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Over the past decade, many studies have investigated peer support between neurotypical and neurodivergent children. Less is known about how autistic children support each other in educational contexts, especially in basic education, where child-adult interactions are still predominant. This study aims to investigate whether and how autistic children supported each other in small-group discussions in the first years of basic education. This paper focused on unraveling the communication structures of these supportive events, aiming to understand further how autistic children make sense of social interactions and intersubjective processes that require peer support.

Building on conversation analysis methods, this paper analyzed the transcripts of the small-group discussions, identifying and analyzing the construction of support in children’s dialogues. Nine Finnish children (7–10 years old) attending mainstream school in Finland under intensified support in part-time special classrooms participated in this study. The study adopted a specific method called Idea Diary to frame the small-group discussions. The teacher guided the conversations, providing a dynamic structure for children’s interactions, but students were encouraged to interact among themselves. This paper recorded 11 sessions within the six-month implementation of the Idea Diary, totaling 240 min of data.

Results show that the children recognized situations where other children needed support in interactions and intervened in ways that promoted the continuation of the conversation and the clarification of ideas. Autistic children were sensitive to peers’ unspoken needs, capable of identifying subtle nuances of conversation dynamics and able to express support through comments and questions during the small-group discussions.

This study provides insights into the understudied phenomenon of peer support among autistic children in small-group discussions. It contributes to the growing corpus of research dedicated to exploring and revealing social competencies among autistic people. It discusses implications for developing educational practices that foster social interactions respecting the quality of autistic interactions and the interests of autistic students.

This study aims at presenting an analysis of a Change Laboratory conducted with the personnel of a youth supported housing unit for clients with a history or at risk of homelessness. The analysis is centered on how the workers’ expansive learning process was supported ensuring that they would be in the lead of their workplace transformation process.

The data were collected in six Change Laboratory sessions facilitated by interventionist-researchers and were analyzed with a specific method of discourse analysis devised for tracing expansive learning at work, the method of analysis of expansive learning actions and deviation from instructional intentions. The purpose of this method of analysis is to present in a detailed and structured manner how workplace expansive learning unfolds.

The results of the analysis indicate that the contribution of the practitioners participating in this Change Laboratory was such that the undertaken transformation resulting from the expansive learning process was actually owned by them. These results contribute to ongoing discussions on workplace expansive learning, which question the extent to which the Change Laboratory is truly a participatory intervention method in which the participating practitioners’ agency becomes visible without the interventionists necessarily dominating.

This study addresses existing gaps in the literature on workplace expansive learning, by opening up a novel perspective for detailed empirical enquiries that demonstrate the role workers may play in supported expansive learning processes and ensuing transformations of their workplaces.

This study aims to find ways to bridge the gap between workplace design and research. Exploring the design process from general design aims to site-specific design makes the process visible to support workplace design research.

Participatory design methods were used to understand employees’ needs and preferences in work-related situations to support the design process. The design process was divided into three phases. The office was temporarily refurbished for the intervention study, and evaluation data was collected with qualitative methods.

Participatory design-generated data revealed typical knowledge work needs, such as the need for privacy, interaction, exposure and preferences for the atmosphere in the workspaces during different situations. The authors identified the following key points to obtain design data: design aims, affordance design and site-specific multidimensional design. An intervention study in a small organisation revealed that lack of activity-supporting spaces created undesirable overlaps for focused work, collaborative work and client communication.

The findings of this paper are explorative and limited to a small knowledge work company. The present approach identifies valuable data collection points in different design phases of workplace design processes. Sharing knowledge from practice to research and vice versa could inform research and improve workplace design.

This study makes the workplace design phases more visible. It supports finding new ways to study the connection between the user-needs and workplaces; and understanding how different design solutions impact workplace experiences, such as satisfaction. This study also brings focus to understanding the versatile needs of small organisations and their workplace design.