By Corinna Matlis
The rates of autism diagnoses are going up across the UK. While this has sparked a fair amount of controversy about whether the cause lies in changing diagnosis criteria or something else, the reality is that we have more and more students in our classrooms who are autistic and/or identify as autistic or neurodivergent. Therefore, it is important that we think carefully about how we are supporting those students. In this blogpost, I’m going to suggest that many of the ways we are already supporting autistic students are in line with best practice, and so we should double-down on them. At the same time, I will suggest that we think carefully about how we understand and talk about autistic pupils so that we can move away from deficit and medicalised language. Throughout this blogpost, I will refer to autistic people and neurodivergent people. These are not synonyms – neurodivergence is a bigger basket that includes people who have ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, OCD, and other conditions. It is common for neurodivergent people to have co-occurring conditions and many practices that support autistic students will also support other neurodivergent students.
In the interest of full transparency, I have delved into this topic this year in part because of the high number of students with autism diagnoses on my registers. The other reason for my delving into this topic, however, is that a close relative received an autism diagnosis last summer, and I also, at the age of thirty-seven, received a working diagnosis for both autism and dyspraxia. (I’m still on the waiting list to be assessed for a formal diagnosis). This topic is therefore personal to me, but I believe that this motivates me to think more deeply about what kind of adaptations are truly helpful. Also, as a neurodivergent teacher, I have limited space in my cognitive load to make massive adaptations and will therefore advocate for rethinking practices that we are already doing that help students and don’t overload teachers.
Thinking about Autism Differently
Before thinking about ways to support autistic students in the classroom, it is worth rethinking how we view autism. The rise in diagnosis has been accompanied by a wider understanding of what autism is and how autistic people may present. The ‘Double Empathy Problem’ is a particularly powerful reframing of autism. While traditionally autistic people have been viewed as having poor social skills and even lacking in empathy, in 2012, the scholar Damian Milton, who is autistic, postulated that the issue is not that autistic people lack empathy but rather that the understanding breaks down between autistic and neurotypical people to such an extent that each one can view the other as lacking in empathy. His argument, therefore, is that the path forward is for all of us to try to learn about and understand each other better.
Many of us are used to thinking of autism as a spectrum. While this is useful in that it makes clear that every autistic person’s experience is not the same, it actually does not capture the wide variety of autistic experience along different modalities that can be dialled up or down. Some examples of these modalities might be sensory processing differences, social differences, different styles of communication, executive functioning differences etc.. Different people may have different levels of support needs (autistic people prefer to speak about ‘high levels of support needs’ rather than ‘severe autism.’) Some autistic people may ‘mask’ more than others, even to themselves, and this may mean that support needs are not apparent or that the person’s intellectual or emotional capacity varies depending on how tired they are from masking. (As a personal example, one of the modalities that shows up most strongly for me is sensory differences, but I tried to ignore those differences for most of my life and just muscle through. This led me to feel pretty exhausted fairly regularly.)
Although the official language in the DSM-5 and ICD-11 refers to ‘Autism Spectrum Disorder,’ most autistic people prefer to avoid using the word ‘disorder’ when talking about autism. Advocacy groups, such as the National Autistic Society, explain that autistic people prefer simply to be called ‘autistic’, and we should avoid saying that someone ‘has autism’ in order to de-medicalise the language we use on a day-to-day basis. In his book, Uniquely Human, Barry Prizant was one of the first scholars to lay out the idea that autism should be seen as a difference rather than a deficit. Autistic or neurodivergent people have strengths and weaknesses just like anyone else. The difference is that those strengths and weaknesses tend to fall in different patterns than those of neurotypical people. Some people do have higher support needs than others, and it may be that some pupils need more explicit support than what I will advocate for here, but the strategies here will support everyone at least to some extent.
Standard Adaptations with a Different Attitude
Below are four practices that are standard in how we teach at WA and especially in how we support SEN students. It would be helpful, however, to understand exactly how and why these practices are especially important for autistic and other neurodivergent people. Thinking through this will allow us to focus on making these practices more effective.
Lesson Outlines: An important priority for teachers with neurodivergent pupils is to give them a sense of where they are in the lesson. (Huma advocated for this in her CPD presented to departments in Term 5!) This can be done verbally or, even better, visually in the slides, but it does not need to be complicated. An overview at the beginning can be helpful, but more important is to remind the pupils consistently of where they are in the lesson and where they are going next. I have included an example of this from a Y7 history lesson below. The slide is very simple, and it is repeated throughout the lesson with different lines bolded, depending on where we are in the lesson. The reason this is so helpful is that neurodivergent people tend to process information in different ways, often in greater detail than neurotypical people. That means it is easy to get lost in the weeds and it can be very helpful to have a framework.
Chunking Information and Having Opportunities to Practice: This suggestion is entirely in line with the new WA Pillars of Teaching and Learning, including the suggested lesson outlines. Everyone, neurotypical or neurodivergent, learns better when we are given a reasonable amount of new knowledge or information to digest and then a chance to practice it. Neurodivergent pupils, however, learn best when given multiple different ways to process information.
Modelling Language: This is also a staple of teaching and not something that needs to be specifically adapted for neurodivergent pupils. Autistic pupils in particular, however, may interact with models slightly differently than others. Almost all autistic people are Gestalt Language Processors. GLPs process language more easily in chunks than as individual words. This is particularly relevant in early life when we are acquiring language but can remain relevant into adulthood. This means that an autistic student may directly incorporate a model phrase into their speech or writing and reproduce it later as well. (This is called ‘delayed echolalia.’) For decades, this repetition was considered evidence that autistic people do not understand language well, but researcher Marge Blanc demonstrated that this is actually part of a process of deciphering language that can not only be a very effective form of communication but also eventually leads to creation of unique language and phrases.
Group Work and Executive Function: All of the practices I’ve discussed above are part of a teacher’s standard toolkit and are also part of the standard toolkit for teaching neurodivergent students. For my PLC this year, I’ve also tried another technique that is not as commonly associated with supporting neurodivergent students – group work. My results were mixed, as I will explain below, but it is worth remembering that structured group work fits with the suggestion that neurodivergent students often thrive when given many different ways to learn. The EEF suggests that working in groups can help support children who struggle with executive function – one of the biggest challenges for those of us who are neurodivergent because of the overwhelming amount of information we are processing. In my Year 7 history class, I structured a unit on Tudor England around group work. The structure and roles for the group work were the same for three consecutive weeks, and this gave students the chance to get used to the process (they were reading about different people who lived in Tudor England and finding similarities and differences between their lives). Ultimately, the classwork and final assessment did show an improvement for many of the students, autistic or not, from previous terms. However, a student voice survey revealed that the students did not feel that the group work had helped them understand the unit. I don’t think that group work is a silver bullet to support autistic and neurodivergent students, but it does belong in our toolkit as a different way to practice skills.
Final Thoughts
With more and more pupils coming to WA with autism diagnoses, it is important that we have a clear understanding of the many complexities of autism and other forms of neurodivergence. I believe the easiest way for teachers to make adaptations to support most neurodivergent students is if we teach lessons as normal but keep in mind the ways certain techniques may specifically help autistic and other neurodivergent students so as to make sure those practices are prioritised. It is also important to keep in mind that we should see autism as a difference and avoid using language like ‘deficit’, ‘disorder’, or ‘dysfunction’ whenever possible.
Notes/Sources
1 This is one of many news stories talking about the rise in diagnoses and the questions around what is driving them: Autism diagnoses are on the rise – but autism itself may not be, last accessed 23 June, 2025.
2 Damian Milton,“On the Ontological Status of Autism: The ‘Double Empathy Problem.’” Disability & Society 27 (6): 883–87.
3 For an example of this kind of explanation for autism, see Claire Jack, ‘From Autistic Linear Spectrum to Pie Chart Spectrum: Is it time to think of autism as a wheel, rather than a line?’ in Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/women-autism-spectrum-disorder/202208/autistic-linear-spectrum-pie-chart-spectrum, last accessed 24 June, 2025.
4 The National Autistic Society has this really helpful PDF that explains the best ways to talk about autism and autistic people: ‘How do Talk and Write about Autism Guide.’ https://nas.chorus.thirdlight.com/file/24/w2nAKE4w2MLxnl9w2LQ-w1l_8C/How%20to%20talk%20and%20write%20about%20autism%20guide%20-%20June%202025.pdf , last accessed 23 June 2025.
5 Barry Prizant with T Field-Meyers, (2015) Uniquely Human: A Different Way of Seeing Autism. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
6 For an introduction to neurodivergence that is also wonderfully accessible for young people, try: Louise Gooding, (2023) Wonderfully Wired Brains: An Introduction to the World of Neurodiversity. dLondon, UK: Dorling Kindersley Limited.
7 Barry Prizant discusses this technique in a vlog on his website specifically for teachers: Barry Prizant, ‘Barry Shares 5 Tips for Educators’ Dr Barry M Prizant, PhD CCC-SLP: Barry shares 5 Tips for Educators (3 min) . Last Accessed 16 June 2025.
8 ‘Autistic Brain Differences in Learning’ Teacher Toolkit: Autistic Brain Differences in Learning - TeacherToolkit. Last Accessed 13 June 2025.
9 Barry Prizant discusses this technique in a vlog on his website specifically for teachers: Barry Prizant, ‘Barry Shares 5 Tips for Educators’ Dr Barry M Prizant, PhD CCC-SLP: Barry shares 5 Tips for Educators (3 min) . Last Accessed 16 June 2025.
10 Here are some online resources geared toward supporting GLPs of any age: ‘General Strategies for Gestalte Language Processors of Any Age.’ General strategies for gestalt language processors - Resource Library - Sheffield Children's NHS Foundation Trust (last access 23 June 2025) and ‘Middle, High School and Young Adult Gestalt Language Processors’ Middle, High School and Young Adult Gestalt Language Processors (last accessed 23 June 2025).
11 Marge Blanc, ‘The Natural Language Acquisition Guide: ‘Echolalia’ is all about gestalt language development’ on www.communicationdevelopmentcenter.com. Last revised 14 January, 2024 and last accessed 16 June, 2025.
12 ‘Self Regulation and Executive Function,’ EEF. EEF | Self-Regulation and Executive Function. Last Accessed 13 June, 2025.
