This course is designed to help teachers and school leaders understand neurodiversity and common neurodivergences present in the classroom. It will explore what educators need to know and understand about neurodiversity as well as explore strategies and approaches at the school, classroom, and individual student level that effectively support neurodivergent students at secondary school (ages 12 to 18). Knowledge building sections throughout the course will also support educators to build their understanding of specific conditions, including co-occurrence. Throughout the course, participants will be encouraged to reflect on their current practice, evaluating the inclusivity and accessibility of their classrooms and settings, and plan how they might modify their practice to support all students’ learning.
The aims of the course are to:
This course has interviews including:
Professor John Everatt, University of Canterbury
Dr Emily McDougal, Anna Freud Centre
Vanessa Leaver, Speech Language Therapist
Tami Harris & Lily Stadlober, Acorn Neurodiversity
Arul Hamill & Lucy Charles, Occupational Therapists
Maria Walker-Kinnell, Student
Annabelle March, Trainee teacher
It includes interviews with staff at
Stonefields School
Westlake Boys’ High School
Northcote College
The course is structured into eight parts, with seven additional knowledge-building sections designed to develop your understanding of different forms of neurodivergence. You can work through the course at your own pace.
Introduces the concept of neurodiversity and what neurodiversity can mean in the classroom. It explores the implications of the neurodiversity paradigm for educational settings.
Explores the importance of building effective relationships with students and their families and whānau, and details the many benefits of working closely with other teachers, leaders, and teacher aides or learning support staff within the school, as well as with external experts and specialists.
Focuses on how to build an effective school-wide approach to supporting neurodivergent students, and explores key ideas and principles for designing support based on evidence-informed and life experience-based approaches to neurodiversity. Case studies of three schools enable you to see what these principles can look like in different contexts.
Explores this approach to designing teaching and learning that is recommended and endorsed by neurodiversity advocates and researchers.
Examines how considering environments from a sensory point of view and developing consistent routines can provide important support for neurodivergent students at school.
Explores the importance of executive functioning and how you can enable students to succeed by explicitly teaching and supporting these skills. It also provides guidance on the importance of explicit teaching of both academic content and social skills.
Examines how you can plan for and effectively respond to challenging scenarios in the classroom. It explains emotion dysregulation and what can cause it, explores how you can proactively support students to build their emotion knowledge and emotional regulation skills, and offers guidance on noticing and ameliorating the factors that can trigger episodes of dysregulation in students.
Reminds you of the valuable and vital role you play in supporting neurodivergent students, and supports you to ensure that you maintain your own wellbeing.
Knowledge building sections throughout the course are designed to develop your understanding about the most common forms of neurodivergence and how they can impact students, and to help you develop a suite of practical strategies and approaches that can support students in school environments. The topics covered include autism, sensory processing differences, ADHD, executive functioning, speech and language differences (including developmental language disorder), developmental coordination disorder (DCD), dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, and the mental health challenges that many neurodivergent students experience.
Enrol yourself
Enrol others AND yourself
Group discounts of 15-25%
Lifetime access*
Personalised certificates
Enrol others NOT yourself
Group discounts of 15-25%
Lifetime access*
Personalised certificates
Please note, all our courses are best completed on a desktop/laptop computer or tablet. Because of the amount of content, we do not recommend using a phone.
* Lifetime access means for as long as the course is hosted on The Education Hub
Group discounts apply to the full price, and can only be applied in one transaction, not retrospectively, or on the addition of more enrolments.
Our standard terms and conditions are available here
