his colleagues at the University of Berlin: Windelband, to whom we owe the term *'idiographic'* ([1894] 1998), Husserl, and Max Weber, who brings *Verstehen* to sociology - with credit shared by Georg Simmel, of whom Dithley was the doctoral supervisor - where it becomes "the understanding of subjective meaning of social action" (Hewa and Herva, 1988, p. 151). In addition to this 'contemporary' (*Aktuelles*) *Verstehen*, Weber speaks of an 'explanatory' (*erklärendes*) one - that is, he seeks to investigate the *motives* of social action as well as their subjective *meanings* (Ray, 2019). One of Weber's much commented upon quotes is that "one need not be Caesar in order to understand Caesar". This notion of understanding sometimes sees *Verstehende* translated as 'empathetic understanding': understanding is achieved through an hermeneutic of empathy. For Weber, understanding Caesar still require seeing things from his perspective, putting ourselves in his sandals. Optics and footwear, coincidentally, are two images Ciara, one of O'Neill's participants, is quoted using in the article. She asks for empathy - the lack of which contributes to to her isolation, wishing "for the non-Autistic members of her school community to 'get in our shoes.'"(O'Neill and Kenny, 2023 p. 13). But when it comes to perspective: "Being Autistic, you know, me seeing it from a different point of view, I saw things through a different lens." (Ciara, quoted in O'Neill and Kenny, 2023 p. 10). The Autistic perspective can, and should be *understood*, but this raise the question as to whether it can be *seen through* by neurotypical researchers, which hits at the very core of the rationale for Autistic-involved research. (Chown _et al._, 2017; Fletcher-Watson _et al._, 2019; Botha, 2021; Bottema-Beutel _et al._, 2021; Crane, Sesterka and den Houting, 2021; Pickard _et al._, 2022). Yet the Autistic perspective on autism shouldn't be the sole one, lest the understanding be solely empathetic and not critical. # Ontological Critique O'Neill and Kenny announce their constructivist epistemology, congruent with the social model of disability, but their "ontological understanding" is a choice, it need not follow from the epistemology. Interpretive epistemologies are compatible with ontological realism. For instance, Creswell and Plano-Clark write of *critical realism*: > "an integration of realist ontology (there is a real world that exists independently of our perceptions, theories, and constructions) with a constructivist epistemology (our understanding of this world is inevitably a construction built from our own perspectives and standpoint)." (2018 p. 40). Admittedly they write in the context of mixed methods research, but other, purely qualitative IPA studies in Education have explicitly stressed the realism of their approach; for instance Jeong and Othman, who explicitly reject the "postmodern paradigm" of other studies in the field of English for Academic Purposes, >"[who] claim that research findings are not what the researcher actually finds out, but what the researcher and participants co-constructed (e.g., Jacoby & Ochs, 1995). They also argue that *“reality” does not exist objectively, but is constructed as multiple subjective realities* (Hyland, 2009)” \[emphasis added \] (Jeong and Othman, 2016, p. 559) For them, conversely, reality's existence is independent of the researcher, whose work is to uncover objective reality; in this they refer to Husserl. Whilst the subjectivity of experience is the starting point of phenomenology, Husserl's own seminal phenomenology sought to approach the objective phenomenon. Yet, Husserl is the philosopher from whom Smith, Flowers and Larkin (2022) draw the *least*, mentioning him seemingly solely to give historical context to phenomenology. Whilst they take care not to explicitly tie IPA to any particular ontological framework, they see objective ontological claims as beside the scope of a phenomenological perspective. This argument is skilfully dismantled by Kukla, who argues against the necessary aperspectivity of objective findings, or indeed, onto the necessity of ontological objectivity even in subjective, perspectival findings. For her, “ontological objectivity is a non-optional epistemic ideal. We strive to perceive and reason properly in order that we might discover the facts as they really are as opposed to how they subjectively appear.” (Kukla, 2006, p. 90). # Conclusion The philosophical approach of *Lens* is made explicit foremost in its methodology, but also in its references to phenomenologist in the findings. Whilst its stated ontological position is an unacknowledged choice rather than, as it implies, a natural consequence of its epistemology, this may be down to an unfortunate choice of words. The explicit social constructivist epistemology underpins its social model of disability; it is paradoxical, however, that a study framed with the neurodiversity model only involved one allistic person, as supervisor. Methods used are the IPA of Smith, Flowers and Larkin ([2009] 2022) rather than the more critical take of Eatough and Smith (2017) - a defensible choice as the study extends only out to the microsystem of the school; although the text seems to claim to include the macro-system in its scope, but here again, this is down to a single diagram. Less defensible is the method seeming lack of reflection, or indeed the text's lack of transparency as to its reflectivity, indeed, *Lens* prefers to pre-empt limits and validity concerns by detailing methodological sources, rather than addressing them, reflectively, in a section before the conclusion. Those critical points do not invalidate the study, and some took a deeper review (and *suspicion* in interpretation) of IPA texts than can legitimately be expected of a first study by a researcher holding a senior teaching role and a running an educational consultancy! I look forward to more research by Claire O'Neill to be sure. # References Botha, M. (2021) ‘Academic, Activist, or Advocate? Angry, Entangled, and Emerging: A Critical Reflection on Autism Knowledge Production’, _Frontiers in Psychology_, 12, p. 727542. doi:[10.3389/fpsyg.2021.727542](https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.727542). 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