With a compassion-focused approach, consider how compassion can be enacted within interpersonal interaction, curriculum design, and leadership culture in higher education and ponder a context in which cognitive diversity can be noticed, welcomed and accepted with warmth. (Hamilton and Petty, 2023)
Explore resources to support the success and wellbeing of neurodivergent graduate students.
Podcasts
- Listen to Effectively Teaching Learners with ADHD on Designed for Learning hosted by Jim Lang, a professor of the practice in Notre Dame Learning’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence. Jim talks with Karen Costa about her new book An Educator’s Guide to ADHD: Designing and Teaching for Student Success. Karen shares strategies for supporting these students and taking advantage of the valuable strengths and perspectives they can bring to the classroom.
- Listen to the Tea for Teaching podcast episode 313 Supporting Neurodiverse Students and Faculty. The podcast series is hosted by John Kane and Rebecca Mushtare who run the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at the State University of New York at Oswego.
Videos
Watch Neurodiversity 101
From Duke University, learn more about neurodiversity from Sam Brandsen and Tara Chandrasekhar.
Watch Neurodiversity Student Panel
From Duke University, current and former students share their lived experiences through the lens of navigating the academic and social environment as Neurodivergent individuals.
Read
- NEW! Read the new guide from the GSSHub Neurodiversity-affirming Supervision for Graduate Student Success (pdf). The guide is designed to centre the lived experiences of neurodivergent graduate students while fostering open, respectful, and supportive relationships between supervisors and students.
- We recognize that each student’s self-advocacy and lived experience is a critical source of knowledge, and listening to and learning from this is essential to building supervisory relationships grounded in access, care and respect for neurodivergent ways of being.
- It is offered as a contribution toward greater accountability, deeper understanding and care-rooted support within graduate education and supervision and as a companion to the Strong Start to Supervision Checklist (pdf).
- Read Neurodiversity: Some Basic Terms and Definitions (.docx) shared by Dr. Nick Walker who posted a list of a few key neurodiversity-related terms, their meanings and proper usage, and the ways in which he has most commonly seen them misused.
- Read Neuroaffirming Supervisory Practices in HDR by Jillian Blacker, Amy Webster and Anna Szorenyi. This chapter is informed by the lived experiences of researchers who currently supervise higher degree researchers (HDRs) or support neurodivergent higher degree researchers and supervisors. The chapter recognizes the growing needs of the neurodivergent cohort and considers how best to provide support, without necessarily requiring the HDR to disclose a diagnosis or formally request accommodations. In Confident Supervisors: Creating Independent Researchers Vol 2.
Visit
- Visit the The Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning and read about how to Support Neurodivergent Students in the Classroom. Dr. Sara A. Misgen wrote the material with input from C. Baumgarthuber, A. Kerkian, D. Mix, K. Nolte, & C. Smith (2024) Topics include:
- Strengths and Barriers to Neurodivergent Student Success,
- Things Instructors Can Do to Support Neurodivergent Students,
- The TILT Framework. This framework and resources are designed to help faculty develop clear and equitable assignments, something that can help neurodivergent students succeed in class.
- Visit the Institute of Neurodiversity (ION) which is an inclusive neurominority led global membership organisation with a purpose of helping neurominorities thrive and prosper. ION fosters neurodiversity awareness, acceptance and appreciation and advocate for equality and human rights of all neurominorities.
- Read Creating Inclusive Campuses (.pdf) from the Conference Board of Canada (2025) to read about neuroinclusive policies and practices in post-secondary education.