At a glance
The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) seeks a grant to identify and address the learning needs of neurodivergent students… Read full summary
- Funding received
- 2023-2024
- Small
- Awarded
- $2,006
- Funding partners
-
- UW Resilience Lab (UWRL)
The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) seeks a grant to identify and address the learning needs of neurodivergent students at the University of Washington. By partnering with Huskies for Neurodiversity, the project will gather insights from neurodivergent students through surveys and focus groups to understand their experiences and challenges in learning environments. The findings will be used to develop resources, including a webpage and workshops, aimed at promoting inclusive teaching practices that benefit neurodivergent students and enhance the broader learning environment for all students.
This project aligns with the UW Diversity Blueprint goals and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, focusing on inclusive education and promoting well-being. By amplifying neurodivergent student voices and providing faculty with strategies to support these students, the project fosters a sense of belonging, challenges deficit-based views of neurodivergence, and encourages compassion and inclusion across campus. The initiative also aims to reduce barriers faced by neurodivergent students, contributing to their academic success and mental well-being.
The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) requests a grant to support work identifying the learning needs of neurodivergent students and students with invisible disabilities at the University of Washington.* Adopting practices that serve neurodivergent students has the potential for a broad impact on student learning. The Cleveland Clinic notes that, “The term ‘neurodivergent’ describes people whose brain differences affect how their brain works. That means they have different strengths and challenges from people whose brains don’t have those differences. The possible differences include medical disorders, learning disabilities and other conditions.” Thus, the term “neurodivergent” includes those whose disabilities may not be readily visible to an observer. Therefore, intentionally thinking about how to serve the learning needs of neurodivergent students promises to improve the learning experience for a broad range of students. Indeed, as the authors of The Changing Reality of Disability in America (2020) note, “Cognition, the mental spectrum of reasons for disability, has become the second most prevalent reason for disability [behind mobility issues] among adults… And it is the undeniable leading reason for disability among children and youth.” Moreover, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (2019), 19.5% of undergraduate students report a disability, with the highest rates among American Indian, Pacific Islander, multiracial, and veteran students. The intersectional nature of disability means that efforts to teach accessibly will also benefit students from historically underserved populations.
The pandemic has brought disability issues to the forefront and revealed the need for more intentional action to create equitable and inclusive learning environments. Our project advances the University’s 2022-2026 Diversity Blueprint goals, particularly Goal #1: cultivate an accessible, inclusive, and equitable climate, which commits us to “actively work to create and maintain learning, working, living, and healthcare spaces in which students, faculty, and staff from diverse backgrounds believe they can thrive.”
*For the purposes of this project, “neurodivergent” refers to both students who have and those that do not have disability accommodations.
CTL will collaborate with Huskies for Neurodiversity to listen to neurodivergent student voices in two ways:
- Through the distribution of a survey asking neurodivergent students to share classroom practices they found helpful
- By recruiting 10 students who identify as neurodivergent to participate in a focus group
- Focus group participants will attend 3 meetings (90 minutes each) built around conversation and reflection on their academic experiences. CTL will aggregate these responses.
- Focus group participants will comment on and suggest revisions to the synthesis document to ensure that the CTL has accurately represented their views
Responses will serve as the foundation for a webpage and workshop focused on strategies faculty can adopt to better serve neurodivergent students. A faculty collaborator will also provide feedback on these resources.
Goals
The project’s primary goal is to identify and promote pedagogies that serve neurodivergent students. These objectives will guide us toward this goal:
- Make space for neurodivergent students to express their concerns and opinions
- Gather insights and perspectives from neurodivergent students about their educational needs and experiences
- Identify barriers neurodivergent students encounter in their learning environments
- Use student voices and perspectives to enrich the resources and work of the CTL
Groups/Individuals involved
CTL will work with Huskies for Neurodiversity to distribute a survey, recruit focus group student participants, and evaluate the resources generated by the project. Huskies for Neurodiversity is a UW student organization whose explicit goal is to “educate about neurodiversity and disability accommodations on campus to students and faculty.” With their help, we hope to recruit a diverse group of students, including those with conditions such as autism, ADHD, anxiety, depression, and dyslexia.
CTL will recruit a faculty member to provide feedback on the resources the CTL will produce.
Sustainable development
Our project aligns with several Resilience and Compassion Seed Grant goals. The project:
- Fosters connectedness, belonging, and community. Positioning neurodivergent students at the center of efforts to improve student success helps empower them and foster a sense of inclusion and belonging in the wider UW educational community.
- Embraces both commonalities and diversity within the human experience. Our project is designed to help us produce resources that shift mindsets from thinking about neurodivergence as a deficit toward embracing difference as a strength. Given neurodiversity’s intersection with gender, sexual orientation, age, etc., focusing on the needs of neurodivergent students ultimately improves outcomes for all students.
- Cultivate kindness, compassion, and gratitude toward each other and ourselves. The student focus groups promise to improve CTL resources, and position faculty to create more supportive and inclusive learning environments for all students, irrespective of their identities and abilities. Raising faculty awareness of the needs and strengths of neurodivergent students helps cultivate kindness and compassion towards all students.
Our project aligns with at least two of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals outlined by the UN:
- Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Our project focuses on making UW learning environments more inclusive for neurodivergent students. Such a focus promotes equity and ultimately benefits all learners.
- Goal 3: Ensure Healthy Lives and Promote Well-Being for All at All Ages. The UN notes the prevalence of anxiety and depression, especially after the pandemic. These issues also prevail among UW students. In the 2020 UW Healthy Minds Study, 84% of surveyed students reported that emotional or mental difficulties hurt their academic performance at least once a week. Navigating learning environments not designed for them places additional cognitive burdens on neurodivergent students, increasing stress and anxiety. Our project considers the voices of neurodivergent students crucial to developing instructional support resources which foster learning environments foregrounding well-being.
Mihaela Giurca
Project lead
- mihaela@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Staff
- Affiliated groups
- The Center for Teaching and Learning
Penelope Adams Moon
Team member
- penmoon@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Staff
- Affiliated groups
- The Center for Teaching and Learning
Philip J. Reid
Support
- pjreid@uw.edu
- Affiliation and department
- Vice Provost, Academic & Student Affairs
- Stakeholder approval form
Request amount and budget
n/a
Measure the impacts
Project evaluation includes:
- Assessing focus group participation through a survey on participant satisfaction
- Assessing feedback from faculty participating in learning opportunities emerging from this work through a survey (for workshop participants)
- Tracking data from project resources through Google and Wordpress analytics (for webpage users)