What Makes a Classroom Enjoyable and Safe for Neurodiverse Learners?

Frida arrives at school, jumps out of the car, and is immediately welcomed with a chorus of greetings from teachers in other classrooms, the principal, staff who are assisting with arrival, and her peers who are arriving at the same time. Her paraprofessional is ready at the front door with a menu of options for the arrival routine. She has the option to stop by and visit her teacher from last year (whom she loves) before she grabs breakfast, or she can visit the sensory room for a brief regulation break to start the day. Afterward, when she arrives at the cafeteria, the staff greet Frida by name and offer her choice menus with visuals. Once she has her breakfast, her para offers her the option of sitting outside, in her classroom with her teacher, or with friends in the cafeteria. She chooses friends and walks independently to a table where her peers greet her and make room. Once she gets to class, she finds her locker with her photo, and her teacher offers her a choice of greeting. She independently walks to her visual schedule to preview the day. Throughout the rest of the day, she works with different groups of peers who all know how to use her various communication tools, she has leadership roles in activities where applicable, and she has access to breaks or co-regulation time with the teacher or para when she needs it.

As a field, we know that increasing neurodivergent learners’ access and inclusion in educational spaces is important for their overall well-being, and we know that inclusion is beneficial for all students, not just neurodiverse learners. However, making it happen often requires changes to the dominant structures, approaches, or practices we typically see in instructional environments, many of which were designed based on an assumption that an “average” student exists . Although individual teachers often believe that redesigning for inclusion is the right thing to do, they face barriers to actually building it in their environment. Because of this, many neurodiverse students, particularly those with historically marginalized intersecting identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, and neurodiversity), continue to face systemic social, sensory, and environmental barriers that frequently result in reduced social participation, isolation, and peer marginalization. These interweaving cultural and social experiences tend to create mismatches between home and school, and learners are often expected to code-switch, mask, and adapt to existing educational structures rather than structures adapting to the range of learner variability.

Identifying What Makes Inclusion Work
It’s not difficult to identify all the factors that can prevent inclusion from happening, but what about the characteristics, policies, systems, and practices that help sustain it? In our new research agenda, Assembling a Mosaic of Neuro-Affirming Environments, the Digital Promise Learner Variability Project is hoping to uncover some of those patterns. The term “mosaic” is intentional; we know that there may already be myriad settings where neurodiverse learners are finding belonging, in public schools, nontraditional school settings, or after-school and extracurricular settings. Through a landscape scan and an analysis of themes across ethnographic case studies, we hope to tell the stories of these environments. Alone, these stories can paint a very specific, inspiring portrait of the various shapes inclusion may take. Together, they will illuminate a more cohesive image of what makes spaces truly welcoming and safe for neurodiverse students to access academic and social success—specifically, what features of the physical space tend to provide agency; what adult or peer dynamics best support belonging; and what instructional delivery methods or routines lead to positive learning experiences for neurodiverse learners. The collective story we weave together from these settings will inform how we use the Learner Variability Navigator to continue to support districts, school leaders, educators, fellow researchers, educational policymakers, and developers in evaluating their own contexts for the presence of those neuro-affirming features and practices.

Looking Forward
We’re excited to share the stories that we uncover across this emerging work with you in the future. We envision including not just a mosaic of inspiration but also a collection of practical resources to support the application of the findings to increase equitable, inclusive access to instruction for all learners. Sign up for our newsletter below to hear more as the work unfolds. And if you work in or know of an environment that is meeting the needs of neurodiverse learners in a meaningful way, please let us know using the survey linked below!

Want to know more about learner variability? Explore these resources:

• Read the research agenda, Mosaic of Neuro-Affirming Environments, to see how the Learner Variability Project plans to study the conditions that help neurodivergent learners belong.
• Visit the Learner Variability Project page to learn more about inclusion and learner variability.
• Think your school or educational setting (or one you know of) is doing great things for neurodiverse students? Share your story through our interest survey.