Researchers in Psychology at Birmingham City University have been investigating how the classroom can be made more inclusive for neurodiverse students and staff, introducing stim toys into lectures and monitoring student experience.
Emily Coyne-Umfreville
Deputy Head of the College of Psychology
“Neurodiversity is a natural variation in cognitive functioning, and includes many non-dominant neurotypes such as Autism, ADHD/ADD, Dyslexia, OCD, and Dyspraxia. Positive neurodiversity perspectives value and cherish such variation in cognitive functioning, and do not see it as a marker of negative difference.
In Psychology at BCU we joined up with a small group of universities (University of Exeter, York St John University and Aston University) to look at creating a positive teaching and learning environment for everyone, including people with neurodiverse profiles.
To create the inclusive classroom, we introduced several measures including use of stim toys in the classroom for all staff and students, making discrete ear defenders available to reduce background noise and ensuring that inclusive language is used in the classrooms.
We asked the students to complete a questionnaire before and after the module asking about their experience in the classroom, the teaching materials, belongingness and loneliness.
We found that the students experience had improved after the intervention and there were lots of positive comments in the module evaluations around the use of the stim toys in particular.
The student’s enjoyment of the class and their confidence in their own work had also improved. Students reported lower feelings of loneliness after the intervention and their feeling of belonging in the classroom had risen. The students also rated interactions with staff more positively after the intervention.
In Psychology, we have found that the use of stim toys and the act of normalising these in the classroom has made a huge impact.
Some students reported that they had never used them before and found them helpful, some asked to take them to their other classes and the staff have all found positive benefits to stimming whilst teaching.
In the module evaluation one student said “I always use stim toys at home, but thought everyone would look at me in class so I did not bring it into uni. Now I can stim as everyone has one and it has made me so happy.”
The next phase of this project is to interview some of the students who took part in the intervention to explore the themes in the qualitative data. But overall, stim toys are here to stay!”