Tag Archives: Neurodiversity

Can there really be one system and one path for success?

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This lay summary is based on the chapter ‘Neurodiversity in Higher Education: Support For Neurodifferent Individuals and Professionals’ by Dr Nancy Doyle in ‘Neurodiversity: From Phenomenology to Neurobiology and Enhancing Technologies‘ edited by Lawrence K. Fung. The summary is written by Nicola Maguire, Psychologist at Genius Within CIC.

Headshot of Dr Nancy Doyle.

As time evolves, the understanding that humans are different is becoming more widely understood and accepted. However, when it comes to higher education (HE) we still live in a world where there is one system, one path to success despite knowing that individuals can be completely different learners, thinkers and doers.

For many neurodifferent students, accessing higher education still feels impossible. So, the issue that is presented in the chapter is that the higher education setting as it currently stands does not help everyone to flourish, to foster self-belief and build confidence. Rather people experience feelings of failure, not having self-belief and a lack of confidence.

In order to address this, the chapter notes that systems in higher education can be
redesigned to support neurodifferent students. The chapter suggests creating a ‘Universal Design’, based on disability research, to ensure that all students have equal access to learning. Universal Design creates a learning journey that considers the needs and abilities of all learners and removes unnecessary hurdles in the learning process.

In order for this to work, universal design principles need to be applied across contexts in the HE system.

Systems can be changed in the following areas:

  • Environment for learning
  • Learning materials provided
  • Testing conditions

The main ways to flex these areas is in considering the senses. Avoiding overwhelming, loud environments and giving students choice and flexibility about where they learn.

Making sure learning materials can be listened to or read, at different speeds and in multi-sensory formats. Give opportunities for questions asked live but also via chat. Testing conditions to reduce time pressures and reduce sensory overwhelm.

Additional supports can also be offered to individuals:

  • Assistive technology
  • Coaching
  • Mentoring
  • Group coaching

The most important thing for student support is building independence rather than doing things for students. They need to transition to the workplace when they leave HE. Therefore, they need to be doing things for themselves more and more. Coaching should be aimed at reinforcing strengths and self-awareness of barriers.

Conclusion

Higher education should and needs to be offering ND students different types of support. A Universal Design in environment, learning and tests would enable higher education to become accessible and achievable.

Alongside the combination of supportive measures such as coaching, mentoring and group coaching to increase self-efficacy in ND students. By implementing this approach in a higher education setting it will safeguard that ND students have equal opportunities to do their best, by ensuring that the process is proactive, positive and that appropriate support is provided for all.

We can deliver a much-needed healing and self-affirming experience to students through this process which will result in individuals building their self-belief in their ability to ‘be able to’ which means the difference between career aspirations being met or falling short.

‘Neurodiversity is a moral, social and economic imperative; we all lose when
human potential is squandered’

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Promoting Neuro-Inclusion in Bordeaux

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Ben Morris is a PhD candidate at Birkbeck’s Centre for Neurodiversity at Work. He reflects on a presentation given at the 15th European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology Conference, 6-8 July 2022, University of Bordeaux, France.

To what extent does the traditional triad job selection process (CV, interview,
references) hinder job seekers who are neurodiverse or neurotypical to access
employment?

Even though there are a lot of programmes like ‘Autism at Work’ and other
employment initiatives for people with disabilities, the employment gap for
neurodiverse people is still big. One of the things that makes it hard for neurodiverse
people to get and keep regular, paid work is that the world of work is set up for
neurotypical people, including the recruitment process.

At the conference in Bordeaux, I talked about my future research, which will be about
finding the right ‘fit’ and how, when done right, this can help both the neurodiverse
person and the organisation. Finding the right ‘fit’ for an organisation can be good
for the health and well-being of employees. The hiring process can also have an
effect on an applicant’s health. I also talked about the good things and strengths
about hiring a neurodiverse person from an employer’s point of view and used
evidence from the literature to back this up. I told them that my study would be about
the ways that the traditional triad recruitment process chooses people (CV, interview
and reference).

The goal of the study is to answer the question, ‘To what extent does the traditional
triad job selection process (CV, interview, references) hinder job seekers who are
neurodiverse or neurotypical to access employment?’

I went on to say that the methods used to do this will be based on a review of the
literature and conversations with stakeholders, including people who have lived
experience.

Further Information

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A diamond in the rough? Or a universal design – one for all.

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Dr Nancy Doyle (Founder and CRO of Genius Within CIC) and Professor Almuth McDowall ask where we can look for good research on neurodiversity at work and what are the most important knowledge gaps to fill. This lay summary of the research was composed by Nicola Maguire-Alcock.

We live in a time where there is an increased understanding that humans are all different, not only by our physical characteristics, but also how we think and behave. The term ‘neurodiversity’ was first termed by Judy Singer in 1999 to explain why humans naturally have a range of differences in our brains and why we behave differently.

Having an unusual neurotype can mean that there are large gaps between a person’s strengths and those things that they may struggle with, compared with a neurotypical person where the gaps are much smaller. There are a number of examples of neurodifferent conditions such as Autism, Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, Tourette Syndrome, Dyspraxia and Dyslexia.

More recently, the term ‘neurominority’ has been used instead of neurodiverse in order to provide an understanding that those with an unusual neurotype are at a disadvantage in a range of daily life outcomes, in particular socially, in education and in employment.

Fortunately, understanding regarding neurodiversity has increased in these areas, however it is still a long way off where it needs to be. For example, in the workplace, even with initiatives and policies to support neurominorities, there is a lack of research that looks at the effectiveness of this support and there is not an approach that brings inclusivity from designing a job role through the life cycle of an employee.

Furthermore, as well as limited research in this area, there is also an unfairness in the research that currently exists on neurominorities and into the understanding into ‘what works’ to improve making working environments inclusive.

Firstly, there is an imbalance of research into this area, due to there being a large focus on Autism and mental health at the disadvantage to other neurominorities. ADHD, Dyslexia, DCD, and Tourette Syndrome are all under-researched considering how common these conditions are in society. This means that there is a large risk of ignoring other neurominorities in the work place and a lack of focus on what is needed to improve everyday lives in the working world.

Secondly, we do not have informed practice from those who are living and experiencing these issues. This would bring a huge benefit in understanding and improving the current initiatives that are already in place in this area.

Have a look at the following questions:

  • How do we design roles in a more neuro-inclusive way?
  • How do we hire to ensure all candidates can perform at their best during the process?
  • How do we contract ensuring that the terms and conditions of employment are inclusive?
  • How do we provide training which is inclusive?
  • How can we provide performance reviews which increase success, with inclusive delivery?
  • How can we change standard wellbeing services to support neurominorities’ needs?

Great opportunities as a business and for the individual can be gained as we take forward a new way of working which provides a simple, flexible, friendly model for Human Resources (HR).

In order to address this, it has been proposed that the Principles of Universal Design are applied through the employee life cycle. This provides a process for HR to follow in the workplace.

By using this, it provides the opportunity to create a workplace that works for everyone, which will really change the ‘can nots’ to the ‘can!’. Let’s not wait to miss opportunities that would limit your workforce, limit your company and increase the prevalence of staff becoming stressed or leaving. Now is the time to update your practice and apply this model.

Universal Design provides a set of principles that can guide HR to work at its best, at any point of the employment life cycle. There really is no better time but now to take action.

Please take a look at this illustration:

A flower design showing five strands: 1) Wellbeing 2) Hiring 3) Contracting 4) Training 5) Performance Review 6) Wellbeing

Further Information:

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Introducing the Centre for Neurodiversity at Work

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Accessible Summary

The Centre researchers are Almuth McDowall and Nancy Doyle. They found that science has ignored lots of important questions about neurodifferences. The found most research looked at children not adults or work. It didn’t think about race or gender or sexuality. They wanted to help.

They are working with a board who have different backgrounds. The board are neurodiverse. The Centre wants to make sure that people who are being studied are part of decisions. The Centre wants to help employers get better at including. The Centre wants to help neurodifferent people reach their potential.

Visual Summary

Infographic showing some of the key statistics shared in this blog.

What is the Centre for?

The Centre for Neurodiversity Research at Work (C4NRAW) is spearheaded by the Department of Organizational Psychology in the School of Business, Economics and Informatics at Birkbeck, University of London and Genius Within, a social enterprise focusing on HR and inclusion services. We’d like to introduce ourselves and our research priorities.

How it started

The Centre is Co-Directed by founders Professor Almuth McDowall and Dr Nancy Doyle, both Organizational Psychologists known widely for their expertise in Neurodiversity and organizational psychology. This brings a holistic perspective for this important topic. They met when Almuth supervised Nancy’s PhD, which was an evaluation of coaching as a disability intervention for Dyslexic adults. The PhD included a review of neurodiversity research, in which we discovered that hardly any research is focused on adults. The small amount of funding and publications is not in balance with how many adults there are with different neurotypes. For example:

  • Even though there are almost as many people with Tourette Syndrome as Autistic people, there is almost 50 times as much research about Autistic people as Tourettes.
  • There is also 50 times more Autism research than Dyspraxia research, even though there are 5 times as many Dyspraxic people as Autistic people.
  • Around 63% of ADHD research is aimed at children.
  • 94% of Dyslexia research is aimed at children and literacy.
  • Adults have different concerns compared to children, like memory, organization, and time management skills.

We also noticed that there were very few studies looking at intersectional exclusion, by that we mean the added layers of bias and discrimination faced by those who are female, belong to the Global Ethnic Majority or LGBTQ+ communities. Autism research tended towards white cishet[1] males, frequently from privileged backgrounds. Most of the dyslexia research (60%) involved scanning the brains of kids to find the bits that are “broken!”

There were only a handful of papers related to ND[2] strengths, though we quickly summarized these and set about publishing them. We started evaluating what “works” so that we could inspire employers to provide the right support.

Our Mission

Our ongoing mission is to focus on addressing the missing research and linking it into employment practice. We want more employers to feel confident in operating neuroinclusive practices so that we can bust through the disability employment gap for invisible disability. Employers often have misconceptions about what neurodiversity means. For example, it is often assumed that dyslexia is difficulty with reading and writing, whereas it can manifest as difficulty with memory, time management, organisation and wellbeing.

Around 22% of the entire population are neurodivergent, but in the UK, just 53.6% of disabled people are currently in work, compared to 81.7% of those who are not disabled. Many more disabled people could succeed in the workplace if they were given access to reasonable adjustments.

Neurodiverse people bring unique qualities to the workplace, including creativity, focus, strategic thinking, innovation and problem-solving. We want neurodivergent adults to work at their best, more of the time. We want to reduce unnecessary barriers to work, and in work see more neurodiverse career progression.

We recently published a paper called “Diamond in the Rough” in which we set out all these research priorities and how we would like to tackle them. Please feel free to click through to our research page if you would like to learn more about what we’ve already achieved.

Centre Membership

Our ambition is for the Centre to be staffed and led by a neurodiverse team: that is a balance of generalists and specialists complementing each other. Nancy is an ADHDer, and we have an Advisory Board which is comprised of researchers, practitioners and those with lived experience. We are currently seeking representation from the LGBTQ+ community, do feel free to reach out, the Board meet twice a year to review research priorities and advise the Directors on ethics and sharing results.

We have several ND PhD and professional doctorate students who are part of the Centre by virtue of studying a Neurodiversity or Disability (including neurodiversity) focused PhD at Birkbeck[3]. They are Uzma Waseem, Charlie Ekton, Jessica Dark, Greg Swaysland and Ben Morris.

We’ll be using this blog to communicate our research findings in an accessible format and start conversations with our wider community. We’ll post calls for research participants and would like to work with our donor team on corporate funding for specific projects. Do feel free to reach out and to join our mailing list if you haven’t already!

We are working towards a world where neurominorities equal specialism rather than exclusion and work is neuroinclusive. We are pioneering the design, evaluation, and practical implementation of Universal Design for Human Resources. We are walking our own talk and making sure that there is “nothing about us without us” in ND research at work. And we are super excited to only just be getting started!

Further Information

[1] “Cis” meaning not transgender and “het” meaning heterosexual.

[2] We’re going to use ND as an abbreviation for neurodifferent / neurodivergent / neurodiverse as we know all three of these can be preferred. We also use Neurominorities as an umbrella term for ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Dyscalculia, Tourettes and more.

[3] Birkbeck was established with the sole purpose of educating working people through flexible education scheduled so that people who are in work can take part. Therefore social justice has always been at the heart of Birkbeck’s mission.

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