The Neurodiversity Walk

Transcript of Helen Sword’s podcast episode The Neurodiversity Walk

Hi, I'm Helen Sword from helensword.com, and this is Swordswings, my podcast series for writers in motion. Whether you're driving or riding a train, out for a walk, or just pottering around in your kitchen, this recording will help you move yourself and your writing to someplace new. 

Today’s episode explores neurodiversity and neurodivergence. What do these two terms actually mean and how do they differ? How can neurodiverse  and neurodivergent writers survive and even thrive in mainstream academic environments? Most importantly, as teachers, colleagues, supervisors, and mentors, how can we best support them? 

I asked Eirini Tzouma these questions in a WriteSPACE Special Event conversation in April 2024. Eirini Tzouma is an Academic Development Advisor at the University of Durham and had recently written an article for the popular Thesis Whisperer blog about the many challenges faced by neurodiverse and divergent writers in academe. 

Let’s hear Eirini’s advice on how to be open and curious while teaching, collaborating with, or learning from others. 

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Helen: Well, let's take a step back because I want to ask you the question which I imagine some people already are well versed in this and others may not be at all. Neurodiversity versus Neurodivergence. Can you give us your take on that, on those terms?

Eirini: Yes. I'm glad you asked because I know that there is, a lot of discussion on the matter.
I tend to use them with a slash and the reason why I use them with a slash is because I want both identifications to have a space in the way in which I'm thinking. Now, there are different reasons why people might prefer one term or the other. Neurodiversity can describe the diversity that exists in a room. Let's say we have in a room people that they're both neurotypical, if such a thing exists, or neurodivergent. All of us, then, we are diverse with each other. So we have neurodiversity.
However, neurodivergent speaks of the divergent from a norm. Some people because they find that this is hard language and they find that this can be stigmatizing, they prefer the term neurodiverse. There are other people that they want to claim that and say, ‘no, indeed, there are neurotypical assumptions and we do deviate from these assumptions and that's why we need a systematic change.’ So then they prefer the term neurodivergence. It's not for me to say which term is best.

Helen: Really, really interesting. I have to confess that when I first heard the two together and thought about them. I found, you know, neurodiverse, I was like, oh yeah, you know, we're all different. And then neurodivergent, I found quite confronting in a way. I mean, I had to confront you know, my sense of, I mean, at first it was like, well, who says there's a norm? What's the norm? But then I thought, well, we're talking about academic writing. We all know there are norms. We all know that there are norms within academic work generally.

I was quite influenced back in the nineties by the work of Howard Gardner at Harvard who wrote about multiple intelligences and whether or not one accepts his way of talking about them, one thing that really resonated with me was that he said that we all have these multiple intelligences and some people might have a fantastic kind of kinetic intelligence, you know, the body, an intelligence of the body or a visual intelligence or an interpersonal intelligence. You know, what we talk about as emotional intelligence, but the only kinds of intelligence that our school system and especially our university system values, except in very specialized like artistic disciplines and things, are what he calls the Logical Analytic, I think is the one which is the mathematical kind of thinking, and then the Verbal Linguistic. So basically it's all about literacy and numeracy and not much else. Now, this was a few decades ago but I'm not sure that much has changed, you know, in the education system.

And so if you think of that in terms of norms and divergence, well, yeah, you could say the norm is that in the school systems in most western countries. If you have a certain ease with forms of literacy and forms of numeracy that the school system is trying to teach you, yeah, that is a norm.

And if your way of thinking means you need to come at some of those issues from a different angle, you would indeed feel divergent from the neurotypical. Can we talk a bit about some of the strategies you've developed then, you know, you've mentioned a few, but specifically with writing. I know in the second half you're going to take us through a worksheet that you've developed. Can you just talk about that a bit?

Eirini: Yes. So about writing. I think I would focus on two different aspects, the feedback and the editing. So one thing about feedback, again, out of reading and speaking with students is that if we reflect back on the kind of feedback we've given at points or the kind of feedback we've received at points, I think what would resonate with most of us is that we would have seen the comment that says “That is wrong”, or a question mark or “change this”. Yes? Now, from that, a person needs to infer what's wrong, why it is wrong, and if it is, how can we address it? Now ‘wrong’ might be too strong for some disciplines, let's say, ‘problematic’ or ‘needs to be thought through a bit more’.

Helen: Well, there's the classic, ‘not clear’.

Eirini: Yeah, ‘not clear’.

Helen: With nothing else!

Eirini: To who, why, what is not clear about it? So feedback. It's in the sense of feeding forward. That is another way of seeing it. It’s something that I try to give in a very transparent and clear way. Now, feedback can be written or feedback can be something that's given orally in a discussion, but I try to make it transparent.

The other bit is editing. Editing is something that a lot of people struggle with, myself included--something that took me ages to come to terms with, and it is the fact that how do you take in this comment? And from this comment, you go back to something you've written. What do you keep? What do you not, how do you change it to what direction?

And editing is something that is often not taught. So if we go back to what we are taught, we are taught possibly some strategies of how to start writing different concepts, how to analyse by theories, how we need to initiate every discipline, connect the data with different critical frameworks. But I cannot recall a time in which somebody taught me how to edit. So what works for some neurodiverse learners is that they like to see it happening. So if you could say I'm gonna take a paragraph here, a paragraph of my own writing or of your writing, whatever you prefer. And I'm going to edit this paragraph with you.

That's not going to take much, it's going to take 5-10 minutes, but I'm going to speak you through the choices that I make and the thinking patterns that I have developed when I see this text. And by doing that and explicitly engaging in that discussion with a learner, the learner can then say these are the skills, can take the tools and apply them to their own writing and editing.

Helen: So you're talking about a piece of your own writing, that you are presumably sort of preparing, like bringing in a ‘before and after’, is that right?

Eirini: You can, yeah, you can bring a ‘before and after’. And in my teaching, I mostly do it to show how I do it for a different reason—to show an initial vignette and then I show how I did this vignette so that then it can lend itself to the theory.

It's a very ethnographically inclined way of doing it, but someone can take it and apply it to the wrong discipline. So I show, this is it, then how do I move from this to be connected to theory and that requires editing.

Helen: Yeah, and it's so tricky. I mean, there's so many moves involved in writing and what I know from many years of doing research on writing and writers is there's no one way, first of all.

So, I had some experiences interviewing, senior academics who would talk about how they teach all of their PhD students basically to use exactly the same processes that they used because it worked for them. And because we're not taught anything about academic writing as part of our education, much less about editing or critique or any of those other things, it's really a black box for most of us. And so most senior academics don't realize that what works for them will not work for everyone because, you know, life's like that basically, isn't it? Nothing you do is going to work for everyone. So that's an, it's interesting to think about how to do an exercise like that in a way that is both demonstrating what you do, but not in any way saying, this is what you must do. These just happen to be my processes.

And then I presume the next step is, let's talk about what your processes might be or what processes work for you. So how do you make that step? Because this stuff is so slow and painstaking, isn't it?

Eirini: Yes. So this is an exercise that I would do later on in the workshop. So we have spent some time in the workshop in the beginning to warm people up. We know who each and every one of us are, and then we can go on to group discussion or reflective discussion, and then the next step is we would have done a whole classroom discussion, and once people are able to just shout out and have a discussion with me on the board, we can do it all together.

So I can start with a line. I don't show what I do, I show what my thinking is. I'll show you an example. Let's say that I want to speak about a meeting that I have, and in this meeting one of the things that I described is where everybody's sitting. So let's say that we have someone that's hierarchically higher than me sitting on the head of the table. That already shows that I am within a hierarchical structure. So how do I go from where a person is sitting to a hierarchy within an organization, let's say an example. Yeah, that's a leap. Now, I might do it in many different ways, and you and I might do it in different ways, but what I want to show is that this is one of the things that needs to be done to move from the chair to the hierarchy.

I show I'm doing it in X and Y way. Then we go and we say, right, how could we do it in the next line? The next line could be about if the table is mahogany or whatever, if it is an expensive wood or not, or if there are matching chairs or not, how do we do it in that instance? And then you can shout out and say, I'm going do it in that way. And then they can discuss in the tables later on, further on down the passage. And then we discuss altogether. So in that way, we get to see different ways of addressing, approaching the same task. And then we have a diversity of approaches in the room. Does it make sense?

Helen: Yeah. And that's the key, isn't it? It's not ‘you've never learned to edit, so let's show you this one way’. It's ‘let's show how many different approaches there could be to this’, but also the care that needs to be taken, whatever your approach is. So a lot of it is unlocking the black box of academic work, that sort of thing.

We've had an interesting comment come in from Vicki, about being diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of 27, during the first year of the PhD. Many people still starting university without a diagnosis, struggling through, without it being picked up and getting the support.

“My MA and PhD supervisor was also dyslexic, but it was another PhD student who picked up on it.” It's so fascinating, Vicki. I had a research assistant who was diagnosed as dyslexic when she was maybe 12, 13, 14, kind of early high school years, and she said it was the best thing that ever happened to her. Because she went from thinking that she was just dumb. You know, she just couldn't get it in school, to being assigned to a specialist who basically said you know, “your brain needs these extra steps”, or, you know, “you're going to need more time to do what some of those other students are doing. But if you take these steps, here's how you do it.” And from that, she learned to have these just amazing study skills where she really prioritized her time and she worked on things early and all that. Now she's got A+s at university and now she's a journalist, which is amazing for somebody who was told at the age of 13 or 14 that she was always going to struggle with writing.

And I've met PhD students who have said a similar sort of thing, which is that there's actually something quite empowering about knowing what you need and then having professional help. And then you can actually name your processes in a way that most of us can't, you know, others might just sort of be muddling through but almost none of us are really taught to dissect our processes the way that you're talking about there.

So yeah, really, really interesting. And I can see several people mentioning ADHD. So just having to do things in a way that the mainstream isn’t taught. That would be that idea of neurodivergence. There's something that is the norm that's being taught and people who need something else.

But we can go back and question that norm as well. So what are some of the particular issues you're seeing with PhD students? I mean, I imagine that's quite a different population from the foundation students. I imagine though, of course, one could have somebody who moves from one to the other.

Eirini: Yes. So, one of the things is that the PhD is a different type of degree than the degrees we've done so far. I was reading this book, which is called How We Write. In this book, the premise is there are guidelines on how to write. However, there are not a lot of honest accounts of how we actually write, which might be different from these guidelines.

Now, how the book does it is that it has 13 different authors in a quite self-reflexive manner speaking about how they rise in the journey. The first one is from a PhD student, and basically what this person is saying, which is really interesting, is that up until the point of the PhD, the kind of student that gets rewarded or is moulded through this academic system is a very structured student, is someone that knows “this is my deadline, this is what I need to do, and I do it on time and I move on.” But then somehow on a PhD, there is a shift. The deadline is three years later. The project is vast. There are no classes. There are no essays. So what do we do then? How does the student change, how, what kind of skills do they need? And then it goes to how do we dissect a big goal into smaller goals?
How do we manage a big academic project together with other academic responsibilities like teaching or presenting or being in a writing group or doing whatever a PhD student is doing. And so, this leap is a very, big challenge for people. Then what also comes to the foreground for some others is supervision.

How do we tackle supervision? Supervision is something that we might come to it with the best of intentions, but it is about how two people work with each other. However, how much transparency there is and honesty about the ways in which we work, how we expect the people to work with us and what we value in this working relationship sometimes is not part of common practice, which is also another issue for PhD students that sometimes feel that they need to manage their supervisor. So these, I would say, are the biggest things that I've seen so far alongside with writing feedback and editing that we've talked about before.

Helen: Well, the whole question of supervision--That's a fascinating one.

In a perfect world, the supervisors would be coming in with an awareness of and would have all the time in the world as well. I remember going to a supervision workshop run by a colleague about ‘how to be a good supervisor’ basically. And she'd done a lot of research in this area. And one thing she told us that has really stuck with me is that when you are a PhD student and you're meeting with your supervisor, let's say once a month or twice a month, you spend hours thinking and worrying about that one meeting, right? You plan for it. You imagine the conversation in advance. You worry about this and that, you know, and by the time you come in, you might be sort of exhausted and stressed before it even happens. As the supervisor, this is just one hour in your very busy month and probably, you know, you may not even think much about it before or afterwards, except whatever minimal preparation you have to do. And so the idea of a student being able to come in with the skills and the ability to manage that relationship a bit, you know, is great, but also hard. Right? And won't always work with a resistant supervisor who thinks that they know everything.

But that's an amazing skill to be teaching and talking about with people. Yeah. Fantastic. There's some really interesting comments coming in. “Supervision is a nest of worms!” I like that. A nest of worms. I've heard of a can of worms and I think a snake nest. I love the idea of a nest of worms. And several people talking about, again, kind of being empowered by a diagnosis of ADHD, and then somewhere in here is a comment….Here we go, Christina says: “I hate being told my neurodivergence is actually a superpower because I see how I struggle differently than my colleagues.” Yeah, that's an interesting one because I would love to think that neurodivergence is a superpower, that something that you struggle with would also be bringing you, and the world, some kind of fantastic extra bonus or something.
But there is something a bit glib about saying something like that too, isn't it? It's a little, a little too easy. The word that keeps coming into my mind over and over again is power. The empowerment, but also the power hierarchies within universities and teacher-student relationships, in supervisory relationships.

And so you are working with the students. But you've developed a kind of contract, haven't you, that we'll be looking at or a sort of worksheet for finding ways of conversations of two writers who are going to be working together. So is that contract for any kind of relationship, including hierarchical?

Eirini: Yes. So it was initially developed from the perspective of a teacher. I can imagine that it can work with many different types of relationships. It can work in supervisor relationships, it can work when you're leading a small group. You know, diversity means that we have so many different…there are so many different ways of seeing the world. There are so many different needs for support. How am I supposed to know exactly what everybody needs? You're not, and that's why it is important to actually have the conversation and see what somebody needs and let them tell you, and this is where this formula comes in.

Helen: Just ask. It's kind of simple, isn't it? When you put it that way. How am I supposed to know what everybody needs? You could ask them! It's interesting the idea of people talking to each other about their working styles…I often get questions from people because I work with writers a lot around how do you write more stylishly and more engagingly in ways that themselves are often challenging academic norms and conventions. And people who work in disciplines with a co-author will say, “you know what? You know My co-author might think something completely different from me. My co-author might disagree. My co-author comes back and processes out all of my interesting metaphors or whatever else.” And what I've found talking to academics is that very few of them seem ever to have sat down with their co-authors and actually talked about style together. They talk about the content and they hand things out--You write this bit, I'll write that bit. They talk about the methodology. You know, they talk about the project, but the communication of that project to the world is something where…and sometimes it's because you'll have, often a senior author, but not necessarily, You'll have co-authors who are just making assumptions about how it should be done. And so it takes quite a robust conversation for somebody to come in and challenge that and say, “maybe we could do that differently.” So conversations about output, about the style, the craft conversations, about the input about how we work, how we communicate with each other.

When we met before you were telling me about a co-teaching situation that you had. Do you mind talking about that, just a similar sort of thing of realizing a gap in your styles?

Eirini: Yes. So I have been co-teaching for a while closely with a colleague. In the beginning, it took us both a while to realize that we were approaching the world and thus teaching and learning in a different way.

So they are very good at being spontaneous and going with a feeling of the class. But I like structure and I like to know what is going to be said when and how and if there are specific places in which spontaneity can take place. Some people say that this goes against the concept of spontaneity altogether because if you have structured it, it's not spontaneous, but I believe that it can fit into the structure.

So in the beginning, they wanted for me different things than I wanted from them. And as the relationship developed, we both realized, “hang on a minute, the thing is that we work differently.” So I had to rewind and so did they, to start thinking, ‘right how do they approach this?’ Now I have to imagine, I take this slide and I have to imagine how my colleague is approaching this workshop and through you know, tracing the thinking steps, I got it. And once I got how they think, I got how I can think alongside them. And they did the same. And now they're my absolute best classes because I feel that we both bounce off, each other's…how do you say… strengths! But it took a while because I assumed that they should think the way I think, and I didn't assume it consciously. It was a subconscious thing in which I was expecting someone to work like I did. Right? Yes, it was a massive moment of growth.

Helen: My son did a business degree and he used to do the case competitions where you go in a team of four students and you do all this practicing together, and then you go off to these competitions where you get given a business case and you're stuck in a hotel room for eight hours and you have to come up with a proposal for turning the business around and present it, right?

This whole thing. But they spend most of their preparation time learning each other's strengths and weaknesses. You know, they dig quite deep into what are you good at? What might be something that somebody else should be taking the lead on? And the supervisors assemble the teams for diversity. And by diversity I mean by kind of intellectual diversity, you know, different ways of thinking and working. And it's seen as a weakness to have a team where everybody's alike. And yet we know, of course, all the stuff we know about unconscious bias and things, you know, there are so many studies showing that when someone’s being interviewed for a job, for example, people will talk about, “oh, well, you know, they're very interesting, but I don't think they're a great fit for this team.” And that almost always means “they're different from us.” Whereas if you said, “let's look for the person who's not like us.” It's much more confronting, but much more, you know, challenging in a good kind of way…

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That’s the end of today’s podcast episode. I hope that both your body and your mind have moved to someplace new. If you’ve been inspired to learn more about neurodiversity and writing, there are two excellent resources on my website. In my blog post “Supporting Neurodiverse Writer’s”, you’ll find our Writing with Neurodiversity Toolkit, which includes research-based articles on how to support neurodiverse and divergent students as well as strategies for academic writing if you’re neurodiverse or divergent yourself. 

You can also download a PDF of Erini’s strategy document “Starting on the Right Foot,” which she developed to help those with neurodiversity engage in professional writing or working relationships.                       

For our full conversation and workshop, go to the Videos section of the Writespace Library at helensword.com.  Thanks for listening, and I look forward to walking with you again  soon.