Neurodiversity in Learner-Driven education
The following is an article I submitted at the request of Manovikas College of Special Education in Ujjain, India for their National conference on special education.
A case of Neurodiversity within a learner-driven environment
The learner-driven revolution in education is now finally upon us!
A learner-driven approach to education is one that focuses on empowering each child. It is a revolution that shifts power from the teacher to the learner. It’s about giving agency to the learner rather than leaving it in the hands of the teacher. A learner-driven school shifts the responsibility of learning on to the students.
Why is this critical?
According to William Stixrud and Ned Johnson, co-authors of The Self-Driven Child, “Agency may be the one most important factor in human happiness and well-being.”
Giving students agency over their own education leads to them finding intrinsic joy in learning. Through that joy, learners find a desire to continue learning on their own. They don’t need to be coerced through extrinsic motivators (or de-motivators) such as grades and report cards.
With unlimited information at their fingertips, students develop an insatiable desire to learn and become life-long learners. With limited / no teacher (or parent) intervention, they will learn to learn.
This is already happening at my school (Acton Academy Columbus) and thousands of other microschools around the world.
The model works. We have been open only two years and we’re already seeing significant results. The Acton Academy network of schools (of which there are 300+ currently around the world) has seen these incredible results for over 15 years.
How does the learner-driven approach work with children with neurodiversity?
That is currently a more difficult question because we have less information here. The vast amount of variabilities in each neurodiverse child make it difficult to answer. What we can do is document case studies. The purpose of this article is to document one case study - an 8-year old that is on the Autism spectrum.
Michael (name has been changed) joined our school in the middle of the year last year and, as with any person, it took him some time to get comfortable with the system. Coming from a very traditional environment, he was confused with the level of freedom and autonomy. At Acton, we don’t have to ask permission to move around the school, go to the bathroom, or take small breaks.
He appreciated that he could complete his math work at his own pace and no one was constantly watching over his shoulder to make sure the work was done.
He was initially frustrated with the language arts work until he discovered how gamified it is. Soon, that frustration changed to excitement. After a month of frustration, he found that intrinsic motivation to begin learning on his own. While we don’t assign any homework at Acton, he would take work home and do it whenever he had time. I was getting emails every weekend from him about the work he was completing. Since the beginning of this year, he has completed more cumulative work than almost all his peers at Acton.
On the non-academic side, Acton focuses on developing skills through project-based learning. This was much more challenging for him. Working in teams, collaborating with peers to develop plans and complete work introduced a lot of points of frustration. He found it difficult to accept that his ideas weren’t always chosen. He also found it frustrating when he wasn’t able to complete a project. Sometimes the frustration would lead to episodes of violent anger.
We had to work through that. Understanding that he enjoyed a gamification approach to learning, we started introducing a more gamified approach to our project-based learning curriculum. We also added a “Failure board” where we celebrated each other’s failures. We started talking about how failures were great because they signify that we took a risk, tried something new, and allowed our brains the opportunity to grow.
The changes made at Acton, along with coordinated changes at home, has allowed this learner to excel in our learner-driven microschool. The violent outbursts are no longer there. He continues to excel in core, academic skills and is continuing to grow in the area of project-based learning.
This is simply one case about one learner in a learner-driven environment. As the revolution in education grows, we will need to collaborate to see how we can make sure all students - including those with neurodiversity - can excel.
Varun Bhatia