Exploring Neurodivergent Children’s Perspectives

The concept of neurodiversity embodies the notion that natural variation in neurological make-up affects how humans process information and experience the world. Within the neurodiversity paradigm, individuals who diverge from what is considered neurotypical are conceptualized as neurodivergent. In the neurodiversity affirmative approach, a core interest is to involve neurodivergent participants, ensuring that their perspectives and lived experiences are conveyed in research that concerns them in meaningful and non-tokenistic ways, thus promoting epistemic justice. Furthermore the focus in neuro affirmative research is shifted from challenges experienced by individuals with neurological differences to exploring their strengths. Research about neurodivergent children's reading has previously been conducted from a mainly pathological stance focusing on reading difficulties and comparisons with neurotypical children's reading abilities. There has been limited interest in neurodivergent children's motivation and reading experiences and neurodivergent children's perspectives have mostly been represented in social validity items in questionnaires evaluating reading interventions. The research interest of the project described in this paper, is two-fold. Firstly, we apply a community-based participatory design to develop methods in cooperation with the neurodivergence community that will encompass neurodivergent children's perspectives and experiences of reading in ways that are relevant to them. Secondly, we investigate neurodivergent children's motivation and reading experiences as a reflection of the interaction between their reading profile and the reading activities they participate in. Insights from this project can inform future design of reading activities to support a broader range of neurodiverse profiles.