Neuroqueer Learning Spaces — Webinar — a summary and reflection 6th May 2024

Neuroqueer Learning Spaces Webinar — A summary and reflection

Neuroqueer Learning Spaces is a community project led by Ryan Boren (Stimpunks) and Helen Edgar (Autistic Realms).
More information is available on Stimpunks’ website.

To support this project and open up further discussions about neuroqueering education and learning spaces, David Gray-Hammond hosted a live webinar, “Explore Neuroqueer Learning Spaces,” with Dr. Nick Walker on 6 May 2024. This is available to watch via David’s Emergent Divergence website and on Facebook & YouTube.

All quotes are taken directly from this webinar unless otherwise stated.

What is neuroqueering?

Nick began the webinar by reminding us that ‘Neuroqueer theory is an extension of queer theory into the realm of neurodiversity”. Everyone can neuroqueer. Neuroqueering is not limited to people who are innately neurodivergent and also queer; neuroqueering is open for everyone to explore.

Neurodivergent people can neuroqueer and diverge themselves into ever-expanding neuroqueer ways of being. Neurotypical people can engage in neuroqueering to diverge their bodyminds further and liberate themselves from socially instilled norms.

Neuroqueering is an act; it has intent; we can neuroqueer how we live and how we experience, interact, engage and respond to the world around us. Within our neuroqueer learning spaces, we are exploring how neurotypicality, which is socially constructed, can be queered to liberate bodyminds. As part of our Stimpunks Learning Spaces project, Ryan and I are also exploring the benefits and potential of embracing an embodied education within our neuroqueer learning spaces. An embodied education is also something that Nick expanded upon and stressed the importance of as she shared some examples of her practice within this webinar.

“Neuroqueer theory is about creative neurodivergence” (Nick Walker)

What if…?

“Neurotypicality is limiting” (Walker). Neuroqueering involves engaging with life and opening up possibilities. Neuroqueering expands potential, questions boundaries and subverts normality. It enables us to explore, to try, to be curious; it opens up questions and the potential of ‘What if…?’

The potential of ‘What if?’ is often found in children’s excitement, awe and wonder as they playfully explore the world around them. They may excitedly run up to you with a twig or shiny stone they have found, wanting to share that moment of finding something that fills them with joy and curisoity and is reflective of the pure magic of being alive and discovering the wonder of the world. Over time, the awe of finding the ‘Marvellous in the Real’ (Grand, 1978) often becomes eroded in people due to the neuronormative expectations that weigh down on our bodyminds to behave, act, talk and even only show joy in certain ways.

Nick and David expanded on this by referring to Nick’s writing about hand movements and stimming, which is also explored in Neuroqueer Heresies (2021, p183–191). There are often enforced school rules based on neuronormative values and expectations for having “quiet hands”, doing “good sitting”, doing “good looking” (making eye contact with the teacher in class) and demonstrating attention skills in specific ways. The use of Positive Behaviour Support(PBS) plans and Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) to reinforce certain behaviours and actions, such as ‘quiet hands’ has been proven to cause considerable harm and trauma, especially for autistic people as it aims to suppress and eradicate their innate need to regulate by stimming and expressing themselves authentically. There is a comprehensive resource list about the harm of behaviourism on Stimpunks website. We are also creating “Why” sheets to help parents and professionals advocate and provide neurodiversity affirming alternatives to support young people.

Many other questions were posed throughout the webinar, including:

How do we queer neuronormativity?

How do we queer our bodyminds?

What does this look like in a learning space?

(We hope to expand these webinars so we can loop back to some of these questions and the comments raised in the text chat. )

Systems

Nick and David briefly (it is a huge topic!) talked about systemic oppression and agreed that education needs a system of some kind. We can not just destroy the education system; it is not practical or realistic. Some parts can be used or at least transformed. We can neuroqueer the education system.

People need structure; routines are as important in neuroqueer learning spaces as they are everywhere else. Routines provide feelings of safety and reduce anxiety. More flexibility is needed for people to be responsive and open to change and transformation. We need to ask what our routines look like, what purpose they have, and what use are they? How responsive and adaptable are they? Are they created in collaboration with others?

Inspired by the quote from Audre Lorde (1984), “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”, Nick said that we don’t need to burn the system down; instead, we should:

“Queer the system, queer the tools and create new tools.” (Nick Walker)

David highlighted that contemporary approaches to research looking at the oppressive structures of our education system are often reactionary, suggesting systems are torn down; however, this could be a barrier in itself to neuroqueering. If you are focused on tearing down the system, you are not neuroqueering. Neuroqueering is not destructive; it is transformative.

To neuroqueer is to transform, not destroy. (Helen Edgar)

Based on the work of Stafford Beer’s cybernetic principles, Nick suggests that it is not necessarily the idea of systems and hierarchy that are the problem; instead, it is the way neuronormative ideals currently enforce them. We need more flexibility and collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches.

To what extent are some parts of the current system repurposable?

Can we remake the tools, and create new tools?

What do we want to dismantle, and what do we want to reshape?

Space

How can we queer our physical learning spaces to free the body?

Nick shared her experiences as a professor, and she emphasised the importance of being a facilitator of learning. She shared with us how she values adopting a collaborative approach to learning where students are not passive recipients but are co-creators. She asks her students to question what knowledge they bring to their learning space so everyone can learn together.

Nick provides a liberating neuroqueer space for students to express their ways of sharing the knowledge they have gained and collaborating with others. Not enforcing neurotypical ways of demonstrating t ways (tests or enables people to express themselves in ways that suit them, whether through art, poetry or other forms of self-expression. This way of working leans nicely into the courses Nick delivers and facilitates. It would be interesting to know what neuroqueer learning spaces could look like for other subjects, younger age groups, and those with different needs and interests.

Based on her own experiences, Nick suggested a few practical ideas for neuroqueering the physical layout of learning environments. Even small changes can make a difference; instead of having desks in rows, she suggests having circles and a variety of other places that enable freedom of movement and embrace different learning styles.

In our Neuroqueer Learning Spaces project, Ryan and I are looking at the potential of Cavendish Space based on the three primordial learning spaces advocated for by David Thornberg.

“Cavendish learning spaces are based on flexibility, interaction, movement and the role of embodied responsive experiences. There is no learning without the body. The boundaries of traditional neuronormative classroom settings not only restrict embodied experiences but lead to disembodied experiences and can cause harm”. (Boren and Edgar, Stimpunks, 2024)

Cavendish spaces are psychologically and sensory safe spaces suited to zone work, flow states, intermittent collaboration, and collaborative niche construction. They have a golden thread of an embodied education running through them, and there is endless scope for learning the potential of the body, mind and soul. (Boren & Edgar, Stimpunks, 2024)

”Enabling autonomy of movement and acknowledging the different ways people learn best through their bodies needs to be considered. It is essential to allow people to move around, pace, stim, sit on the floor, and adopt positions and movements that are comfortable for them and have the freedom to change”. (Nick Walker)

This is only the start of our journey exploring neuroqueer learning spaces. If you are interested in our project and would like to learn more, please get in touch with us at Stimpunks.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate” — Carl Jung.”*

Thank you to David Gray-Hammond for hosting this event and thank you to Dr. Nick Walker for your support and the fabulous webinar.

* a quote often attributed to Carl Jung (nb. there is no reference we can find for this but Dr. Jung did say: The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves. ~Carl Jung, Aion, Christ: A Symbol of the Self, Pages 70–71, Para 126.)