How can knitting possibly help you learn science? I’m going to show you some examples of how my neurodivergent brain uses crafting to help me engage and learn.

Today I’m expanding on the topic because it raises some important points about how neurodivergent individuals may learn and generate knowledge differently to the accepted norm.

In school, learning starts with theory. In higher education, there’s lots of this. You do theory, a bit of practice, then reflect about the practice, then theorise again.

Now I’ve accepted I’m never going to be a brilliant scholar, but I am an amazing crafter. Earlier this week, my OneDrive “memories from this day” gave me a fantastic example of how my ADHD works.

Two years ago I was working on a funded project, looking at bacterial cells down a microscope. The colours and formations were beautiful, and I immediately thought they would make wonderful prints. Within 20 mins I had images on the one drive of my mobile phone and was ordering fabric to be printed. Two days later, I was sat at my sewing machine into the early hours making my Gram stain TAL cuff top (see picture below).

The process was invigorating, going from science lab to makers bench in a few days, it was great fun. The product however was not so good. I had no knowledge of textile printing, or photography, so the image I used just didn’t work well on a fabric. I got lots of pity likes for that project. So was it a terrible failure? Hell no! It’s still one of my favourite crafted pieces. It’s prototype 1, generation 1, beta test, first edition.

I learned so much from every step of that process. It was two years ago and I could repeat the process tomorrow and  implement every improvement needed just from memory. More incredibly, every time I think back to the project, I remember my acetobacter, I remember the flowers they were extracted from, the colours and smells of acidic alcohol mix they produced in the lab. All of these sensory experiences helped to build up my knowledge of the bacterial strains I was studying.

And that is how I motivate myself to learn science. Accepting there is always a need to do some theorising, but mostly by doing and experiencing.

The first cycle of crafting is my background research. Having sensory experiences and building muscle memory helps me generate and consolidate knowledge. In the same way that reading text and writing essays helps other people learn. Experimenting is one of the reasons I fell in love with science.

But in my case, where ADHD gives, autism takes away. My difficulties with written language mean that I am not an avid science writer, the final step in the process of academic success.

Thankfully, society seems so be coming to a new understanding about neurodiversity. Individuals like me, who are desperate to contribute but feel hindered because we don’t fit in the mould, are about to have our renaissance.

All of my posts are opinion based, as I can only talk about my own experiences of ADHD and autism. But listening to the voices of other neurodivergent individuals has allowed me to see the commonality between us. And that helps me to feel less alone in the world.

Anyhoo, have a peep at prototype 1 below and, if you feel brave enough, post one of your own…

What does it mean to be a scientist? I have been contemplating this question a lot over the last few weeks, particularly since I posted about what it feels like being an autistic academic (the wrong kind of academic). If I’m not really an academic by most people’s traditional standards, then at least I am still a scientist. I think.

“Alexa, what is a scientist?”.

Thankfully, the UK Science Council has provided a definition of a scientist for us here:

A scientist is someone who systematically gathers and uses research and evidence, to make hypotheses and test them, to gain and share understanding and knowledge.

There is some further definition that provides context of methods and disciplines within which the scientist works. There is also a separate definition of a science technician that is distinct from the main classification of a scientist but that recognises the immense skill and expertise needed in a technical role.

I’m putting a disclaimer in here that I am a devoted supporter of The Scientific Method and its purpose in generating new knowledge and understanding. But can we do better with our definitions of what comprises a scientist? Do we really need to have a separate definition for those who do the “technical work”. And what about everyone else who works in the realm of science but doesn’t conduct research?

One problem with the above definition is that for the most part, being a scientific researcher almost always requires a university degree. And a PhD if you want to lead a research program and be the person who makes the decisions around what actually gets researched to begin with. You want to be a scientist when you grow up? You probably need a PhD. Its easy to see how inaccessible this career path feels to most of the population. So how can we start making science more accessible to the younger generations?

In December 2023, the Education for 11–16 Year Olds Committee, appointed by the House of Lords, published a report outlining the urgent need to reform secondary school provision in the UK. The main findings suggested that school is too focused on the acquisition of academic knowledge in a core set of subjects and learning facts for traditional style exams. The report suggested that reform should focus on providing a broader overview of subjects, more varied learning experience than just learning facts for exams, and more real life context to learning.

“Schools must be given greater flexibility to offer the subjects and qualifications that would best serve their pupils, based on a balanced curriculum including the study of creative, technical and vocational subjects”

I have children at both primary and secondary school, one that attends alternative provision. From my experiences as a parent I see that, likely due to issues around covid and the general lack of time and resources of staff and schools, science can be taught as a very dry subject in schools. And it shouldn’t be taught that way. In my opinion, this is like teaching art through reading books and looking at pictures. Science is not just a set of facts to be memorised and it should be taught in the main using practical experiments and a range of learning methods.

In 2020, I delivered a session at an event aimed at discussing digital transformation in higher education. One of the big take home points from my talk was that we need to include more creativity in science education. My talk was awesome – the participants (unbeknown to me at the time, some of them were very senior leaders in academic organisations) had fun playing Minecraft on iPads and experiencing more of what I think learning should be about. Remembering and understanding knowledge because you enjoyed the experience and learning new skills because you were taught them in a safe, comfortable, accessible, fun and relevant environment.

For a number of years pre-covid, I used Minecraft as a learning environment for hosting environmental field trips. The idea was that we have few opportunities to leave the classroom and go into the field, so Minecraft could be used a safe and easy way of wandering around “outside” and testing out a students skills before the real thing, whilst generating some data to analyse as a practice run. The alternative option was to give the students a sheet of data and a PowerPoint presentation explaining the relevance.

I look at this situation and think it is easy to see the benefits of using Minecraft. But honestly, alongside the academics who were supportive (and there were a good few hence my talk at an important event) many of my academic peers were very cynical and snobbish about my Minecraft work because it wasn’t very “academic”.  To counter this, I did a robust study where I went into different Minecraft environments and gathered tonnes of ecological field data, which I then analysed to demonstrate how it could be used as a suitable replacement tool for field work. So I have a piece of work that was conducted using proper scientific robustness, was innovative as nobody was doing this at the time, and could have been a great contribution to both education and scientific discussions on accessibility of field trips. The data is still there, unpublished due to my struggles around writing publications and somebody from another university published similar work years later. Feeling like you have lots to offer, but not being able to contribute due to accessibility, is frustrating on a personal level. But it is tragic on a societal level.

So I now have two main questions for us (scientists and educators) to consider:

Firstly, how do we make science more accessible by using digital tools and practical experiences to capture learners imagination and interest during their earlier studies at school?

And Secondly, how do we then recreate that accessibility within the science industry itself? Because even if we generate interest in science at an early age, barriers to becoming a bona fide “scientist” still exist (re: the PhD issue).

I’m finishing off with my favourite Temple Grandin Quote:

I am different, not less (Temple Grandin)

I am a scientist, and always will be, without the need to fit into black and white definitions. I love learning about our amazing world, how it works and how we impact upon it, and I love sharing this knowledge with anyone who will listen. And that’s good enough for me.

Crochet for this week is a work in progress and is going to be a long, long long ….. project in many ways. You may guess what it is…. its a bit niche but one I’ve been wanting to make for ages. Once finished, it is destined to be a whole blog post in itself.

One of my work interests at the moment is in finding ways to provide more accessible learning and research environments for individuals with neurodivergent traits that impact on their learning needs. I tend to focus on ADHD and autism because they are where my difficulties lie and this allows me to speak from personal experience.

A great example that I have encountered myself recently is around finding, processing and presenting information when you have ADHD. As I’ve mentioned in past posts, there is some irony in this situation. When researching accessible learning, I am carrying out academic tasks and still find the usual road blocks in place that make the topic ….. well, inaccessible. One obstacle I have overcome in terms of communication is in writing this blog. This blog isn’t proof read by anyone. I don’t spend hours tying myself in knots over the quality of my writing. It is imperfect, but it is also authentic.

I am keen to develop good practice and conduct some research around universal design for learning (UDL) in higher education, specifically in relation to supporting learners with autism and ADHD. UDL is a way of designing learning experiences with accessibility as a starting point rather than an after thought. The idea is to build a learning session with the flexibility that allows different styles of learning and assessment to be utilised, but that ultimately leads to the same outcomes. We can all get to the same point via different routes, right? I am keen to see how recent increased awareness of neurodiversity will influence research on learning styles over the coming years.

Now, having ADHD I know exactly where my weaknesses lie when trying to research new topics. I struggle to read, so much that I will often avoid reading anything unnecessary. This is going to be a difficult concept for some folk to comprehend, but the following description is how my reading attempts usually work. I have a passage to read (book, magazine, website etc) and will read the first sentence, maybe two. Then I immediately become aware that I am reading text, and have a sort of out of body experience- you know the kind of thing where you say a word too many times and it loses all of its meaning? I tell myself I need to focus and continue reading but this time whilst being aware that I am tying to focus, I will read a few sentences further. However, this is just looking and recognising words, not comprehending the information. At this point, my brain has branched off into a number of different thought lines and I have seven things going through my head, none of which are the four sentences I have just read.

You will think this part is hyperbole, but I often feel physical discomfort during this process. If I become hyperaware that I am reading, my body wants to crawl out of my skin, a sensation similar to restless leg syndrome but with a touch of tinnitus added in. And I repeat this cycle many times until I give up. I want to read the document / book that is in front of me, I desperately want to know the information, but I somehow struggle to get my brain to focus and assimilate information in this way. So it ends up that producing academic outputs that require reading comprehension of any kind (such as writing an essay, journal paper etc) becomes a difficult task.

But its not impossible, and I have adapted mechanisms and strategies that have allowed me to survive this long in academia. I am essentially a top down assimilator of information. Having to research and understand a new topic in academia (especially when you get to senior academic levels) usually requires the synthesis of a significant amount of information. This can feel overwhelming when you struggle to read one paragraph without getting stressed. So I tend to gamify the process of acquiring the information which usually turns it into a hyperfocus session of organising things into groups.

I usually start at a journal or library search engine (Teesside Uni Discovery, and Scopus are my favourites) and start with keywords. Maybe I’ll get 10,000 hits for a topic, so I adjust the keywords and criteria to narrow down my returns. This bit can be fun, because its doesn’t involve reading anything more than one or two sentences of a header or abstract, which I can happily do. I can flit through lists, reorganise and whittle down to a nice concentrated subset of papers / journals etc. Finding a really enjoyable search engine that allows you to play around with criteria and document the process of searching is important for this part.

When I’ve completed a number of searches using different combinations of keywords, its easy to see the same papers coming out again and again as being most relevant. I will often export the search results into OneNote when the list gets manageable where I can use coloured highlighters and stickers to play around with my lists and eliminate papers I don’t need.

A good reference management system helps here. If you can export a whole list of reading material into RefWorks then you can also play around with organising the material into groups. Just from skimming over the titles – which ones have the most citations? This is often an indication that the publication was seminal in its disciple (or hugely controversial) but worth looking over. Which paper is the oldest – who started off this work? Yes, its probably out of date now but sometimes its interesting to see the beginning of an idea. Can you organise into subfolders by publication date, discipline, keywords, author?

To many students and researchers, this probably sounds like a standard way of working – you do searches and read some papers, what’s revolutionary about this strategy? Well, to an individual with ADHD this is probably the most important stage of the process. Moving onto the step where you actually have to read the material can be challenging. But if you have managed to organise a volume of material it is highly likely that you will already have provided yourself with a pretty basic overview of the topic already without even reading one source. Your brain will have inadvertently picked up on important keywords, different contexts in which the topic arises, an understanding of the timeline during which the topic has evolved, any closely and tenuously related topics that sit beside the main research idea. All of this is great information when wanting to understand a new subject.

It does feel overwhelming when you still have a list of documents to read over. One strategy I use here is to narrow down my reading to a specific subset of items – maybe 10 pieces that look important from my searches. This is quite an important step for me because even though I still need to do some reading, I have defined the upper boundary for my project (for now anyway). And already having an understanding of the breadth of the topic makes it easier for me to manage “reading” smaller chunks of text. I already have a framework to hang the ideas from – and that allows me to retain the information more easily.

This is similar to my other favourite tools of learning which are knitting and Minecraft. Using these building tools to construct information from a scattered array of knowledge helps me to focus and allows me to think in pictures rather than using language, which is an area where I struggle.

So, I can go on a fantastic and enjoyable learning journey without extensive reading and use of literature that is often expected from an academic. On that note, today’s piece of crochet is more for fun than education!

I have spent a significant portion of my life within the higher education environment. But it hasn’t always been a fabulous relationship. This isn’t an experience that I like to talk about, but its important in the context of autism and the impact it can have on the student experience.

When I was just gone 18 and straight out of A levels, I made an unsuccessful attempt at studying Biochemistry at York University. It was a learning experience, but one that I would rather not have had. At 18 I had never left the UK or travelled more than a few hours from home. I didn’t know how to cook. As an autistic teenager I had huge hang ups about food and I hated eating in front of people. I was terrified of socialising with new people. I really, really, really struggled from the moment my parents left me at my new halls of residence. Living with 15 other teenagers was overwhelming for me. And York had (unknown to me before I started) a very different demographic of students to those I was accustomed to mixing with in Middlesbrough.

Lectures were a new stress in themselves. Mostly in massive old wooden lecture theatres crammed full of students, with bright lights and a tiny blackboard at the front. Staff churned through hours of material whilst students scribbled down notes. I can’t explain it, but I just can’t sit in a full lecture theatre, even now.

The library was a gloomy, moss covered block of concrete and I really hated going there, especially on my own. Everyone else knew what they were doing, but I somehow missed the memo. How did they know – did they ask? I couldn’t face approaching someone I didn’t know and asking for help. There was no internet, so no online studying. It was lectures and books, or nothing. So, I chose nothing. I stopped attending lectures, didn’t do my work, didn’t eat and lost a lot of weight, and became very isolated and unhappy. And hence I became a university drop out. No one would have known (or asked) why I didn’t engage, I was just perceived to not be of the York academic standard and quickly swept out of the way.

I’ve been back to York University campus three times since I left – all in my role as an academic at Teesside. And honestly, I still feel some physical symptoms of anxiety just being on that campus. After dropping out, I remained in the city of York for four years working in retail, and I eventually developed a group of friends outside of the university. I still feel a kinship with York, from the experiences I had working in the city, but I don’t feel even the tiniest attachment to the university.

But this was 30 years ago, and things have changed considerably, or so I hope. I went back to uni in my 20s – to Teesside University in my home town. I loved every minute of it, and it was a fantastic reaffirming experience for me. Being older and a tiny bit more experienced with people made a huge difference. I moved back home with my parents who lived in Middlesbrough, so in between lectures I had a safe space for respite. Online learning had just started and I could look at materials before my lectures which removed the surprise element of teaching sessions. Ultimately I felt at home at Teesside, surrounded by people who accepted me and more importantly, included me with no strings attached. In this space I thrived at University and went on to achieve amazing things as a student – winning prizes and going on to do a PhD. I eventually returned to work at Teesside as a researcher and lecturer, wanting more than anything in the world to be part of the team that provided me with so much support and opportunity. When you experience that feeling of support, you inevitably want to pay it forward to other people.

My journey through higher education as an autistic student will be different to yours. And now I am sitting on the other side of the fence as a autistic lecturer and researcher, which brings its own challenges that I’ve not yet managed to overcome.

There’s now a tonne of research about the autistic student journey through HE. I’m putting together a reading list for a future blog post about Universal Design for Learning and Autism in HE. So look out for future posts on this topic 🎓!

In my opinion, the most important progress we have made in HE over the last couple of years is around awareness and acceptance. Being able to ‘come out’ and publicly disclose being autistic is a fantastic step towards inclusion. Reading journal papers is informative but I honestly want to hear about my own students journeys and experiences. I want to talk to other academic staff about their struggles and successes. I want to know, and I want others to know too, that they are not alone. Can we create a community of autistic folk within the HE environment? Would this provide the support that we need?

I would love such a group to exist, anyone want to join me?

(NB It is important to also acknowledge that any disclosure of disability is a privilege that not everyone is able to do).

World Autism Awareness Day is on Tuesday 2nd April 2024. I’m planning on raising awareness by …. mostly knitting at the moment (my one track autistic brain at it again). Does anybody want to team up and plan some activities for that week? I’d love to hear ideas and join in planned events.

So for Autism Awareness Day I’m planning on knitting a new version of my ‘Wheres your head at’ headband. Here’s the Young Minds world mental health day version. What colour / theme design should I choose for autism awareness? Any suggestions welcome 😊.

 

 

Aside from a few years here and there, I am a born and bred Teessider. I love our fabulous region and all of its natural beauty and industrial heritage. There are loads of beautiful beaches along the NE coast but in terms of accessibility, local facilities and the expanse of the sandy beach, Redcar is my favourite. And I can satisfy one of my autistic compulsions with a trip to to the beach – collecting and organising stuff.

Collecting things is one of my life long autistic special interests. I didn’t realise the significance of this behaviour until the last few years when I was diagnosed with autism. Before that I would say that I probably hid a lot of these interests from people outside of my immediate family out of embarrassment. I still feel a physical stress response when I think about the time I mentioned Minecraft to a group of mums outside Brownies one evening.

However, one of the few positive aspects of social media is that I have found plenty of other individuals who have similar interests to me and I don’t feel quite so alone with my unusual hobbies. I could talk endlessly about knitting and Minecraft, and have somehow managed to shoehorn both into my working life. I very rarely discuss how much I love collecting things. Its probably not as obvious to everyone, but two of my hobbies – playing Pokémon Go and bird watching are entirely based on my need to collect things. I have a substantial collection of stamps in my attic from the summer when I was on my first maternity leave. From my childhood, I still keep my collections of erasers (super 80s hobby!), stamps, thimbles, Wedgewood, Garbage Pail Kids stickers, Garfield stuff and New Kids on the Block memorabilia. I was a pretty weird kid to be honest. I’m also a completionist gamer – I have to collect every object, tick every achievement and finish every side task. If you add a dose of ADHD hyperfocus to this mix then I can end up doing some pretty awesome, but also quite random, things.

The process of placing items in order is as important as the process of collecting them – its something my brain is compelled to do. I find this whole process incredibly relaxing – perhaps this is how some people feel after a long run or session at the gym? It is like all of the loose threads in my head get smoothed out and tied together. Or maybe it just keeps my brain busy for a while to stop the ADHD hyperactivity?

Anyway, back to Redcar and my current hobby of collecting shiny pebbles 😊. I can’t leave without a bag of rocks. Anything that looks unique or interesting. And I’ll clean them up, try to identify them and organise into little groups. And my brain is super happy in this space ☺️. Here’s a piccie of today’s haul:

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  And finally, I have the perfect piece of knitting for this post. It’s one of my favourite pieces from the last year. It’s a first and only draft and certainly needs to be rejigged and remade. Do you recognise it?? It’s Redcar blast furnace at night 🌙 ✨️ 😍.

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Happy New Year peeps!

This is my first new post in a while, after taking a year long career break to be a full time parent carer. During my year off I came out as being autistic and having ADHD. Identifying as being neurodivergent is a topical issue at the moment and lots of people are sharing similar stories to mine. Having open and honest discussions around the impact of neurodivergence is the first step towards improving the lives of those who need support or simply acceptance and understanding.

Over the coming months, I am going to post about neuroinclusion and accessibility in academia. My aim is to engage with others who feel similar to me, and have positive discussions around how we can improve support and career retention, and remove barriers to progression that stem from being neurodivergent.

This week I have been thinking about aspects of research (and academia) that I find the most challenging and trying to drill down into the specifics of where I need support. And if I had an academic mentor to guide me through my career, how could they help? The criteria for promotion through the academic ranks are grouped into three broad categories that cover an academics professional standing in the research community, academic outputs (impact, publications, grants etc) and contribution to leadership in academia. Its sensible to assume that these are the main achievements that are deemed necessary to be a successful academic.

Reading through the criteria I realised that there isn’t necessarily one area that I find difficult to achieve. It is the intrinsic need to collaborate for success in all of the activities. And I find collaboration hard – it is the one aspect of autism and ADHD that really challenge me in my role.

Academic collaboration frequently involves working in a team environment with ill defined roles, leadership and boundaries and many invested individuals with no clear workload allocation. Some people will thrive in this flexible working space and will naturally lead the pack and ensure their ideas are heard. Being autistic makes this situation incredibly challenging for me. I thrive with clear and transparent communication, fair division of work and well defined tasks. My natural response is to withdraw, from conversations, from meetings, and eventually from projects. Many times I have left fantastic projects where I had been central to their development because I felt an overwhelming need to run away and hide from the complexities of the collaboration that eventually built up around me.

The impact on my career has been significant in so many ways. Surprisingly, colleagues never ask why, just assume I lost interest and go on without me. I lose publications, I lose the time that I spent building a project where I didn’t benefit academically, and I lose confidence in myself every time this happens. My natural default is now to focus on small scale projects, maybe where I see a gap in the provision, or usually just something that I find exciting and fun. Almost always projects that I can run independently with my amazing students. And this is where the benefits of ADHD can really help because I have an uncanny ability to generate ideas and combine existing stuff into new and exciting better stuff. This is where I thrive and when I am most productive. So it seems I get to be a happy academic, but just not a successful one.

Does this resonate with any other academics? And if so how do you break that glass ceiling and manage the complexities of research collaborations? Please get in touch or comment below if you want to chat!

I’m going to sign off with a bit of crochet. I made the piece below when I was having a spectacularly low day… and feeling like a bit of a misfit, hence its called the wrong kind of leaf. But Homer Simpson always cheers me up so its a fab piece in all.