Thread by @curtaindsleep

1/ I've been thinking about my status as a neurodiverse educator: I'm #ADHD, and on the pathway for an #autism diagnosis. There's not a lot of discussion about what working life is like for neurodiverse educators, so I'm doing my own research and I plan to discuss it here. 🧵

2/ I'm going to start with a core tension the neurodiverse face: the DOUBLE EMPATHY PROBLEM.

3/ According to Milton (2012), cognitive neuroscience and other psychological paradigms don’t acknowledge the divergence and difference in social reality between autistic people and the ‘neurotypical’.

4/ He formulates the term ‘the double empathy problem’ to explore this contested space, arguing that autistic people are framed, assimilated and judged on by terms.

5/ Such unilateral judgement, without the input of autistic people, takes us beyond the idea that it is simply autistic people who struggle to understand the world, read its social cues, and correspond to its interactions. It is, in fact, a double empathy problem.

6/ Issues are therefore not just due to #autistic people alone, but ‘a breakdown in reciprocity and mutual understanding that can happen between people with very differing ways of experiencing the world’ (Milton, 2018).

7/ Judgement of autism from the outside position the autistic person as a curiosity.
Therefore, if we are to properly understand autism and the people who identity on the autism spectrum, we must:

8/ 1: Allow autistic people to play an active part in the codification of what autism is, and what defines its daily experience.
2: Create inclusive spaces for autism within society.

9/ 3: Stop thinking of and discussing autism using a deficit narrative and deficit thinking; it should not be about ‘modifying the autistic person “as best one can” to fit in with the mainstream culture of society’ (Milton 2012).

10/ This matters a great deal for schools who employ neurodiverse educators. I'd imagine few who make it to executive positions are neurodiverse, because the neurodiverse tend to struggle, statistically-speaking with matters of employment.

11/ Therefore, if we work from this logic, SLT are more likely to be neurotypical, with neurodiverse staff occupying lower-strata roles. Failure to recognise the double empathy problem can t/f result in schools that are borderline impossible for ND educators to work in long-term.

12/ This is explored by Happé and Wood (link in last tweet), whose analysis of a survey of autistic teachers sheds light on the hidden lives of autistic school staff. I'm going to explore the findings from this paper, and what we might do about them, in a later thread.

13/ Further reading:
Milton, Damian. 2012. ‘On the Ontological Status of Autism: The “Double Empathy Problem”’. *Disability & Society* 27 (6): 883–87.
Milton, Damian, 2018. n.d. ‘The Double Empathy Problem’. Accessed 6 April 2022. autism.org.uk/advice-and-gui….

14/ Happé and Wood's paper: (doi.org/10.1080/096875…)