Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Learning Curve Podcast, a feature of the School of Education at University of Aberdeen.
Welcome to The Learning Curve, the official podcast of the University of Aberdeen’s School of Education. Join us as we go beyond the syllabus to explore the bold ideas, high-impact research, and personal ambitions of our staff, students, and leaders.
Every episode features candid conversations with experts in areas ranging from Early Years Education and Outdoor Learning to Inclusive Practice and Leadership Development. Whether you’re a prospective student seeking career paths, a teacher looking for CPD, or an academic tracking the latest insights in STEM and Digital Pedagogy, The Learning Curve is essential listening.
Subscribe now to connect with a world-class educational community and discover what makes the future of learning happen in Aberdeen.
TLC S1E6 Inclusive Practice and Autism_mixdown01
Gordon: Hi there and welcome back to The Learning Curve. I'm Gordon Stewart, and today we're going to be continuing our focus on the specialist areas of the School of Education. Our discussions so far have covered everything from outdoor learning to technology. And today we're tackling a topic that's crucial for a welcoming and effective learning environment, inclusive practice with a specific focus on autism. So joining me today is our resident expert on inclusive education Dr Shannon Babbie. Shannon thanks for being here today with me.
Shannon: Thanks, Gordon. This is quite a role reversal, isn't it? I'm usually the one asking these questions. So Shannon, I wonder if you could explain to the listeners who you are and what you do here at the University of Aberdeen. Well, for our listeners, I'm Dr Shannon Babbie. I'm the program director for inclusive practice and autism here at the university. I also teach on educational leadership and I support initial teacher education as well. So what exciting projects are you focusing on right now? I'm working on a few projects right now. Probably the biggest of which is an accessibility study here at the university, an all three campus locations.
My colleague Melanie Witter and I examined personally each of those sixty five buildings in the public spaces between. We sort of created a rating scale based on the acoustic visual, um, legibility, predictability and safety and security of those locations. We took about a thousand photographs and used that to help us document our experiences in those locations. What we wanted to know essentially was are those spaces which are sometimes more than five hundred years old, accessible to autistic students and other autistic users of those spaces, whether they be staff or members. As an outgrowth of that, we have been trying to work with other universities and other spaces to examine their locations for the same reason. And we're trying to develop, uh, an audit tool to help with that process. In addition to that, I'm working on an augmentative communication study for autistic children in primary school. Essentially what we've done is create some low tech symbol-based boards that children who are non-speaking can use to communicate their needs, wants, or desires. And our goal there is to see if in returning pupil voice to those who cannot or choose not to speak, is there a consequential improvement in health and well-being, behaviour and attendance.
I am also working with some colleagues looking at autism education policy across the thirty two local authorities. So creating a welcoming and inclusive learning environment is so important for all students, but especially for neurodivergent students. What are some of the key principles of inclusive education that you focus on in your work? Well, to answer that effectively, I think we have to move beyond simple accommodation, meaning fixing the student and toward a more universal design approach, which is fixing the environment. I mean, for me, it comes down to shifting from a deficit mindset to a design mindset. And I think that the key principles to focus on there are really around safety, sensory regulation, flexibility, those kinds of things.
Gordon: So what are some of the specific strategies that teachers and schools can use to support neurodivergent students in the classroom.
Shannon: We need to acknowledge that a dysregulated nervous system cannot learn. So I think our first priority in classrooms is creating an environment that is sensory friendly, that is predictable. All of which help to lower anxiety. Once a pupil feels safe, we can use universal design and concepts related to that to ensure that our pupils can access the learning in a way that suits their brain, whether that's through movement or visuals or technology. I mean, ultimately, inclusion isn't about inviting neurodivergent students into a normal classroom. It's about changing the classrooms so that neurodivergent students belong there. And they and they know that they matter. Before diving into specific strategies, I think the foundational principle has to be a shift in mindset here. We have to move away from the medical model of viewing neurodivergence as a deficit. That has to be fixed, and we have to move toward the social model of viewing the environment as the barrier to full participation.
There's four key principles to focus on here. The first of which is universal design for learning. So instead of retrofitting a classroom for neurodivergent learners after the fact, we have to design the environment to be accessible to everyone from the start. And I know this isn't always possible. We also have to show that there's multiple means of representation in our classroom spaces. We have to present information in various ways so that it isn't reliant solely on reading or listening. And we can do that through different visual, different auditory, different hands on activities. We also have to provide multiple means of expression for our pupils. We have to allow them to show what they know in different ways. So if we see a pupil struggling with writing but they understand the concept, is it possible that they can record a podcast, for example, or can they use speech to text technology? Can they build a model? Can they draw a diagram instead? This matters because it stops neurodivergent pupils from feeling othered by the special accommodations, because everyone now has choices.
The second thing I'd highlight is creating sensory informed environments. We know that neurodivergent pupils often have different sensory threshold than their peers, so an inclusive classroom respects that neurobiological reality of sensory processing. One way we can do this is by reducing the sensory load in the learning spaces. For example, we can minimise fluorescent lighting. We can try to reduce the visual clutter on the wall. That can be really distracting, and we can manage noise levels. We can also allow neurodivergent pupils to to regulate themselves and we can normalise the use of fidget tools. We can normalise the use of noise cancelling headphones, ear defenders, we can provide movement breaks. There's a number of different ways to approach this. One of the most effective may be the creation of safe spaces. We can create a low arousal zone, something we might call a chill zone, a calming corner someplace that's quiet where the pupil can retreat and and decompress and find their way back to regulation without shame or without stigma.
The third thing we can do is to provide predictability and psychological safety. As I noted before, anxiety is a frequently co-occurring experience for neurodivergent pupils, and a welcoming environment is a predictable one. Explicit expectations are key to this, right? So the hidden curriculum or those unspoken social rules that exist, creating anxiety. I've talked to many neurodivergent individuals who feel like the rest of the world has some sort of script or plan of action that they're operating by, which is not at all apparent to that person. So inclusive education makes the implicit, unspoken, more explicit and accessible.
Some ways we can do that in classroom spaces are providing visual scaffolding. We can use visual means to represent the day. We can provide visual schedules. We can use First-Then or Now-Next boards. We can use, activity strips; we can use countdown timers, whether that be digital or sand hourglasses. And this helps makes transition between activities smoother because transitions are an ‘unknown’ for, for many children and a source of great anxiety. We can also use a trauma informed approach here. So when we recognize that behaviour is actually a means of communication, when we see that a student is dysregulated, we can say, geez, what's causing that kind of stress? Why are they acting in the way that they're doing, you know, rather than ‘they've challenged me and now they need to be disciplined.’
The last thing I'd like to highlight is thinking about a strengths based approach with our neurodivergent children. So often we use individualized education plans or other educational plans to focus entirely on what a pupil can and cannot do. So, true inclusion, in my opinion, focuses on knowledge of the ‘spiky profiles’ that exist. And you might want to look at Amanda Kirby's work on this, if you're listening, and acknowledge that every person, every learner might struggle with something in their, in their learning process, and we can help focus on Executive Function, for example, Organizational Skills and things like that, and that everybody has some sort of innate creativity, special interest, perhaps skills like pattern recognition, for example. And we have to leverage those kind of special interests and skills and help provide opportunities to access the intended learning for those children.
Many autistic children have special interests, a hyper-fixation, for example. And we can use that as a, as a gateway Way to curricular engagement. I think we also have to come at abilities in a different way. I think we have to presume competence, and we have to always assume that the children understand that they're capable, even if their communication style or their processing speed is different than their peers in their classroom.
Gordon: So how does the School of Education at Aberdeen prepare future educators to create a learning environment where every student can thrive?
Shannon: Yeah, Gordy, that's a really important question. I think the university has really pioneered a shift in how we think about inclusive practice. In fact, Lani Florian, who really was one of the prime movers of this idea of inclusive practice, started her research and her practice here at Aberdeen. And we've inherited that and we carry it on with pride. A few years ago, the university led a major research initiative called the Inclusive Practice Project, and that research fundamentally changed how we approach teacher education here, instead of teaching future educators to look for labels and then apply a specific fix to a child. We now focus on this kind of inclusive pedagogy approach. This means helping teachers understand that they have to design their lessons in their classrooms so that they're accessible to everyone by default. And we do this through specific modules on inclusive teaching and through the unique placement system that we have, where our teacher students reflect on real world classroom challenges with university tutors in real time.
You know, it's about moving away from the idea that inclusion is a specialist's job and that teaching every single student here in the teacher education program, that that inclusion is their job. I think the most important thing to mention here is probably that Aberdeen's approach is research-led, right? I mean, this was a major £1.5M initiative. The shift of that project moved the curriculum away from the medical model, which tends to label children with special needs and treat them differently towards the inclusive pedagogy approach that I mentioned. We're, we're no longer asking what's wrong with the child; we're asking what's wrong with the environment? What's, what's the goal that we can or excuse me, what are the strategies that we can put in place so that the learning is accessible to everyone from the start.
One of the beautiful outcomes of that shift is that we help teacher trainees to understand that inclusion is a shared responsibility. Our students are not taught to be hands-off with our neurodivergent students, but to, you know, to, to support them themselves. It isn't the role of the, you know, pupil support assistant to work with our neurodivergent children. This has to be a collaborative process with specialists, with CIRs, with parents and keeping students, not just integrated, but belonging in mainstream settings. For those people seeking a deeper knowledge around this, we have a master's of education and inclusive practice in autism that we offer here. It's a specialized pathway that feeds back into general teaching.
Gordon: Well, Shannon, this has been a really important and insightful conversation. Thank you for sharing your expertise on how to support neurodivergent students and create a welcoming and inclusive learning environment for everyone today.
Shannon: Thank you Gordon. It was a real pleasure to get to speak with you about this.
Gordon: And again, thank you for joining us as part of our podcast and listening today. Join us next week as we discuss STEM Education with Fraser Hepburn and learn about the innovative research and teaching methods in science, technology, engineering and maths at the University of Aberdeen. You won't want to miss it, but until next time, keep learning.