Episode 6: The Neurodiversity Paradigm in Higher Education

In this bonus episode, Ebe shares the recording of her November 2025 ADCET webinar on the neurodiversity paradigm, which drew over 500 registrations from across Australia.

The session covers the foundations and principles of the neurodiversity paradigm as articulated by Dr Nick Walker and Sonny Jane Wise, contrasting it with the pathology paradigm that currently dominates university support systems. Ebe explains key concepts including neurodiversity, neurodivergent identity, neuronormativity, biocertification and biopower, and explores what these mean for how universities structure support, assessment and inclusion.

The webinar addresses a growing issue in the sector: institutions adopting neurodiversity language whilst maintaining the same exclusionary practices and diagnostic requirements. Ebe calls this "paradigm washing" and outlines what genuine paradigm shift would require instead.

Practical guidance is offered for disability practitioners, teaching staff and institutional leaders, with particular focus on universal design for learning, harm reduction approaches, epistemic justice, and moving from individual accommodations to systemic change.

The episode includes Q&A with ADCET's Rebecca Morris, addressing questions about assessment design, the role of diagnosis, and how to balance institutional requirements with paradigm shift.

Resources mentioned in episode:

• ADCET webinar recording (video)
• Written Q&A responses from webinar
• History of the paradigm and terminology (including the role of Kassiane Asasumasu in coining 'neurodivergent' and 'neurodivergence')
• Dr Nick Walker's work
• Sonny Jane Wise's work, including the Neurodiversity Smorgasbord

New from Higher Hopes:

• Submit your questions for "Ask me anything about neuro-affirming practice in higher education"
• Higher Hopes on Substack

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:18 Welcome from ADCET
• 3:34 Session opening and overview with Ebe Ganon
• 9:16 Foundations of the neurodiversity paradigm
• 11:54 Moving beyond language (but getting it right)
• 16:10 Who are neurodivergent students?
• 21:23 Common misunderstandings
• 23:24 Biocertification and biopower
• 25:28 Reflection (break time!)
• 26:23 The pathology paradigm
• 29:25 Paradigm washing
• 31:03 What paradigm shift looks like
• 34:04 Practical applications
• 38:33 Navigating institutional tensions
• 41:35 Q&A session
• 53:57 Outro and Announcement

Transcript

Introduction

“I think that real universities are grounded in principles and values where neurodivergence actually thrives. Universities value knowledge and curiosity, which are strong elements of neurodivergent culture. Academia values hyper-focus and passion.

Earlier iterations of universities - think like Old Oxford Energy - they were designed for academics who lived and breathed their work and didn't have time to think about food or cleaning or life admin. Residential universities and fellowships and ecosystems of support emerged from this. We've cooked it along the way. Marketisation of universities has cooked it. But research and learning really is about thinking differently and developing new perspectives, and that is something that neurodivergent people thrive with.”

Ebe here, host of the Higher Hopes podcast. I'm dropping in with a bonus semester break episode this week while I hope that you are all resting and ignoring email and hopefully not thinking about semester one just yet. This is a recording of a webinar that I gave in November 2025 about the neurodiversity paradigm. I wanted to share this with you because I know that neurodiversity has really emerged as a hot button topic in the sector this year, but there are a lot of misunderstandings and some confusion about what that really means.

The Australian Disability Clearinghouse for Education and Training was kind enough to give me a platform to talk about all things neurodiversity theory and paradigm shift with enthusiasm and solidarity. They locked in a date straight away, and we ended up with over 500 registrations Australia-wide.

In this recording, you'll hear a brief introduction from Rebecca Morris, acting manager of ADCET, before the session starts, and she'll drop back in towards the end to facilitate some Q&A.

This session is all about what neurodiversity and the neurodiversity paradigm actually are and what this means for us in higher education. There are some insights specifically for disability practitioners, teaching professionals, and those with more senior decision-making and strategic powers to consider, but there should be something in there for everyone no matter what position you occupy in the sector.

I hope you enjoy, and stay tuned for an announcement at the end.

Welcome from ADCET

So welcome everybody. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Rebecca Morris. I'm the manager of the Australian Disability Clearinghouse on Education and Training, or ADCET for short.

ADCET is hosted on lutruwita, Tasmanian Aboriginal land, and in the spirit of reconciliation, ADCET respectfully acknowledges the lutruwita nations and also recognises the Aboriginal history and culture of the land. I pay my respects to elders past and present and to the many Aboriginal people who did not make elder status. I also acknowledge all other countries and lands from participants in this meeting and very warmly welcome any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining this webinar today or listening in later.

Today's webinar, Neurodiversity Paradigm 101: Lessons from the Movement for Higher Education, presented by Ebe Ganon, will contrast clinical and neurodiversity paradigms, unpack paradigm washing, and offer critical reflection and practical tools for institutions seeking to create truly neurodiversity-affirming environments.

There has certainly been a lot of interest in this webinar, and I'm personally very excited to hear Ebe speak on this topic.

Session opening

Thanks, Bec. Thanks everyone for joining today's session on the neurodiversity paradigm. I'm Ebe Ganon and I'm a PhD student at UNSW Canberra. I'm a researcher, I'm a disability advocate, I'm also the board chair of Children and Young People with Disability Australia, and in all of my spare time I run a community engagement practice working at the intersection of disability inclusion and higher education policy.

To begin, I'd like to acknowledge that I'm joining you today from Ngunnawal and Ngambri land. I pay my respects to elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. I also want to acknowledge the deep knowledge systems that have existed here for tens of thousands of years - knowledge systems that show us ways of understanding difference, community and care that exist beyond Western clinical frameworks.

I also want to acknowledge the diversity in the virtual room today. Your lived, professional and research-based expertise are all valid and valuable. They also produce assumptions and biases. I welcome all the neurodivergent people in the session today. Also, if you feel comfortable, I encourage you to safely share your own experiences of neurodivergence where they diverge from my own when it becomes relevant through the session.

I want to say clearly from the start: I don't have all of the answers for you on neurodiversity in higher education. What I'm going to do is present you with a theoretical framework and some principles, but I can't give you a step-by-step guide for how to apply this perfectly within your specific individual context. That work is yours to do. But what I can do is give you the conceptual tools to start questioning the systems that you're working in, and some examples of what this might look like in practice.

So here's what I encourage you to do through the session. I want you to keep a document or a notebook or something open while we're together. You can note down the ideas and thoughts that you might have or things that you want to look up later. If there are words or phrases that I mention that you're not sure about, note those down. When something I say doesn't sit right with you, when you think "but that wouldn't work here" or "what about...", just write that down. Don't dismiss it and don't let it derail you from staying present. Just note it, because I think that that's where the real learning will happen for a lot of people today.

Those tensions and those places where your institutional reality is bumping up against the neurodiversity paradigm - that's really valuable information. And you might look at those notes later and think, "oh actually, Ebe might be right, that is a problem." Or you might think, "nope, there is a real legitimate reason that we do it this way that we didn't account for." And that's fine, and that's all useful reflection.

Before we dive in, I also want to briefly position myself. The lenses that I bring to this work include that I'm ADHD and autistic. I also have lived experience of mental health hospitalisation. I'm currently a PhD student and I've also worked as a sessional academic and researcher. Those experiences give me certain privileges in terms of access and legitimacy that lots of neurodivergent people don't have. I'm from a cultural minority background. I'm queer, and all of these identities shape how I understand neurodivergence, disability and the systems of oppression that we work in.

And it also means that some of the examples I use will be biased towards my experience of neurodivergence. That's not me trying to exclude other identities from this cohort, but more to respect the rights of other parts of the neurodivergent community to speak for themselves and to speak for my areas of expertise.

And one more thing before we start: universal design for learning, inclusive practice, disability rights - these are all givens in these conversations. If you are not open to those principles, this probably isn't the right session for you. What we're exploring today is what might sit underneath those principles and the paradigm that should be guiding our practice.

All right, let's dig in.

Session overview

To our session today, we're going to cover the foundations and principles of the neurodiversity paradigm. We're going to talk about how the clinical or the pathology paradigm differs and what the neurodiversity and clinical paradigms produce in practice. We're going to talk about some practical ways forward for different roles in higher education - and depending on what's going on in the chat, I might focus on some of these more and less depending on what I can see is coming through - and then I'll give you some resources for continuing this learning.

This session is about theory that drives practice, understanding paradigm shift, and moving beyond language.

The session is not about autism and ADHD 101. Neurodivergence is not only more than these neurodevelopmental conditions, but also there's a lot of content on this already, and I recommend checking out recent recordings of ADCET webinars. There are a few that might be relevant there for you.

I'm also not going to give you adjustment lists or specific recommendations for programme or course design. And this session is also not lived experience sharing for its own sake. I've written a lot about my own experiences already. You can go over to my Substack to read about those if you like. But we're really going to be focusing on theory - not to say that I'm not happy to answer questions at the end if you want to do a little bit of picking my brain on my experience as a neurodivergent HDR, because I suspect that some of you will want to do that.

Foundations of the neurodiversity paradigm

Let's start with the foundations of the neurodiversity paradigm, which is what we're here today to unpack. We're going to layer on from these foundations.

The neurodiversity paradigm was first articulated by Dr Nick Walker, building on decades of work by autistic advocates and the broader disability rights movements. And Walker, in their early work, identified three core principles that underpin what this paradigm is. And for those who haven't engaged with the concept of a paradigm before, a paradigm is a lens or a way to view the world - a set of assumptions.

So the first core principle: neurodiversity is natural human variation. Just as we have diversity in ethnicity, in gender, sexuality and culture, we also have diversity in how our brains are wired and how we process the world. And this diversity has always existed and always will. It's nothing new. Some of the language has changed over time and some of the ways that we identify people have changed, but it's always been here and it always will.

Second: there's no normal brain. The idea that there's one right or healthy way for minds to function is a cultural fiction. It's no more valid than claiming that there's one normal ethnicity or one right culture.

Third: the social dynamics around neurodiversity mirror other forms of human diversity. So this includes power inequalities, marginalisation, and also the creative potential and innovation that emerges when we embrace rather than suppress difference.

Another character in this space that I really hope you'd like to learn a little more about is Sonny Jane Wise. They are an advocate around lived experience and neurodivergence, particularly in the mental health space, and they put it brilliantly: the neurodiversity paradigm is about understanding ourselves and others outside the DSM or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. So that's the big book that the psychologists and psychiatrists use to categorise people's brains into categories - I guess that's what we categorise things into.

So the neurodiversity paradigm is about stepping out of that system of categorisation that's really grounded in a lot of those Western clinical frameworks of helping people. So it's a fundamental reframing of how we think about human cognitive diversity as an alternative to a collection of symptoms and diagnoses.

Moving beyond language (but getting it right)

We want to move beyond language, but we also need to get the language right. So I did want to spend a few moments just touching on these terms.

When we talk about neurodiversity, we are describing a fact of infinite variation of human functioning that's natural and expected.

When we talk about a neurotype, we're talking about the sets of traits, behaviours, communication styles and preferences that make up an individual's way of functioning. And broadly speaking, we can describe neurotypes in two ways.

A neurotype might be neurotypical - so that's a neurotype for whom someone is not marginalised or pathologised. In the pathology paradigm, we might call that someone who is normal or who doesn't have a diagnosis.

On the other hand, we have neurodivergent. And that is a neurotype or an individual who is marginalised and pathologised for their neurotype. So that's talking about folks that in the pathology paradigm we would be saying they have a diagnosis of this, they don't do things in the way that is traditional or normal. They diverge from something there - they diverge from what we think is standard.

And if we are looking for an alternative to a diagnostic framework and we aren't using the DSM, so we can't say "oh, they diverge from being normal because they have this diagnosis" - because it's not relevant as a construct under the neurodiversity paradigm, there's no normal brain - so when we talk about neurodivergent as an experience, we've got to ask: what actually is it that neurodivergent people diverge from?

And the answer to that question is neuronormativity. And neuronormativity is the belief system that suggests that there's one superior, correct way to function. Neuronormativity describes the set of standards, expectations and norms that determine whose ways of being are valued and whose get pathologised.

So when we say neurodivergent, that describes people and neurotypes that diverge from this standard of neuronormativity.

Let's kind of bring it into the higher education context. So think about what's expected in universities and TAFEs. We've got these linear timelines, semester structures, specific communication styles like eye contact, neurotypical body language, particular learning methods that get valued over others - for example, reading and writing as primary modes of knowledge acquisition. You've got sitting still in lectures, meeting arbitrary deadlines that don't flex for different rhythms of work.

Those aren't neutral standards, as our institutions would have you believe. They are neuronormative standards that privilege certain ways of functioning while marking others as different.

And neuronormativity doesn't exist in isolation. It's deeply connected to capitalism, which values productivity over humanity. It's connected to colonialism, which imposes Western ways of knowing onto cultures that have alternatives. And lots of other systems of oppression like racism, heteronormativity and patriarchy. And all of those systems rely on the same logic, right? There's one right way to be human, there's one way to do things, and everyone else who isn't functioning in that way needs fixing or we need to address that in some way.

And in universities we see this when we expect all students to work best between nine and five. When we privilege verbal participation over other forms of engagement. And when we assume that everyone's experiences of time are the same in a linear way. When we treat accommodations as special extras rather than questioning why the system is built to exclude in the first place.

Who are neurodivergent students?

So in the neurodiversity paradigm, who are neurodivergent students? Who are we talking about when we say neurodivergent students? And this is where things may get broader than lots of people expect.

Yes, it includes students with what the DSM would call neurodevelopmental conditions: autism, ADHD, learning disabilities, intellectual disability, Tourette's.

But it also includes students experiencing what gets labelled as mental illness: anxiety, depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, OCD, eating distress.

It also includes students with trauma responses that might get classified as personality disorders or PTSD.

It includes students who are plural or systems, students who hear voices, students experiencing altered states.

And Sonny Jane Wise offers us two useful models for understanding this breadth.

The first is the umbrella model - seeing neurodivergence as an umbrella term that encompasses anyone whose neurological functioning diverges significantly from neuronormativity, from those dominant societal standards. On my slide I've got a graphic of an umbrella across which all of those different neurotypes that I just listed before are displayed. You'll find those DSM labels under this umbrella across a whole range of different areas, whether it's neurodevelopmental conditions, whether it's mental illness, mental health conditions.

But what you notice when I'm describing the umbrella model and talking about these diagnoses is that we're still in this diagnosis language, right? We're still talking about categories that are labelled by practitioners who can classify them and assess them. And it's not particularly helpful in kind of progressing our thinking towards the neurodiversity paradigm, right?

So Sonny Jane Wise has also proposed more recently a newer model for understanding this that I find quite helpful, and this is the smorgasbord model. Just acknowledging before I dive into this, this is a very busy slide. There's a graphic in the top left that you're not intended to be able to read, but it's a zoomed out view of Sonny Jane Wise's original graphic, which you can find online.

And on the right I have a very crudely designed graphic of a charcuterie or a smorgasbord with a whole range of different tiles overlaid over the top to represent different traits, including communication, motor skills, plurality and systems, stimming, emotions, sleep differences, empathy, attention and focus, sensory preferences, voice hearing, and many more.

And what I'm communicating with this is recognising that neurodivergence isn't about a neat list of conditions. It's a collection of experiences and traits that every individual navigates uniquely. And it gives us a way to get out of this diagnostic categories model that sits in that pathology paradigm.

So one student might experience executive dysfunction, sensory sensitivities and social anxiety. Another might experience time blindness, emotional intensity and communication differences. And this gives us a way to challenge the DSM conditions that we're sort of comfortable with labelling and recognise what the full diversity of neurodivergent student experiences are on our campus.

And what you'll notice is those experiences don't nicely map neatly onto those diagnostic categories. But in this paradigm, they don't need to.

In this way, the phrase "neurodivergent conditions" becomes inconsistent with the paradigm and doesn't exist. So if you see the phrase neurodivergent conditions around, we're kind of putting that in the bin. That is not consistent with the framework that we're working in here, and I'll come back to that in a moment. This is about neurotypes and ways of diverging from neuronormativity.

So boxing people into these categories is a colonial and clinical fiction that is not consistent. Some neurodivergent students will have diagnoses, but many won't - either because they can't access assessments because they're really expensive, or because they choose not to pursue a diagnosis, or because their experience doesn't fit neatly into diagnostic categories.

Lots of students come from cultural backgrounds where the pathology paradigm is very strong and very stigmatising, particularly for a lot of international students that I work with. Presenting something like this and their first engagement with the neurodiversity paradigm can be really destabilising because it's so different. Equally, my own experience certainly reflects that in many ways.

Some students will identify really strongly with the language of neurodivergence, and others will prefer different terms or reject labels altogether.

Common language mistakes

Again, I want to get away from language, but I also want to draw your attention to a few of the ways that we misuse language which are symptomatic of not really understanding what neurodiversity is.

"This person is neurodiverse." One individual cannot be diverse. You're probably looking for neurodivergent. I have the same gripe with "culturally and linguistically diverse individual". Diverse from what? Grammatically it doesn't make any sense, but it also reflects this misunderstanding of what the paradigm is. I also see this often used when people feel a bit nervous about using the word divergent because there's a value assessment going on there that divergent is negative. So maybe that's something to question and reflect on.

"We are looking for neurodiverse people." So maybe you use that in a programme setting that you run. Maybe there is like a community group. "We are looking for neurodiverse people" is only correct if you're also including neurotypical people. Neurotypicality makes up part of neurodiversity. If you're only looking for neurodivergent people, then say that: "we're looking for neurodivergent people".

"This programme is for neurodivergent people." That statement is only correct if it is for all neurodivergent neurotypes. Be specific. If it is only for autistic and ADHD students, you do need to say that. Is it for all neurodivergent people? Then you can say "this is for neurodivergent people". Are you going to accept people without a formal diagnosis? If you're not, it's not for neurodivergent people - it's for people with formally diagnosed conditions.

Let's challenge the way that we're applying language in this space.

Biocertification and biopower

Why the neurodiversity paradigm is so different to the way that we currently operate in universities. There's a couple of concepts here I want to outline that I've learned a lot from Sonny Jane Wise on recently.

Universities require students to prove their quote-unquote neurodivergence through a psychiatric diagnosis or a psychological diagnosis or a formal assessment in order to access support. And that process is what we call biocertification, and that is the assumption that psychiatric authority is more reliable than a person's own knowledge of their body-mind. So it privileges that professional experience over lived experience.

So students who know they need support but can't afford assessment are excluded when we apply biocertification. Students from cultural backgrounds whose experiences don't match white Western diagnostic frameworks are excluded. Students who are really good at masking or whose presentations don't match stereotypes - excluded. Students who reject the pathologising language of the DSM - excluded. You can sense the theme.

Biocertification gives our institutions huge power. We get to decide whose needs are legitimate, whose support is reasonable, and who deserves accommodation. And that is biopower - using diagnoses as tools of social control.

So in this framing, when students don't comply with our expectations, when they push back on assignments or maybe they challenge our processes, struggle with attendance, we can pathologise their behaviour. We can call it non-compliance. We can say that they're lacking insight or that we don't have evidence of their disorder. Maybe we do, rather than questioning whether our systems are working for them.

So the way that biocertification and biopower are working in higher education systems exclude students who actually need help, and it also gives us this pathologising language that locates the problem with the student rather than locating the barriers within the system.

Reflection

So at this point, I'm going to give you just a few moments to reflect, and if you want to use this time for a little stretch break, some questions to consider at this point:

• What and who drives our requirements for proof when we provide students with support at university?
• What if students didn't need to prove anything to access support? Does this make you anxious? Why?
• And why do we need students to perform struggle and have it validated by somebody else before we can offer help?

And these questions have really big implications for how we design support services, assessments, academic policies, campus culture. If we really want to embed neuro-affirming practice, we need to challenge these assumptions. It's not optional.

Thanks to Bec for popping in the chat that reference to Kassiane Asasumasu who coined those specific terms around neurodivergent and neurodivergence. And then from there Dr Walker built on those to coin the paradigm. Trying to keep the history lesson brief in the presentation for the sake of brevity, but really important to acknowledge Kassiane's work in that. So thanks for that.

So like I said, if we want to do neuro-affirming practice, we need to challenge those assumptions. It's not optional. And if you're still interested, we are going to play on from here.

The pathology paradigm

I just want to be a bit more explicit about some of the pathology paradigm assumptions before we move on.

So in contrast to the neurodiversity paradigm assumptions, we've got these pathology paradigm set.

First: that there's something wrong or different about an individual, physically or mentally, that needs diagnosing and treating. The issue and the impetus for support under this paradigm is a result of the student's characteristics, not features of our system.

Second: that professionals know better than individuals about what they need. Psychiatric experience or clinical evidence and theory trumps lived experience.

Third: that our success criteria is that a student learns to function within existing structures, not that we adapt the structures. And neuronormativity decides what those structures are, and our goal is conformity.

And let's be honest, most people working in universities aren't consciously choosing to harm students with these assumptions. But when our whole support system is built on these, regardless of if you're calling a student neurodivergent or not, you get predictable outcomes.

I am going to move past our comparison slides because I think we have already covered those. But if you want a little bit more detail around the different ways that we can frame particular issues and challenges in higher education, please do go back to these slides.

But what I really want to highlight here today is: we can do inclusion and we can do student support and we can provide adjustments and we can operate in a biocertification model and we can require evidence and we can reject support for students who don't have the right evidence, all while using neuro-affirming language.

So we can do all of those things - we can be operating in this very exclusionary way, but we can still call students neurodivergent, we can still feel good about what using that language means - and that is what I'm calling paradigm washing.

If you've heard of greenwashing, pinkwashing, performative allyship…

Paradigm washing

What I've noticed is that over the last few years, universities have enthusiastically adopted this language of neurodiversity. Websites proclaim we're neurodiversity-affirming, policies refer to neurodiverse students, sick staff complete training on neurodivergent-friendly practices. But the actual support model hasn't changed.

We still require diagnoses. We still frame adjustments as individual deficits. We still expect students to adapt to our structures rather than questioning the structures. And we still respond to crisis with risk management and exclusion.

That's paradigm washing. We are using the language of liberation while maintaining the same systems of oppression.

You can't just swap the language without examining the foundations. The neurodiversity paradigm is not a rebranding exercise. It needs to be a challenge to how we operate. We need to transfer power from institutions to students, trust lived experience over professional assessment, prioritise access over gatekeeping, and we have to embrace uncertainty rather than control.

And that's uncomfortable. It should be, because it means admitting that a lot of what we've been doing, with the best of intentions, has been causing harm.

What paradigm shift looks like

So what does it look like when we operate from a neurodiversity paradigm?

We've got those assumptions on the left from the previous slide, but when we use these assumptions, what we see coming into our systems as expectations are that we have universal design for learning as a baseline. We can offer support without diagnostic requirements. We take harm reduction approaches to managing students who might be experiencing crises. And we have academic integrity processes and systems that consider the context.

So unpacking that a little bit more: students aren't broken. Our systems might be, but students aren't.

Students are experts on their experiences. They know the barriers that they face, what support works for them, and what they need to thrive.

It's the systemic barriers that need change, not individual adjustments that are going to fix our problems here.

And the goal is access, belonging and autonomy. So our success criteria, instead of being "the students can succeed in our existing neuronormative systems", is that actually the success is building systems that work for diverse and divergent minds, not forcing divergent minds to fit into our systems.

We design courses, assessments and environments with flexibility built in at the start. Students can access what they need based on their articulated need, not based on their ability to navigate healthcare systems. And when a student is struggling, we meet them where they're at. We design assessments and academic integrity processes that don't require masking or conformity to be successful.

That's what paradigm shift actually is. It's not about being nice to students or lowering standards. I know we're very protective about our excellence in this sector. But actually, what is excellent is building a system that doesn't require students to conform to neuronormative expectations to succeed.

And if you don't want to do that, don't use my language.

So have a think: can you see any examples of paradigm washing in your university? And what do you think drives that?

Can't just use the language. It's not enough.

So if you want to feel comfortable popping any examples there in the chat... Yes, examples of programmes that require diagnostic evidence to attend. Ideas that lack diverse perspectives and diverging perspectives in decision-making. And yeah, some comments around adoption of language without shifting assumptions. Thanks, team. I'll come back to those. I just - I know I'm going to get in the rabbit hole, so I'm not going to spend too long in there.

Practical applications

Theory is really important, but we can get a little bit more practical about what this might mean for our work. I'd be in trouble with ADCET if I didn't get a little bit practical, and I want to leave time for questions. So this is going to be a very high-level overview. Happy to expand in question time.

For disability support practitioners

The concept of epistemic justice is really important. We believe students about their needs. Your default response should be belief, not interrogation. And that doesn't mean that you'd never ask questions of a student - you need to understand the request. But there's a difference between asking "can you help me understand the barrier you're experiencing?" versus "can you really prove that you need this adjustment?"

Harm reduction comes from drug and alcohol work, but the principles apply really nicely to disability support: meeting people where we're at, not where you think they should be. In our context, that means not demanding students get better before we would support them, or that they should quit or take programme leave before they consider re-engaging with studies if they're experiencing crisis.

A student experiencing depression doesn't need to be well enough to engage with services. A student in crisis doesn't need to demonstrate improvement before we continue support. Recognise that functioning fluctuates and that some students may not see traits that we've traditionally pathologised as a problem, just as a difference. Where they do experience distress, we provide support.

Finally, moving from individual accommodations to systemic change. You all know what I'm talking about here. Individual adjustments are never going to be enough. They are inefficient band-aid solutions. They locate the problem with the student. You can see the increasing rates of disclosure and support requests as well as I can, and we can't use this old way of thinking about adjustments as our only tool anymore.

For learning designers and academics

Again, UDL as a baseline, not as extra. None of this makes your course less rigorous. It makes it accessible. It's okay.

Assessment design that doesn't assume one way of demonstrating knowledge. Our assessment practice is really neuronormative and we privilege written, timed, individual and linear ways of demonstrating knowledge. Ask yourself what you're actually trying to assess - and if you are assessing the learning outcome or the knowledge area, or if you're actually assessing a student's ability to perform knowledge in a specific neuronormative way.

Flexibility built in from the start. We don't wait for students to request extensions or alternatives. We build it in: multiple deadlines or assessment pathways that students can choose between, use-it-when-you-need-it extensions, multiple means of representation for our content, and lots of choice in assessment formats.

So students don't have to disclose, they don't have to negotiate, they don't have to justify. They just do what works for them.

For institutional practice

I know you can't eliminate diagnosis requirements overnight. Funding is tied to them. Policies require them. But you can reduce reliance on them and phase them out.

It might mean allowing students to access some supports - so licensed assistive tech, recordings and transcripts - without disclosure. Accept broader evidence of need, not just formal assessments and reports. Provide interim support while students are in assessment. And again, UDL is really important there.

Every time you provide support without requiring that disclosure and diagnosis, you are challenging biocertification.

Recognise neuronormativity in academic integrity. Those frameworks also are not neutral. They assume students have been taught academic conventions in accessible ways, that everyone understands unwritten rules in the same way, that common knowledge is actually common.

Doesn't mean abandoning integrity standards - it means we need to teach conventions explicitly and repeatedly and recognise that breaches can come from access barriers, not dishonesty.

And finally, I'm not going to get on my soapbox here about student voice and student engagement, but you can ask me about it or go read about it on my Substack. Build genuine student voice and student perspectives into policy design and programme design.

Navigating institutional tensions

As we come to a close, I want to acknowledge the real tension that we're navigating here. You are all working in institutions that require diagnoses for funding. There are risk management frameworks you have to follow. You get assessed on metrics like service utilisation, disclosure rates. We also work in universities where we have traditions about whose knowledge and whose perspectives we trust that have both produced and reinforced neuronormativity over time.

This paradigm isn't ideal to work towards. You can't complete a checklist on this. You're going to find yourself compromising and working within systems you know are problematic, making decisions that don't align perfectly. And that's the reality of institutional change work.

Doesn't mean we give up. You can name when systems are creating barriers. You can document the impact of policies on students. Advocate for change, even when it's slow, and find creative workarounds within existing structures. But most importantly, build relationships with students based on trust, not control.

Your role in paradigm shift

What is your role in all of this? You're not just service providers or support staff. You're advocates for paradigm shift. And I know that, particularly in disability practitioner circles, we are very anxious about the word advocate. But I think that you are, and you need to advocate for this paradigm in spaces where you have influence. Challenge neuronormativity when you see it. Push back on adjustments as the only solution and build coalitions with other practitioners doing the work. You don't do this by yourself. You do it as a community.

Every time you push back, every time you build in flexibility, you are shifting the paradigm. It's not just a nice theory - it's a challenge to how we organise higher education, and you have more power to change it than you think.

Closing thoughts

As I see Rebecca popping up for questions, I want to take us home with a bit of hope.

I think that real universities are grounded in principles and values where neurodivergence actually thrives. Universities value knowledge and curiosity, which are strong elements of neurodivergent culture. Academia values hyper-focus and passion.

Earlier iterations of universities - think like Old Oxford Energy - they were designed for academics who lived and breathed their work and didn't have time to think about food or cleaning or life admin. Residential universities and fellowships and ecosystems of support emerged from this. We've cooked it along the way. Marketisation of universities has cooked it. But research and learning really is about thinking differently and developing new perspectives, and that is something that neurodivergent people thrive with.

A few places that you can go to keep reading, keep learning: Nick Walker's work, Sonny Jane Wise's work. 

Q&A session

EBE: Very happy to answer questions. Send the curly hairy ones.

One that I will just address briefly before I hand over to Rebecca is... the intention here is not to blame neurotypical people. And it's also not to assume that all of these systems work for neurotypical people either, because they don't. But what often is confused or potentially misunderstood in this space is: neurodivergence, or neurodivergent, is not a diagnostic category. It's a socially constructed identity. And as a neurodivergent person, I am disempowered from making the change, right? I don't have the positionality necessarily in the same way as someone who is neurotypical to affect the change.

So I'm not saying that everything works perfectly for neurotypical people or that all neurotypical people are creating this issue. That is absolutely not the case. I work with lots of neurotypical folk in the work that I do. But just recognising the positionality to the issue and the power to be able to affect change.

So definitely not trying to isolate or, yeah, marginalise neurotypical people in this conversation, but just to recognise there is a real difference in the way we experience these barriers. But anyway, I'm going to let Rebecca take us through some questions.

REBECCA: Thank you so much, Ebe. First of all, I'd just like to thank you for your time and your expertise, and especially for your courage. I've heard you speak a number of times and we've worked together, and every time you walk in, you microphone-drop and then you're gone. And it's really great because I do feel challenged. I feel my heart's racing a little bit. I'm sweating a bit. I'm trying to keep on top of the chat - it's not working. But you do it in a way that's so digestible and with such positivity and this belief that we can work together to address some of these things.

But yeah, you've got me pretty nervous at the moment actually, because, you know, universities - we love collecting data, we love following policies and procedures, so it's really difficult. But definitely something to consider.

And there have been some questions in the chat and some questions in the Q&A. So I'll just go through some of the questions. You very generously offered to go through some that we don't get to today and potentially provide some written feedback for us all.

But let's start with the first question. So what's the one thing you wish institutions would do differently first to combat some of the issues you've raised?

EBE: I think the most impactful institutional-level change that universities could make in this space is implementing universal design for learning. Because I think even if you changed nothing else, if you made the primary way that students were engaging with our institutions - which is through their learning and through their assessment - if you made that flexible by default and give students choice and autonomy in the way that they choose to demonstrate their knowledge and engagement, I think that goes a massive way towards addressing some of the really biggest barriers.

Because at the end of the day, belonging is nice, inclusion is nice, but we're here to get a degree. And at the very bare minimum, if we can make that part of the process - regardless of student life, regardless of all the other things, regardless of the nice programmes - if we can make that process of learning and being assessed and getting the degree flexible, easy, responsive, I think that's the most impactful way to genuinely address this challenge.

Because what I hear in the sector is that the rising rates of disclosure in the neurodiversity space is presenting a really big challenge to our existing model of "let's make individual adjustments for individual students". If we could actually address the learning design and the assessment design from the root cause, we wouldn't be experiencing so many of these tensions and kind of system overload. Because I know everyone here is really overworked, and the fact that you've made an hour to learn about this today is massive.

Yeah, we think about this perhaps in a way that is short-term, and our institutions incentivise that to some extent. But yeah, I think that's the biggest first thing. 

REBECCA: Not a small one. And it is... It does involve us completely reframing the way we think, I suppose, about equity and reasonable adjustments. And this reflects some of the comments that I've taken out of the chat. So I'll just talk to this for a moment.

Because the way we think about reasonable adjustments is that it is to mitigate the impact of people's disabilities or some of the challenges that they're facing, and it's to actually level the playing field. And so if we're talking about levelling the playing field for everybody, does that then put people at another disadvantage?

Because one of a couple of the themes in the chat were... if we're moving away from a strictly biometric or medicalised diagnosis - and I'm taking this directly from Julia - what methods do you propose for accurately assessing an individual's need for support and accommodations to ensure resources are distributed effectively?

Does that make sense what I'm trying to connect here?

EBE: Yeah, I think so. It's hard, right? Because we don't have particularly well-established tools to do this outside of a diagnostic framework, I suppose. And to take that in a slightly practical direction to give people something to go on there: looking at ways that we can understand functional impact and ways that we can understand what the interaction between someone's neurodivergent experience is with what they need to do in their learning - I think that has to be the starting point.

It can't be a set of assumptions about a particular diagnosis. It can't be a set of assumptions about the programme itself. It needs to be an interaction model between those two things. And I don't know what that looks like. I'm not as experienced as a lot of people in the room around what that means and what that would look like.

But I'll give you an example. As an HDR student on a scholarship doing a PhD, things just take me longer as an ADHD and as an autistic person. But the one real adjustment that would genuinely make a change to my ability to successfully complete my PhD - which is extending my scholarship - that's not a thing. Can't do that.

So that means that what you need to do for me is you need to make me faster. You need to give me tools so that I can be faster and make up the time so that I can complete study in the same way as someone who doesn't have the experiences that I have.

Now, our systems as they are are really bad at doing that and recognising the individual variation of what would actually be required to achieve that. So I get offered a generic software package that is supposed to... "this is the one that we do, this is the one that we use, and this is what we use for everyone". Even if I go back with a whole list of reasons why that doesn't work for me or doesn't actually address the issue, "that's what we do, that's all we've got". Like, no, not good enough.

We need to be looking at an individual student. We need to be looking at what they need to do and what would need to shift there. What kind of power-ups can you give me? Because in that situation, we can't change the system element of extending my scholarship, despite the fact that that would be the most equitable thing to do.

So it's balancing those system elements with individual and interactional ways to understand the experience to then develop the solution if it does need to be individualised.

I went on a journey there. Sorry, I don't think I directly answered your question.

REBECCA: No, no, you've raised many more questions, that's for sure. And I do want to have this conversation, but I'm mindful that I just don't monopolise this conversation. So I'm going to move on to the next question, but perhaps we can touch on that again at a later date, or I'll just choose my own questions for later.

So Julia's asked in the Q&A: can you please share an example of something designed with different needs in mind compared with the standard assessments?

EBE: Yeah, I mean, I've seen some good examples of UDL-informed assessment pathways where students get to choose their case study or their context application for whatever assessment it is that they're doing.

So, I mean, use an example from my Master's - I studied disability and inclusion. Shout-out to some of the units there that I marked that showed really excellent UDL-informed assessment, giving students a choice of case study, giving students a choice of whether or not they express their thoughts in writing, verbally in a recording, or in an interview format. And giving people flexible timeframes in which they can submit those or demonstrate their learning.

Pacing is really variable in neurodivergent experiences. And so it's not up to us to decide whether one big exam at the end or lots of formative assessment along the way is better or worse for any one individual. Yeah, it takes a lot of time and energy to facilitate both of those things - I'm not saying that it doesn't - but it's way better for the student if you can give that variation in the way that you structure their ability to demonstrate learning.

Within enough structured frameworking - there's nothing worse than where you've got seven different choices of ways that you can complete an assignment. I get decision fatigue in those settings. So giving enough structure so that students could choose a low executive function pathway where the choices are made for them, or they can make every individual choice along the way if they want to.

That's not a specific example to a discipline or a specific type of assignment, but that's kind of the principle rules behind what I'm talking about.

REBECCA: Yeah, that's a great example. Thank you. I think there's time for potentially one more question, and this is from Katie.

Do you think there is still a place for diagnosis? And Katie's saying that I know that for a lot of people, currently getting a diagnosis provides them with additional insight into themselves. Katie knows that you have said people know what they need, and many do, but there's also a significant number who have masked heavily and are a bit at a loss of what they actually need. And again, that ability to advocate for themselves and start developing those skills - it can help them feel a legitimate part of the neurodivergent community if they get that diagnosis.

So do you have any thoughts on that?

EBE: Oh, that's absolutely my experience. Formalising a diagnosis was certainly transformative in the way that - not just in how I engage with education, but throughout my whole life. And I don't think... the whole core of the neurodiversity paradigm is autonomy and choice. And so if someone chooses to pursue formal diagnosis for whatever reasons - and there's lots of them, some of which you've listed - then that's awesome. And if they choose not to, that shouldn't be a reason that we deny them support.

So it's about acknowledging that everyone has different priorities in what they need. And equally, I also don't always know what I need all the time. And having a diagnosis can help with locating your experience with others and finding some ideas and some insights. And it's also shorthand to communicate with others who don't have that experience - the kinds of things that you might be experiencing in higher education.

So there's definitely a place for formal diagnosis. But what I'm saying here is that requiring that produces really bizarre outcomes for accessibility and inclusion. And we really need to question that if we want to deliver sustainable and genuine, authentic support to students.

REBECCA: Thank you. I think my takeaway from that is that we're not questioning individual experience in any way or individual choices. We're questioning how we administer it in tertiary education.

And having said that, I think time is up. There are more questions. So if it's okay with you, Ebe, we will provide those to you later and hopefully be able to post some responses with the recording.

So thank you, Ebe. Thank you again.

EBE: Thanks everyone. Thanks for all the chat and your engagement. It's really wonderful to see everyone so interested. Thank you.

Outro and Announcement

Thanks for listening to another episode of the Higher Hopes podcast. You can in fact go over to the ADCET website to have a look at the written responses that I gave to those questions that I didn't get to in the session.

But in addressing those questions in writing, it gave me an idea for some new content in 2026. So if you have questions about neuro-affirming practice in universities - just like the audience in the webinar - you can ask me about what's challenging you in the tutorial room, how you can improve your programme to be more neuro-inclusive, or how neurodivergent student leadership can be centred.

I'll be batching these thematically and addressing them monthly via a new column series on Substack, which I'll be calling "Ask me anything about neuro-affirming practice in higher education". I will put a link to where you can submit your questions, as well as the questions that I answered in writing after the webinar. And if you want to watch the full recording of the webinar via video, I'll also pop a link to that as well as ADCET's other awesome resources in the show notes.

If you're keen to back this project, please head over to Higher Hopes by Ebe Ganon on Substack, which you can find via higherhopespod.com. There are various paid and free ways you can support this work, including by leaving a rating and review to help other people discover this platform.

Until next time, keep dreaming bigger, keep building better, and stay hopeful.

The Higher Hopes podcast is produced on the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples. I pay my respects to elders past and present, as well as to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people listening today. Sovereignty was never ceded, and this acknowledgement extends to wherever you are listening from. I encourage you to learn about the traditional custodians of your own country. It's our job to support First Nations perspectives and knowledge in the higher education sector, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the original teachers, learners and researchers on this land.