‘Visual clutter’ in the classroom: voices of students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Objectives

To date, there has been little qualitative research exploring how students interpret visual sensory input in the classroom. Research has found that seeking student voice has the capacity to act as a change agent for Educational Quality of Life (EQOL), in several aspects of educational decision-making. In light of this knowledge, this study endeavored to fill this gap in the educational research literature. In this research, we take a qualitative, deductive approach to exploring students’ interpretations of ‘visual clutter’ in the classroom, to seek to improve EQOL.

Methods

Through Arts-informed methodology, this study sought students’ interpretations of ‘visual clutter’ in the classroom. The study was conducted in three stages using photo elicitation, draw and talk, and semi-structured interviews.

Results

In seeking three students’ voices regarding their personal interpretations of ‘visual clutter’ in classrooms, light was shed on four themes: color palette, feature congestion, affordances, and spatial size, which were each shown to elicit negative emotional responses from the students. We analyzed the drawings of one child in depth as an exemplar for the qualitative methodology used.

Conclusion

Student voice is central to educational quality of life. In seeking student voice, students are given the opportunity to convey the scope of their adaptive responses to incoming visual input, thus providing personal context to support measures. In doing so, student voice is given meaning in another facet of educational decision-making. This can include implications for classroom design.

Introduction

Although formal Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) prevalence studies within Australia are sparse, research suggests that there has been an increase in parent reported diagnosis rates of ASD in recent years (Randall et al. 2016). These studies report that 2.5% of children born between 2004–2005 were diagnosed with ASD, as compared to 1.5% of children born between 1999–2000. These studies further suggest that the number of students diagnosed with ASD attending mainstream schools has risen proportionally (Randall et al. 2016).

With this increase, there has been a surge of professional development opportunities surrounding the topic of inclusive practices to cater for students with ASD (Odom et al. 2010). These opportunities are supported by a substantial body of quantitative research confirming clinical diagnosis and central characteristics of ASD, such as atypical sensory processing. Furthermore, such deductive research has focused heavily on the tri-directional effect of sensory motor stimulation in the classroom on students’ emotional, behavioral, and educational outcomes (Ashburner et al. 2008).

Atypical sensory processing of students with ASD is likely to have an impact in their learning environments. However, within current educational research, there is a lack of qualitative studies exploring how students with ASD interpret the effect of sensory stimulation in the classroom. More specifically, research is lacking in the area of students’ interpretations of their visual sensory input. The perceptions of students of what constitutes ‘visual clutter’, and its effect, have been neglected. Student voice is known to contribute to quality of life (Verdugo et al. 2012; Faragher & Brown, 2005; Schalock & Verdugo, 2014; Prunty, 2011; Shearer, 2010) and specifically educational quality of life (EQOL) (Faragher & Van Ommen 2017). Recognition of the value of student voice entails increased ability, and responsibility, to act, advocating strongly for future educational research to be grounded in interpretive and hermeneutic theory (Freeman, 2014).

It is for this reason that student voice became the focus of this study, in order to understand students’ interpretations of visual sensory input in classrooms. This represents a shift in discourse which aligns directly with Article 24 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with a Disability (United Nations, 2006). By taking a bottom up, inductive approach to this subject area, it is hoped that improvements in the EQOL of students with ASD will be pursued.

This study aimed to give voice to students regarding their interpretations of visual sensory input in the classroom, specifically, the idea of ‘visual clutter.’ Here, ‘visual clutter,’ is defined as the visual stimuli in a classroom that students perceive as being detrimental to their behavioral, emotional or educational well-being. In accordance with interpretive and semiotic theory, it was decided to allow the students involved in the study to express what ‘visual clutter’ meant for them personally, through an arts-informed approach, in order to prioritize student voice authentically and not limit the potential scope of interpretation. Therefore, the overarching aim of this study was to seek insight into students’ interpretations of ‘visual clutter’ in the classroom in order for student voice to further inform EQOL.

ASD and atypical sensory processing

The term ‘sensory processing’ may be defined as the way in which a person’s nervous system responds to incoming sensory information, and his/her subsequent behavioral responses to this input of stimuli (Ashburner et al. 2008; Lane et al. 2000). At present, it is known that it is more difficult for individuals with a diagnosis of ASD to regulate their sensory processing in order to prioritize competing stimuli within an environment (Sasson & Touchstone, 2014). As a result, the ability to concentrate solely on any one stimulus is also more difficult. According to the American Psychiatric Association, ‘atypical sensory processing’ is characterized by a person’s hyper- or hypoactive response to the competing input of visual, tactile, or auditory sensory stimuli (APA, 2013).

Recently, several studies and analyses have been grounded within a positivist paradigm to investigate atypical sensory processing as a common clinical characteristic of those diagnosed with ASD (Ashburner et al. 2008; Sasson & Touchstone, 2014; Stewart et al. 2016; Cléry et al. 2013). One such analysis conducted by Gerrard and Rugg (2009) supports a heterogeneous, neuroconstructivist model for atypical sensory processing as a characteristic of ASD. The analysis concluded that abnormalities in peripheral and central sensory processing are biological markers of ASD, which are further produced by emergent properties of the interaction between genetic, environmental, and behavioral systems.

In order to develop a deeper, deductive understanding of how the environmental system contributes to this production of atypical processing, Cléry et al. (2013) particularly scrutinized the role of visual difference in atypical sensory processing, finding that children with ASD detected visual changes in the non-social stimuli within their environment more rapidly than those without ASD, causing distress and induced hypersensitivity to incoming visual input.

Unfortunately, the nature of the social and physical design of classrooms often contributes to this very aversion. Within classroom environments, sensory input is rapidly changing and multimodal, with concurrent stimulation in several sensory modalities. One of the primary sensory modalities, is that of visual sensory input (Sasson & Touchstone, 2014). Explicitly supporting the idea that visual perceptual difference induces a hypersensitive reaction in children with ASD, Sasson and Touchstone (2014) extended this conclusion by using deductive measures to record students’ eye tracking of social and object stimuli in a classroom. It was found that the presence of competing, non-social stimuli in a classroom environment significantly affected the students’ social attention. Students were less able to focus their visual attention on the teacher in the room when there was competing visual input, such as wall decorations and toys. This difficulty in regulating social attention was found to be due to induced hypersensitivity in the students, in accordance with a hyperactive reaction.

Atypical sensory processing and associated behaviors

The hyper- or hypoactive reaction induced by difficulty in regulating visual sensory input eventually manifests into certain behaviors widely associated with ASD. Recently, Gaines and colleagues have explored the relationship of a number of theories to ASD (Gaines et al. 2016). Two of these theories with relevance to our research are the ‘Prospect and Refuge Theory’ (Appleton, 1975) and the ‘Theory of Affordance’ (Gibson, 1979).

The ‘Prospect and Refuge Theory’ (Appleton, 1975), describes the need of individuals to feel secure within the environment they reside in at any particular time. ‘Prospect’ means the environment has the capacity for the individual to observe within, and ‘refuge’ means the individual is able to hide from view and sensory input, thus providing for safety and security (Singh & Ellard, 2012). This theory is related to the concept of ‘previewing’ (Regnier & Denton, 2009), whereby individuals feel the need to assess or ‘preview’ a space before entering it, to ensure that the environment will meet their needs for ‘Prospect and Refuge.’

‘Prospect and Refuge Theory’ would suggest that when visual sensory input becomes overwhelming, causing distress and a hypersensitive reaction, students with ASD may engage in behaviors such as wanting to take ‘refuge’ from the overload of sensory input, before they can observe the environment (Gaines et al. 2016). However, if students are not offered an opportunity to preview and then take refuge from a space that does not meet their sensory processing needs, hypersensitivity can be heightened, resulting in visual behaviors, such as lateral glances and prolonged visual inspection, disengaging the students’ social attention (Hellendoorn et al. 2014). These visual behaviors may then culminate in challenging behaviors presenting within the classroom (Schilling & Schwartz, 2004), externally presenting as disruptiveness.

A second relevant theory, the ‘Theory of Affordance’ (Gibson, 1979), pertains to an individual’s need for the objects in an environment to have possibilities for action. In the context of a classroom, there would be the need for the visual environment to have ‘affordances’ for opportunity. This perceived interplay relation between the individual and the affordances of the visual elements of the environment has far reaching effects on visual sensory processing (Hellendoorn et al. 2014). With regard to ASD, the characteristic of atypical sensory processing lends itself to differences in perception of affordances within the environment (Hellendoorn, 2014), meaning that adaptive responses are often affected (Hellendoorn, 2014; Loveland, 1991; Atmodiwirjo, 2014). In situations where a student is unable to determine the affordances of an object within a classroom, and thus cannot respond adaptively to the visual stimuli, a hyper- or hypoactive reaction may be induced due to a breakdown in the interplay relation (Atmodiwirjo, 2014; Hellendoorn et al. 2014). Therefore, in order to mediate this reaction, it is important to take into account the scope of the individual student’s adaptive response in order to provide for appropriate affordances in visual design within the classroom. This can only be taken into account by hearing the student voice, which has not yet been sought within this aspect of educational research. Rather, the research landscape thus far has undertaken a top down, deductive approach to understanding atypical sensory processing, by quantitatively focusing on clinical diagnosis and subsequent behavior that is perceived as being undesirable within the classroom environment. This gap has remained despite other current qualitative works demonstrating the value in prioritizing student voice for improvements of EQOL.

Student voice in improving EQOL

Student voice is critical in order to help minimize hyper- and hypoactive reactions induced by overwhelming visual sensory input, and thus make improvements in EQOL. The opportunity to voice students’ perceptions and understand their experiences of ‘visual clutter’ in the classroom has the potential to act as a change agent for EQOL and reduce inappropriate behaviors, such as disruptiveness, in the classroom. However, behaviors can only be addressed once the internal, underlying causation has been voiced from students’ perspectives. Prior to undertaking this process, we argue the importance of doing so from the perspective of the Quality of Life (QOL) framework.

Verdugo et al. (2012) draw on the relationship between the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with a Disability (UNCRPD) (2006) and the framework of QOL, to promote the overall, personal development of individuals with a disability, including ASD. By using QOL as an overarching framework, the standards explicitly set by the UNCRPD for equality in areas such as education, health, habilitation and rehabilitation, and work and employment, are committed to being pursued. QOL frameworks detail factors, domains, and indicators, which cumulatively comprise the ways in which QOL for individuals with a disability can be promoted in direct accordance with the UNCRPD.

Article 24 of the UNCRPD details the rights of individuals with a disability, including ASD, to a fully inclusive education. The article further explains what ‘inclusive’ means in terms of education, and maintains that education needs to ensure ‘effective individualized support measures are provided in environments that maximize academic and social development, consistent with the goal of full inclusion’ (Article 24, para. 10).

To provide further, targeted detail regarding the positioning of such measures, Faragher and Van Ommen (2017) used the QOL framework as the basis to compose the emerging EQOL framework. It is this model that gives light to the social constructivism of the intrapersonal variability of EQOL and, in turn, school experience and student wellbeing. The framework comprises five domains that relate to overarching principles.

In light of this framework, the concept of sensory input, specifically visual sensory input, relates directly to the ‘physical resources’ indicator of the framework, which further speaks to the domain of ‘School Organization’, as the physical architecture of the classroom pertains directly to its organization. As indicated by the framework, student voice is a fundamental principle, contributing to EQOL across domains for students diagnosed with ASD, and thus goes beyond clinical diagnoses. Student voice acts as a change agent for EQOL, and allows for the sharing of individual perception that essentially reflects the quality of life the student experiences (Schalock & Verdugo, 2014), thus providing personal context for individualized support measures.

Other studies have demonstrated the value of prioritizing student voice for improving EQOL for students with ASD. Shearer (2010) found that maintaining open communication with the students within the school environment was imperative to the success of inclusive education.

Prunty (2011) highlighted the value of maintaining open communication with students, in order to enable them to make decisions regarding their education, specifically the construction of their Individual Education Plans (IEP). The study allowed students with a diagnosis of ASD the opportunity to express their views on the educational and social/emotional goals set by their IEP, thus giving individual agency over learning, in conjunction with teachers and parents.

Therefore, the value of student voice has been demonstrated in a wide range of educational research, suggesting that seeking student voice in other areas of educational decision-making holds the potential to improve the EQOL of students with ASD. Thus far, educational research has not yet provided a bottom up approach to qualitatively understanding students’ interpretations of ‘visual clutter.’ Therefore, in this research, we take a qualitative, deductive approach to exploring students’ interpretations of ‘visual clutter’ in the classroom, to seek to improve EQOL.

Methodology for a qualitative study – Arts informed research

Human sense making of a particular phenomenon is complex, and dependent on the intra-subjectivity of an individual’s experiences. In this way, reality, and EQOL, is constructed according to epistemological interpretation of ‘truth,’ according to the individual. This ‘truth’ can be understood through interpretivist theory, and the science and art of interpretation, that is, hermeneutic theory (Scholz, 2015). Through an interpretivist, hermeneutic lens, perspective is widened, and the aim is to understand individuals in their entirety, so as to avoid the fragmentation and scrutiny caused by an experimental approach (O’Donoghue, 2007). It is for this reason that a qualitative methodology of interpretation, as informed by interpretivist and hermeneutic theory, was chosen to conduct this research study, to wholly understand students’ individual interpretations of ‘visual clutter’ in the classroom.

An arts-informed methodology was deliberately selected to allow participants the opportunity to express their sense of self within the research domain. Arts-informed research, according to Brearley (2008), is underpinned by the epistemological premise that there are endless ways of experiencing, knowing and communicating, thus allowing participants the opportunity to express their individual ‘truth’ without limitation. In paying particular attention to the word ‘informed’, arts-informed research is distinguished by its purpose to inform the ways in which the research is undertaken (Brearley, 2008; Savin-Baden & Wimpenny, 2014), incorporating a multimodal approach to data collection. In terms of the research study at hand, the arts refer to the manner in which photo elicitation and drawings of the participants informed subsequent semi-structured interviews. In doing so, the multifaceted nature of arts-informed research ‘revealed a depth of understanding arguably not possible through the use of one semiotic system alone’ (Ewing & Hughes, 2008, p. 515).

The study was conducted at a primary school located on the west side of the city of Brisbane, Australia, with participation by two students in Year 4, and one student in Year 3, diagnosed with ASD. Age was not considered to be a variable in recruitment, considering atypical sensory processing is a characteristic of ASD present at any given age of diagnosis (APA, 2013). However, it was ensured that the students’ diagnosis did not include any accompanying intellectual or physical impairments, so as to limit potential variables interacting with atypical sensory processing as the salient characteristic.

To take account of the multifaceted nature of arts-informed research (Ewing & Hughes, 2008), the study was carried out in three sequentially defined phases, as discussed below.

Phase 1: photo elicitation

During the initial phase of research, the students engaged in a process of photo elicitation. Photo elicitation is based on the idea of introducing a photograph into a research interview, in order to trigger a response to a form of symbolic representation that would otherwise be inaccessible in an interview based solely on verbal cues (Harper, 2002; Pink, 2007).

Students were presented with three, unfamiliar images of classrooms featuring varying degrees of visual sensory input. Table 1 contains a description of each of the photographs.

Table 1. Description of the photographs shown to children.

Photo	Description
Classroom A	Classroom A has many types of furniture, including a couch, tables arranged in clusters with children’s plastic chairs, open shelving, cupboards and a chest of eight drawers. The open shelving is full of boxes and crates of various sizes and colors containing reading books, craft materials, board games, toys and plants. The walls are decorated with posters and features such as three large trees made from paper. The floor is carpeted in gray and there is a large mat showing a lily pond. Stuffed toys are arranged on the floor, including a tiger and three large frogs. Gray cushions are on the floor and a green one is on the couch, covered in a brown, green and red tartan pattern. On top of the cupboards are many boxes and miscellaneous materials such as toys and plants
Classroom B	Classroom B has a white ceiling with fluorescent lighting and tiles in a grid pattern. The walls and floor are white. There are two orange doors to the left that are partially obscured by half height shelving. There is a brown mat on the floor under a table with five chairs. The mat is surrounded on three sides by the shelving that contains crates. On the left, the crates are blue, at the rear, the top shelf are lime green, the middle row of four are purple and the bottom shelf are light blue. On the right there is a shelving unit with small containers, all light blue. On top of the shelving there are blue crates, all neatly arranged, with no objects within them visible. The arrangement of the shelving makes a corridor to the class door and separates off the classroom area. On the walls, there is a whiteboard, partially obscured by the shelving and a noticeboard. Above the whiteboard, there is an alphabet chart and a flag
Classroom C	Classroom C depicts haphazard arrangement of furniture, decorations and resources. Paper, books, drawing equipment, boxes and other material are randomly spread on the floor amongst the furniture. Individual desks (painted in a range of colors and writing) and chairs (black and yellow) are on wheels. There is no apparent pattern to the furniture arrangement. The floor tiles are brown and tan. The window curtains are blue and purple floral. The walls are wood paneling covered with pictures, calendars, certificates, and other paper. The desks are covered in stacks of books, plastic boxes, crates, and other paper and equipment

Students were given time to observe the images, in order to allow the elicitation process to ‘evoke deeper elements of human consciousness than words’ (Harper, 2002, p. 13). Unfamiliar images of classrooms were chosen to ensure that the students would not associate the images with prior experiences or emotions, but rather, would view the classroom impartially with a sole focus on its visual sensory input. By engaging in this photo elicitation process, ‘representations that are interpreted in terms of different understandings of reality’ (Pink, 2007, p. 23) were able to inform the remainder of the research process.

Chosen images of classrooms varied in degrees of visual sensory input, in terms of color, orderliness, and feature congestion. The images allowed for individual interpretation regarding ‘visual clutter’ to be explored accounting for the multifaceted nature of the visual sensory input. This gave students the agency to build their understanding of what ‘visual clutter’ means to them, without a pre-assigned definition.

Phase 2: draw and talk

In phase two, students undertook a draw and talk process. Draw and talk is a child-centered approach whereby students draw an image to represent a response to a situation studied (Savin-Baden & Wimpenny, 2014), which, in turn, acts as an esthetic springboard for semi-structured interviews. The process of drawing to represent a response is noted in wider disability research (O’Farrell, 2017; Hackett et al. 2017), and specifically with regard to ASD (Durrani, 2014; Gazeas, 2015; Van Lith et al. 2017; Malchiodi, 2014; Martin, 2011). This research indicates that the process of art therapy in drawing allows students with ASD an alternative means to communicate the way they interpret particular phenomena to the outer world that does not rely on social interaction. Furthermore, the visual nature of art therapy can support the process of articulating feelings in words, which can then translate into a conversation (Malchiodi, 2014; Martin, 2011).

Grounded in the credibility of this wider research, each of the students in the study were asked to draw three pictures in direct response to the three images shown during the photo elicitation phase, depicting how they would feel in each classroom environment. The Draw and Talk phase was an important addition to the research methodology as it provided a way to encourage a connection between the interviewer and the students. It also served as an important mechanism to assist the children to show their response firstly without words and later in the interviews explained below, with words. Indeed, art has been shown to be an alternative form of communication for students with ASD (Gazeas, 2015). In this paper, we discuss the set of drawings of one of the students, we have called Helen.

Phase 3: semi-structured interviews

During the semi-structured interviews, a new realm of dialog was entered into between the interviewer and the students. In response to the students’ drawings, semi-structured interviews took place in accordance with wider disability discourse, prioritizing student voice (Faragher & Van Ommen, 2017). The conversations were fluid in nature to ensure that the interviews were student led and their voices foremost (Prunty, 2011; Wilson, 2013; Freeman & Mathison, 2009). Students were asked questions related to their drawings to clarify points the students were making. Therefore, participants’ voices were given value, and provided insight into their interpretations of a field that had previously been dominated by experimental studies (Humphrey & Parkinson, 2006).

Methods of data analysis

The three phases of the Arts-informed methodology led to rich data. Fundamental to the value of qualitative research is thorough analysis of the data. In this section, we describe the methods undertaken to analyze the student drawings and the interviews.

Student drawings

As previously established, using draw and talk as one aspect of qualitative methodology holds great value as a means of establishing an esthetic, semiotic springboard for communication, and providing a stimulus for student voice (Savin-Baden & Wimpenny, 2014; Gazeas, 2015; Van Lith et al. 2017; Durrani, 2014; Malchiodi, 2014; Martin, 2011). However, in order to value the drawings authentically as a means of communication in and of themselves, it is imperative to analyze students’ drawings through a hermeneutic framework of their own, in accordance with the semiotics of interpretation. By doing so, the artworks are placed at the center of the analysis, which deems drawing as an innate by-product of children’s self-expression (Quaglia et al. 2015). We acknowledge that this is an emerging field and so our analysis is undertaken within frameworks of previous research that are still being studied and developed. Further considerations of the limitations of this approach are addressed in the Discussion section of this paper.

In considering this need to authentically value the drawings as communication, Adoniou’s (2014) framework for analysis of children’s drawings was used to study the pieces of artwork created by the students during the ‘draw and talk’ phase of the study. Our research represents an extension of the framework to the analysis of drawings by students with ASD, based on drawing analysis research in the context of ASD. The framework comprises a three domain system for analyzing student artwork created specifically with the purpose to instruct or explain. The three domains used by the framework include ideational (field), interpersonal (tenor), and textual (mode), which are further explained in Table 2.

Table 2. Adoniou’s framework for analyzing children’s drawings (2014, p. 91).

Domain	Description
Ideational (field)	Refers to the visual construction of the events, the objects and participants involved in the image, and the circumstances in which they occur
Interpersonal (tenor)	Refers to the visual resources used to communicate the relationship between participants within the image but also the relationship between creator and the viewer
Textual (mode)	Refers to the tools used to cohere elements within the image in order to realize the intended message

Adoniou’s framework was originally designed to instruct or explain the completion of a task. Therefore, in order to use the framework to analyze students’ personal interpretations of ‘visual clutter,’ some adaptation was required to the ideational (field) domain, as well as the interpersonal (tenor) domain. The ideational (field) domain was adapted to address the representation of the participants, objects and captions within the drawing, as opposed to the events captured. Therefore, the emotional representations of the participants within the image (as analyzed according to the approaches of researchers such as Quaglia et al. 2015) are addressed, as well as the objects and captions that support these representations. This part/whole relationship thus comprises elements that are identifiable in themselves, but contribute to an overall message conveyed by the participant (Unsworth, 2001, p. 80).

The interpersonal (tenor) domain was adapted to encompass the visual resources used to convey the relationship between the participant in the image and the surrounding space (each drawing was a self-portrait showing the child’s reaction to the different classrooms), as well as the relationship between the image and the viewer. This adaptation differs from analyzing the relationship between multiple participants within the image as a task develops, as detailed in the original framework. In adapting the framework in this way, the positioning of the participant within the drawing in relation to the paper is addressed, as well as the attitude to involvement in the concept realized through frontal or oblique views of the drawing, through the viewer’s perception.

The textual (mode) domain was not adapted, as this part of the framework addresses the physical tools students used to convey their message, such as the means used to complete the drawing and the colors selected in doing so, elements of analysis consistent with the study at hand. The three domains and relevant adaptations are detailed in Table 3.

Table 3. Adaptation of Adoniou’s framework for analyzing children’s drawings.

Domain	Description
Ideational (field)	Refers to the visual construction of the participants, objects and captions within the image, and their representation
Interpersonal (tenor)	Refers to the visual resources used to communicate the relationship between the participant and the surrounding space but also the relationship between creator and the viewer
Textual (mode)	Refers to the tools used to cohere elements within the image in order to realize the intended message

Therefore, the students’ drawings were analyzed through the adapted framework in order to value the artworks as their own semiotic means of communication. By doing so, the viewer enters into a dialogue with the artwork, and the opportunity for deeper insight through the semi-structured interviews is subsequently available, through a participant-centered approach (Freeman, 2014). The analysis of the students’ artworks thereby acted as the esthetic springboard for conversation, in aiding students to express themselves through an alternative means of communication (Quaglia et al. 2015).

Methods of analysis of semi-structured interviews

The realm of dialogue entered into during the semi-structured interviews was analyzed in a manner that did not seek to reduce the data, but worked to distil it (Charmaz, 2014). To achieve this, the semi-structured interviews were coded in order to then shed light on the main themes that arose throughout. By doing so, students’ interpretations of ‘visual clutter’ in the classroom were captured through salient, evocative comments. The coding then allowed interpretation to transcend the participant’s individual ‘reality’ (Saldaña, 2009), and to understand part of the EQOL he or she experienced. The codes were analyzed for the ‘subtle and tacit processes’ (Rossman & Rallis, 2012, p.282) that formed emergent themes from the data. These themes shed further light on the elements of ‘visual clutter’ within the classrooms that students perceived as being detrimental to their EQOL, in direct response to the emotional construction of their interpretations shown in their artworks.

Reflection on reflexivity

Framework analysis and coding, in and of themselves, are an invitation to engage hermeneutically in students’ interpretations of ‘visual clutter’ in the classroom. In turn, it is ethically imperative to consider the researchers’ role in the research process, and consequently discuss how the interactions between the researchers, and the participants, were bi-directional interactions that were context-dependent and context-renewing (Mann, 2016). This role and context subsequently affects the hermeneutical analysis of the interactions, in terms of the researchers’ own positioning. Therefore, in order to ensure transparency of the study, an explicit reflection on the researchers’ journey of reflexivity throughout this study has been included in the data analysis.

Analysis of results

Analysis of student drawings

In order to develop a deeper interpretive understanding of the nature of the students’ drawings and subsequent interpretations of ‘visual clutter’ in the classroom, three drawings from one student, ‘Helen’ were analyzed. Figures 1, 2 and 3 show Helen’s drawings in response to Classrooms A, B, and C, respectively.

Figure 1.

Helen’s drawing in response to Classroom A

Figure 2.

Helen’s drawing in response to Classroom B

Figure 3.

Helen’s drawing in response to Classroom C

These drawings have been analyzed through Adoniou’s adapted framework (see Table 3) using understandings of art interpretations developed by researchers such as Runion (2017) and Quaglia et al. (2015). In extrapolating that research to participants with ASD, our analysis of the drawings connects research on visual perception and ASD in a new way. These drawings were springboards for conversations through which greater understanding of the feelings expressed by the children were elucidated. The combination of drawing analysis and interview conversations strengthens the trustworthiness of the use of the technique with students with ASD.

Table 4 presents the analysis of the student’s response to Classroom A in the ideational, interpersonal and textual domains. Our analysis is hermeneutic and influenced by our interpretation. The use of the drawings as a springboard to conversation with a student who has difficulty expressing emotion is an important purpose of this approach. The conversations with the student allow a clarification of the interpretation of the drawings and indicate support for the methodology.

Table 4. Analysis of drawing of Classroom A.

Ideational (field)	The participant in the image has been drawn to depict a full frontal body, which Helen has clearly constructed to represent herself within the image. The facial expression is represented by an open mouth, accompanied by red cheeks. The image of the participant is captioned with the words ‘stressed and angry’, to convey strong feeling
Interpersonal (tenor)	The image is positioned in the center of a portrait view page, occupying most of the space within the page, as the white space acts only as a backdrop. The participant within the image has been configured at a frontal view, whereas the accompanying words and exclamation mark have been configured at a slightly oblique view
Textual (mode)	Green, black, and red coloring pencils have been utilized as the tools to cohere all elements within the image

Confusion is suggested in drawing 1 by the construction of a slightly open mouth, signifying the thought process (Runion, 2017). The caption ‘stressed and angry’ indicates Helen’s strong emotional response to classroom A and provides support for her difficulty in regulating the visual sensory input within the environment. Helen indicates that this difficulty has led to emotions of frustration and anger, thus affecting her EQOL.

The use of color in the drawing is significant. The decision to use two colors, green and red, adds to evidence for strong emotions as research has found that red is the main color children use to communicate personal experiences of mixed emotions (Burkitt & Watling, 2013). The use of green as well suggests her confusion towards Classroom A, which is later confirmed in the conversation.

In Table 5, the analysis of the drawing in response to Classroom B is given.

Table 5. Analysis of drawing of Classroom B.

Ideational (field)	The participant in the image has been drawn to depict a full frontal body, which Helen has clearly constructed to represent herself within the image. The facial expression is represented by a shaky line as the mouth, accompanied by a furrowed brow. The image of the participant is captioned with the word ‘sick,’ to convey further meaning of feeling, as well as an exclamation mark to emphasize this meaning
Interpersonal (tenor)	The image is positioned in the center of a portrait view page, occupying most of the space within the page, as the white space acts only as a backdrop. The participant within the image has been configured at a frontal view, whereas the accompanying words and exclamation mark have been configured at a slightly oblique view
Textual (mode)	Green, black and red coloring pencils have been utilized as the tools to cohere all elements within the image

Helen’s drawing conveys ill feeling, potentially originating from the emotions of unsettledness and anxiety (Crawford et al. 2012; Burkitt et al. 2003; Burkitt & Watling, 2013; Jue & Kwon, 2013). The emotional perception of the participant can be shown by the facial expression, representing the mouth as a shaky line, accompanied by red eyes and a furrowed brow, suggesting unsettledness and anxiety (Unsworth, 2001).

The caption ‘sick’ sheds further light on Helen’s interpretation of Classroom B, and provides additional support for the interpretation of the anxious facial expression portrayed. The colors chosen by Helen to convey the textual mode speak deeply of this interpretation, as the colors red and black are associated with strong emotions of fear and worry, while the color green is often used to symbolize uneasiness and ill feeling (Crawford et al. 2012; Burkitt et al. 2003; Burkitt & Watling, 2013; Jue & Kwon, 2013).

Table 6 gives the analysis of the drawing response to Classroom C

Table 6. Analysis of drawing of Classroom C.

Ideational (field)	The participant in the image has been drawn to depict a full frontal body, which Helen has clearly constructed to represent herself within the image. The facial expression is represented by a dramatically curving line as the mouth, accompanied by eyes drawn at a slightly oblique view. The image of the participant is captioned with the words ‘safted up’, which Helen clarified as reading ‘stuffed up,’ to convey further meaning of feeling, as well as two exclamation marks to emphasize this meaning on the opposite side of the page. The top of the page also features jagged lines surrounding the participant’s head
Interpersonal (tenor)	The image is positioned in the center of a portrait view page, occupying most of the space within the page, as the white space acts only as a backdrop. The participant within the image has been configured at a frontal view, whereas the accompanying words and exclamation mark have been configured at a dramatically oblique view
Textual (mode)	Blue and red coloring pencils have been utilized as the tools to combine all elements within the image. The style of the drawing is clearly less structured than the previous two images, composed of more jagged line strokes

The response indicates feelings of sadness and confusion (Malchiodi, 2014). The depiction of the dramatically curving mouth line suggests confusion of emotion, as no clearly defined expression has been created. This confusion is further supported by the jagged lines surrounding the participant’s head, which appear to be indicative of unclear thoughts overwhelming the participant. Helen’s decision to use blue and red is further indicative of her emotional response to Classroom C. The color blue is commonly associated with feelings of sadness and depression (Malchiodi, 2014), while red, as noted previously, indicates feelings of strong mixed emotions.

The caption ‘safted up,’ which was later explained by Helen to be read as ‘stuffed up’, refers to an emotional state of anger, sadness, and/or fear (Wesson & Salmon, 2001). This interpretation was later supported by Helen during her interview when she stated that the facial expression was a ‘mixed face’ (Interview 2, June 14, 2017), which she drew because ‘in my mind it’s not clear’ (Interview 2, June 14, 2017), when referring to her emotional state in response to Classroom C. It is important to recognize that the interpretation of the drawing based on earlier research has been affirmed in the interviews, offering the potential for the use of Arts-informed methodology to understand the responses of children with ASD.

Helen’s drawings – a set

By creating artworks that portray a negative reaction to each of the classrooms, Helen constructs a diverse interpretation of ‘visual clutter,’ as each of the rooms presents varied degrees of visual sensory input. In doing so, the process of draw and talk offers extended semiotic support for seeking student voice. Furthermore, engaging in this Arts-informed methodology allowed for deeper insight to be gained through the semi-structured interviews. It is to be noted that the interviews afforded the opportunity for the student to explain her drawings. In addition, the interviews served as a source of evidence in support of the analysis of the drawings. The analysis was undertaken based on findings from research with participants with and without ASD. The student’s confirmation of the meaning of the drawings lends support to the veracity of the approach in this context.

Analysis of semi-structured interviews

In this paper, we exemplified findings from a larger study by a detailed discussion of Helen’s drawings. The interviews conducted in direct response to the drawings were coded and thematically analyzed to provide further insight into the students’ interpretations of ‘visual clutter.’ The themes that arose throughout the interviews with each of the three students, Lily, Harry, and Helen, have been listed and discussed below, so as to provide individualized, yet holistic interpretation of ‘visual clutter’ from the perspectives of these students. The themes have been classified as Color Palette, Feature Congestion, Affordances, and Spatial Size.

Color palette

The color palette of a classroom was a consistent theme raised by each student, in relation to Classroom A, Classroom B and Classroom C. Each student expressed the desire for the color palette of the rooms to consist of ‘calming colours,’ which they identified as being shades of brown and white. This is partially consistent with Grandgeorge and Masataka (2016), who found that color preference of children with ASD in their study to be brown and green.

Students also expressed the view that an environment that is too colorful can be distracting, as one student stated in relation to Classroom A: ‘mmmm, it’s colourful but…some things that are too colourful can be too distracting lots of times’ (Interview transcript 1, Lily, June 12, 2017). Similarly, another student compared Classroom B to Classroom A by saying that ‘it’s not as colourful…a lot less distracting…because it has more white space’ (Interview 3, Harry, June 14, 2017). The students’ apparent aversion to the colors featured in Classroom A may stem from a hypersensitive reaction to the shades of blue, red and purple that are found throughout the room (Hellendoorn et al. 2014; Grandgeorge & Masataka, 2016). Because of this aversion, the room could present as being difficult to bear for students with ASD.

Helen made a comment during her interview that changing the color palette of the classroom to shades of white and brown ‘would make me not feel sick…and be like, in one space instead of the others’ (Interview 2, Helen, June 14, 2017). This comment particularly lends support to Helen’s hypersensitive reaction to Classroom A, as hypersensitivity induces anxiety, which in turn can cause the student to feel nauseous or sick (Tarbell et al. 2014). Moreover, Helen’s comment that a calmer color palette would help her to ‘be in one space instead of the others’ may be a reflection of enhanced sensitivity to different dimensions of color in ASD (Hadad et al. 2017). A consistent color palette would limit such enhanced multi-dimensional perception and may help Helen to remain grounded in one space.

Feature congestion

The crowding of decorations, and features such as student work, displayed in the classrooms was also a recurrent theme drawn from the interviews with the three students. Each student individually observed that Classroom A and Classroom C were ‘a bit too crowded,’ which led to the conclusion that the two spaces were, in Helen’s words, ‘not tidy.’ With regard to Classroom A in particular, it would appear that despite the classroom’s orderly nature, the feature congestion throughout the room lends to an interpretation of untidiness from the students’ perspectives. This perception may be a further reflection of a hypersensitive reaction to the environment in the students’ struggling to regulate the overwhelming degree of incoming visual sensory input (Ashburner et al. 2008; Hellendoorn et al. 2014). This explanation is supported by the students’ apparent preference for Classroom B as one student noted, ‘there’s no hanging things on the walls’ (Interview 3, Harry, June 14, 2017), referring to the decoration of student work hanging from the ceiling of Classroom A.

The aversion to the decorations and displayed features of student work was supported by Helen, who insisted that in Classroom A, she would not have liked ‘a lot of things hanging up…I would keep it clean’ (Interview 2, Helen, June 14, 2017). However, one student did comment that ‘a rocket to test something for science’ (Interview 3, Harry, June 14, 2017) would be an acceptable feature to display in the room. This comment speaks further of the ‘Theory of Affordance’ (Gibson, 1979), as discussed in the following section.

Affordances

Harry’s desire that he would like to see a rocket displayed in the classroom is reflective of his desire for the visual stimuli in the classroom to have possibilities for affordances, such as to test a hypothesis. The students also discussed the arrangement of furniture and other classroom features in terms of affordances for learning.

Harry expressed concern regarding the layout of Classroom B, in terms of the decorations on the whiteboard and the positioning of the furniture. Harry maintained that ‘it would be hard to learn because the whiteboard is covered up’ (Interview 3, Harry, June 14, 2017) and stated ‘if I was like working here, then I couldn’t see what the teacher was doing’ (Interview 3, Harry, June 14, 2017), as he gestured to the table in the foreground of the image. In expressing these concerns, Harry indicated that the affordances of Classroom B were limited by its arrangement, which can have far reaching effects on visual sensory processing, as the interplay relation between the individual, and the affordances of the visual elements of the room, has broken down (Hellendoorn et al. 2014).

Helen also commented on the classroom design, ‘there’s too much wide and there’s too much space…and things are there and there, and you have to walk through things to go places’ (Interview 2, Helen, June 14, 2017), as she gestured to the book shelves positioned in Classroom B. It would thus appear that Helen’s individual adaptive response is dependent on the affordances of the visual elements of the classroom allowing for movement throughout the room to be undisrupted by the arrangement of furniture. By making this comment, Helen provides individualized measures for the scope of her visual adaptive response (Hellendoorn, 2014; Atmodiwirjo, 2014).

Harry resolved that he would rearrange the furniture to suit his learning needs, by shifting the bookshelves to the sides of the room, removing the decorations from the whiteboard, and shifting all working tables to be positioned directly in front of the clear whiteboard. By doing so, Harry was seemingly satisfied that Classroom B would then ‘be a really good learning classroom’ (Interview 3, Harry, June 14, 2017), as his needs would be met for the visual stimuli in the room to have designed affordances. Thus individual adaptive response is dependent on the affordances of the classroom environment being designed in a manner that is conducive to maintaining social attention (Hellendoorn, 2014; Atmodiwirjo, 2014). By voicing that he would like to rearrange the furniture in order to see the teacher without distraction or obstruction to his view, Harry provides individualized measures for the scope of his visual adaptive response.

Spatial size

A noted above, Helen referred to the width of the room. The spatial size of a classroom is directly related to ‘Prospect and Refuge Theory’ (Appleton, 1975), as the size of a classroom pertains to its capacity to provide for ‘prospect’ and to subsequently take ‘refuge.’ Helen’s comment regarding Classroom B ‘having too much wide and too much space’ (Interview 2, Helen, June 14, 2017), may be indicative of her desire for ‘prospect’ within the environment. An environment that is interpreted as being ‘too wide’ from the perspective of the individual does not allow for effective observation of the entire space, at any one time (Gaines et al. 2016; Singh & Ellard, 2012). Helen expressed her desire to ‘make it [the classroom] a bit smaller, like that small’ (Interview 2, Helen, June 14, 2017), as she demonstrated by outlining approximately half of Classroom B to decrease in size. She wants the classroom to be smaller in order to wholly and effectively observe the visual stimuli. This expression may also be reflective of Helen’s need for an additional, shallow, closed in space, to be created within the classroom itself (Gaines et al. 2016). This space would allow Helen to take ‘refuge’ from the visual sensory input within Classroom B (Gaines et al. 2016; Singh & Ellard, 2012), which she had previously indicated through her drawing, made her feel sick. Therefore, creating such a space for Helen has the potential to meet her needs for ‘Prospect and Refuge,’ and thus aid in her visual regulation and adaptive responses to the classroom environment.

It is important to note that Helen was the only student who raised the spatial size of the classroom during the interviews. Despite this theme being raised in one interview alone, it could not be disqualified as its pure nature sheds light on the importance of seeking individualized measures of support, as opposed to measures that have been established on the blanket basis of diagnosis. By seeking student voice, individualized measures of support are given personal context and become truly applicable to the individual student, as their voice has been given meaning.

Discussion

Flowing from the analysis of data arising from arts-informed methodology, we reflect on aspects of our research that suggest implications for practice of research and for teaching, while acknowledging the limitations of the methodology.

Limitations

The methodology adopted in the research has been used to elicit responses from the participating children. Their views provide an indication of how some children might experience their classrooms and that those perceptions may be totally different to other children in the class and indeed, to their teacher. The critical importance of listening to individual students and being responsive to their needs is clear. We discuss the challenge this raises for a classroom teacher below.

A limitation in the use of Arts-based methodology should be noted. Analysis in this study has been largely based on prior research from typically developing children, rather than children with ASD. It is not known if children who have impairments in social interactions (a characteristic feature of ASD (Moss, Howlin & Oliver, 2012)) convey feelings of emotions in the same way as typically developing children. This could be a fruitful avenue of future research. In the meantime, therefore, our discussion of the interpretation of the children’s drawings is tentative. However, confirmation of interpretation provided in the interview lends support that the interpretation is applicable for children with ASD. The benefit for conversation stimulus in the interview phase was powerful and lends support to the potential for classroom use where teachers can elicit the views of students about a space where they will spend significant time.

Reflection on reflexivity

The qualitative data collected during this study are representative of an inter- and intra-personal journey, between researcher and student. In traveling this journey, the data collected do not call for objective truths to be drawn, but rather, are representative of one aspect of the subjective nature of human sense making (Symon & Cassell, 2012). Initially, when beginning this research project, the researchers had a pre-conceived idea of their own definitions of ‘visual clutter’ and how they personally interpreted its effect, as a result of personal lived experiences through social constructivism. Through this positioning, three photographs of classrooms were chosen as representing varying degrees of ‘visual clutter.’ This selection aligned with the researchers’ personal reality of what they believed constituted a ‘cluttered’ classroom, and what did not. In doing so, personal interpretations of ‘visual clutter’ were not independent of the research process, but rather formed a pre-understanding of intra-personal reality. However, as the research developed, the students transcended this pre-conception with their personal interpretations, thus bringing together multiple truths, resulting in the emergent themes drawn from the semi-structured interviews. In this way, prior knowledge, experience, and new knowledge interacted to compose a reflexive narrative through this research study, which has added to emerging practical theories within the education research landscape (Symon & Cassell, 2012) regarding the value of student voice.

It is also understood that the interactions with the students were context-dependent and context-renewing (Mann, 2016). The interactions were context-dependent in the cultural and social constructs of where the research took place, that is, the school environment. The students’ interpretations of ‘visual clutter’ were dependent on the context of their experiences of classrooms within the organization of the school, and how they subsequently expressed these interpretations, as shaped by the school pedagogy (Faragher & Van Ommen, 2017). Further, the interactions were dependent on the constructs of the researchers’ relationships with the students, in terms of the relation of power. It is acknowledged that when researching with children, the position of the researcher inevitably leads to elevation of authority, due to age difference and perception of ‘teacher status,’ which in turn contributes to the interactions throughout the research. However, questioning this construct and working to reverse this role of power through student-led methods reflexively brings about change, leading to context renewal. As the relationships with the students developed through each phase of the research process, the dynamics were gradually renewed by ensuring that the students’ voices became dominant. This renewal was essential to consider the reflexive understandings of the dynamics at play throughout the semi-structured interviews, in further contributing to personal renewal of reality.

Implications

The research demonstrates an application of an Arts-informed methodology that was used to uncover the perspective of the learners in this study. It highlights the diversity of views that can sensitize teachers to an issue. Rather than being an approach for teachers to adopt themselves, the findings of the research provide insights for teachers. Teachers are used to observing classroom behavior and the technique of inviting students to respond through photo elicitation, drawing and conversation could be developed as part of their practice allowing them to gain greater understanding of their students’ perceptions. The potential is there to use this technique for enhancing the EQOL of all in the class as discussed in the following section.

Educational quality of life

This research becomes significant when thought of in terms of its overall purpose, that is, implications for educational quality of life. The EQOL framework emphasizes objective and subjective aspects are central to educational quality of life. In doing so, the tacit processes of the framework imply that ‘effective individualized support measures…that maximize academic and social development, consistent with the goal of full inclusion’ (UNCRPD para. 10), must be considered as subjective according to the individual student. Student voice is of central importance when investigating EQOL.

In seeking student voice throughout this study, it was found that ‘visual clutter’ extends beyond clinical definition, and needs to be understood from the personal interpretations of students. These interpretations shed light on four separate, yet interconnected themes that not only defined what ‘visual clutter’ personally constituted for the students, but also how they emotionally interpreted its effect. By doing so, it became clear that the color palette, feature congestion, affordances, and spatial size were elements of a classroom environment that held the capacity to impinge on the EQOL of the students, resulting in negative emotions and subsequent responses, as depicted in the students’ drawings.

Therefore, providing individualized measures of support, whereby individual adaptive responses to visual sensory stimuli are taken into account through student voice, has the capacity to improve the EQOL of students by creating environments that are ‘really good learning classroom[s]’ (Interview 3, Harry, June 14, 2017).

Classroom design

Listening to student voice about their interpretations of ‘visual clutter’ in the classroom can lead to implications for classroom design. In doing so, context is provided for individualized support measures in relation to the scope of the individual students’ adaptive response to incoming visual stimuli in the classroom, as voiced by the students themselves. Classrooms, in return, can become spaces that in and of themselves, promote the EQOL of students with ASD, as opposed to being a physical barrier to their inclusion. Once the physical design of the room itself is conducive to inclusion, inclusive pedagogies are more able to be effectively implemented, as the surrounding environment does not impinge on students’ wellbeing and responses to the classroom.

Concluding remarks

Reflecting on our initial views of classroom visual clutter, we recognize the differences held by the students. As teachers, we were confronted by the notion that classrooms we have established in the past and considered to be warm, inviting, and stimulating places of learning could have been distressing to some of our students. We also expect that other students found our classrooms to be just as we had planned. Balancing the needs of diverse learners is the challenge and opportunity of teaching in inclusive settings. Taking account of student voice through listening to their views of their classroom is important. Children spend the majority of their day in these spaces and their perceptions influence their EQOL. When competing strong perceptions are uncovered, for example one child detesting the ‘book corner’ while another finding it to be their favorite space, a compromise might be reached where part of the room is decorated in one style and other spaces differently.

Therefore, by allowing students the opportunity to define what ‘visual clutter’ means to them, and the subsequent scope of their adaptive responses, student voice is given meaning in another facet of educational decision-making. It is hoped that such an approach to understanding students’ interpretations of visual sensory input in classrooms will also be adopted in other educational settings, in order to provide extended opportunity for improved EQOL for students with ASD.

Contributors

HZ conceived and designed the study, obtained ethics approval, analysed the data, wrote the article in part and revised the article. RF designed the study in part, supervised analysis of the data, wrote the article in part and revised the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.