Currently reading Jeffery et al. (2025): “Autistic voices in higher education: lessons from UK geoscience students to inform inclusive practices for neurodiverse learners”

This is a really interesting article, both because of the recommendations they give and because of the “asynchronous, anonymous, and discussion-focused” method they use, “tailored to best fit the needs of autistic individuals“!

Jeffery et al. (2025) used an online version of a World Café (somehow everybody is talking about World Cafés these days, and everybody uses that term for a different method!) on Discord, where participants were free to move between 27 questions that were posed over the course of a month (I really like this format, though!). Participants were 40 current or former (graduated within the last 3 years) UK Geoscience students, diagnosed or self-diagnosed as autistic. Participants were instructed to use user names and avatars that contained no identifying information and were not allowed to disclose their identity to each other or the researchers (I wonder why? Towards the researchers makes sense, I guess, but this might have been a good way to build a personal network?).

While participants were very clear that they have individual needs and want those seen and accommodated, rather than receiving a general “autism” accommodation, “there were some short- and long-term recommendations that were consistent between participants, offer no significant downsides to non-autistic students” (so no excuse to not work on them! :-))

1. Talk and listen to individual students to accommodate them in the way they need, and to create spaces where they can contribute
2. Provide information about learning spaces, schedules, changes to routines, and work with autistic students to create better spaces
3. Create predictability (by doing what’s mentioned in 2, but not only for the campus where students are every day, but especially in situations like field trips)
4. Train staff and students about the diversity of autistic people
5. Be clear in the language used (“For example, tell students what is required, rather than suggesting that something might be good practice.“
6. Provide both quiet physical and timetable space for recovery from intense learning or social experiences, especially in the field
7. “Assume the best“, even when students leave class or seem disengaged etc., “it is likely that they are encountering a challenge, not that they are being difficult. Trust them to know what is best for them“

Interestingly, “mandatory training [was] almost unanimously presented as the most powerful means of addressing the exclusivity of the current HE system to autistic people“. Reading this, I am pretty sure that this is the type of training that would end up on my task list, and I am completely not qualified to do this! Even though all the recommendations above seem like simply good teaching practice, and I would appreciate especially the quiet physical and timetable space so much myself… Maybe it is not so much more difficult than asking, listening, and responding to students?

But one point I find very important to stress: We need to make sure that “autistic students are not merely accommodated but are empowered to excel“!

Jeffery, A. J., Rogers, S. L., Jeffery, K. L., Lucherini, M., Hulme, J. A., Griffin, M., … & Bullock, L. A. (2025). Autistic voices in higher education: lessons from UK geoscience students to inform inclusive practices for neurodiverse learners. Discover Education, 4(1), 326.

Walking towards my dipping spot before sunrise this morning!

This was about 3 minutes before the sun was supposed to rise according to my weather app.

So foggy! And the sun is rising on the left behind us, in case anyone is wondering…