How to think about teaching using the "neurodiversity paradigm"

This week’s post is a more of an extended thought, as I have been busier than usual with other writing projects and teaching (perhaps an “evergreen” statement - when are writing and teaching not extremely time-intensive!) As I have been working on my forthcoming book, I have become very interested in applying concepts from the Neurodiversity Paradigm to our educational practices and relationships. To summarize, if you are newer to this newsletter, the neurodiversity paradigm as introduced by Nick Walker offers the following set of assumptions (I paraphrase them here) about neurodiversity, or the variation in human cognition:

1. The variation in cognitive function among humans is natural and valuable

2. There is no one “right” way to think

3. The social dynamics that exist with other forms of diversity exist for neurodiversity too. This could involve dominant groups marginalizing or excluding minority groups, and it could also involve the positive consequences that come with an embrace of diversity

For me, this has been an extremely useful starting premise for thinking through interactions and relationships, both in the learning environment and outside of it. The paradigm helps me identify situations in which there is assumed to be a right way to think, behave, or communicate, and to reconsider that assumption. However, I want to stress that even though I find this paradigm useful and instructive, that doesn't mean it is easy or frictionless to apply. Take the first principle, that “human cognitive diversity is natural and valuable.” An instructor told me that he incorporated role-playing activities into his course to provide students opportunities to practice working in the small teams that produce and edit television content. One neurodivergent student insisted that he did not want to participate in the role playing activity, as it didn’t make sense to him why he should “pretend” to be in a certain role, rather than have the teacher explain the tasks and skills necessary in that role and then have students practice them in a classroom setting. The teacher expressed significant frustration. Not only were role-playing and simulation activities self-evidently useful in this course, according to this instructor, but he felt the student lacked self-awareness about his own learning preferences and unwillingness to try new things. I sympathize with this instructor. It is quite challenging when a student questions the premise of your pedagogy, especially if you haven’t had time to think about a useful response. This is a situation in which I might try to apply the neurodiversity paradigm.

If we were to take seriously that cognitive diversity among humans is natural and beneficial (as the first part of the neurodiversity paradigm suggests), we might start by noticing that this student’s perspective represents a different way of thinking about learning and collaboration than the instructor’s. We might continue by reconsidering the idea that role-playing or simulation activities are self-evidently beneficial. This might be true for many instructors and students, but not all. For those students for whom it is not self-evident, they might come to see the value after additional explanation and discussion. Some may not.

Assuming that the differences persist in some way after further discussion, what might be the benefits of this student’s perspective? At the very least, his resistance to the role-playing activity might have had the benefit of prompting the instructor to ponder and clarify the goals of the activity. Thinking more expansively, there may be a certain value in reluctance to play a role that one isn’t very well prepared for. I think one of the often unspoken assumptions of classroom role-playing activities is that the learning environment is a low-stakes space, where mistakes can be made and learned from. However, this student may be drawing on a range of experiences or ways of thinking that lead him to think that there are risks to jumping into a role and just trying it out. If a situation is sufficiently high-stakes, it would not make sense to “build the plane while you fly it” if there are more experienced or qualified people around. He may have also had experiences where there are serious social consequences, even in “simulations,” of not “performing” as expected by instructors or fellow students. Perhaps his fellow students have judged him negatively in the past for elements of his participation in group activities, especially given that he is neurodivergent.

Dr. Steven Kapp, a researcher from whom I have learned a lot, wrote a thought-provoking article reviewing the origins of the idea that Autism is a condition defined by a deficit of social skills or motivation and critiquing this idea. One idea he raises is that when a difference such as Autism is defined exclusively as a deficit, then even neutral traits tend to be interpreted through the lens of deficit. In a study he refers to, researchers looked at differences between Autistic and non-Autistic participants’ laughter, especially considering “unvoiced laughter,” which is thought by the researchers to be used to negotiate social interactions rather than reflect a person’s internal amused state. The results showed that Autistic participants engaged in less unvoiced laughter than the non-Autistic participants and researchers interpreted this difference as a deficit in Autistic participants, even though the laughter they did engage in was admittedly “affectively engaging” to other people. Kapp explains that this is an example of confirmation bias. When I read the conclusion of the paper, I agreed, as the authors made specific moves to reject the potentially neutral interpretation of the results in favor of the pre-established principle that Autistic people are characterized by social deficits. I feel that this hazard is present in the classroom as well, as we can often fall into the trap of assuming a student has “poor social social skills” or “poor comprehension skills” and interpreting every difference from expectations through that lens.

Going back to the role playing activity, if I were in the teacher’s situation I might try to start out on a positive note. “I hear you! There are some very good reasons to be apprehensive about this,” rather than “Well, too bad, that’s what I have planned for today.” I might go on to acknowledge that the role-playing activity may feel high-stakes to some students and fun and laid back to others. Given that, I might consider whether the student’s preferred activity (didactic instruction and structured practice) might be an activity that could be done in the lead-up to a simulation. I might ask the student what would help him feel more comfortable in the activity (even though it may still feel difficult) and ask if he would take a chance and try it, and then share more about his experience with me after.

I have also been thinking about how these ideas could be applied in work with faculty as well. One of the deficit-based labels that is often applied to faculty who participate in CTL or other professional development programming is that someone is “unwilling to deviate from their established methods or to try new methods.” There could be benefits and challenges, of course, to any range of orientations towards “newness” and “innovation” in pedagogy. In fact, I imagine it could be pretty challenging to parse how much value should be placed on “new” methods given the often mixed messaging of campus teaching centers. Often they are called the “Center for Teaching/Learning Innovation” or “Transformation,” but messaging may also counsel instructors to stick to established effective methods or make only small and incremental changes in their teaching. A faculty member who is encountering challenges in the classroom and is reluctant to adopt new strategies may be overloaded with the amount of new information they have been presented with, or they may even be demonstrating justified caution after previous difficult experiences with changes in their classroom. When working with such an instructor, I’d try to take their preference for status quo as a neutral fact to learn more about, and (in contrast to earlier in my career), I’d now avoid using the label of “not wanting to try anything new” as shorthand with colleagues, as it is so often interpreted as an individual deficit.

As always, I am curious about your reactions to these thoughts and invite you to comment if you are signed in to Substack or contact me.

I have also recently added an “events” page to my website, where I will note any public presentations that I am doing in the near future. Feel free to check it out!

Photo by Carley Friesen on Unsplash