What to pay attention to when teaching neurodivergent students?
The Centre for Teaching and Learning (formerly CEQEM – Centre for Educational Quality Enhancement and Methodology) and Student Journey and Welfare (formerly Student Support) have been working together to highlight the issue of social inclusion in recent months. As part of this, a three-part series of workshops was launched, the second of which was hosted by the Egy sima egy fordított – Egyesület az inklúzióért (One smooth one reversed – Association for Inclusion) NGO.
The event on 7 November gave our teaching colleagues an introduction to neurodiversity, the opportunity to raise dilemmas they face in their teaching and share best practices. A key element of the workshop was a training exercise based on personal experience, which brought participants even closer to understanding student diversity.
What does the concept of neurodiversity refer to?
Neurodiversity is a concept that recognises and takes into account natural variations in human brain function and behaviour. It emphasises that neurological differences such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia and other conditions are part of normal human diversity and should be accepted and valued rather than labelled as abnormal (Goldberg, 2023).
What to pay attiention when teaching neurodivergent students?
Clouder and her colleagues (2020) make a number of recommendations to support neurodivergent students in higher education. Some of these are highlighted here:
Students with ADHD: Interactive teaching methods, group work and coaching type activities are the most helpful for them. In addition, tutoring can effectively address gaps in academic skills and knowledge.
Students with autism: They prefer personal attention and support in educational, academic and personal contexts, so even peer mentoring can mean a positive benefit to them. They also prefer digital, web-based resources and video content, and find it easier to communicate with peers in group tasks through online platforms.
Dyslexic students: For them, non-traditional teaching approaches such as tactile or other activity-based learning experiences are the most effective in helping them to learn.
Generally speaking, neurodivergent students perform better when they have to meet some alternative form of assessment. For example, students with dyslexia may perform better on traditional multiple-choice or extended-choice tests based on problem descriptions (Bhakta, Tennant, Horton, Lawton, & Andrich, 2005) but additional time is still needed.
What suggestions do the invited speakers have for everyday teaching?
In the case of a presentation, it is advisable to display the contact details of the lecturer (e-mail address, office hours) on the first slide.
It is also worth sharing the main points, topics and contents (e.g. timetable) in outline or table form in all materials and in the slides for each lesson.
Visuals are important to make the material easier to understand – this can be done in different ways depending on the topic (diagrams, graphs, tables, summary points).
Further advice can be found in a document shared by the Association and on the Harvard Business Publishing website.
Read the summary of the previous workshop here.
References:
Bhakta, B., Tennant, A., Horton, M., Lawton, G., & Andrich, D. (2005). Using item response theory to explore the psychometric properties of extended matching questions examination in undergraduate medical education. BMC Medical Education, 8(9). Source: https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6920-5-9
Clouder, L., Karakus, M., Cinotti, A., Ferreyra, M. V., Fierros, G. A., & Rojo, P. (2020). Neurodiversity in higher education: a narrative synthesis. Higher Education, 80, 757-778. Source: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00513-6
Goldberg, H. (2023). Unraveling Neurodiversity: Insights from Neuroscientific Perspectives. Encyclopedia, 3(3), 972-980. Source: https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia3030070