Schools have the responsibility to provide an environment, which enables all students to learn. This seemingly profound notion is challenged when talking about inclusive education and even more so, when taking neurodiversity into account. This presentation investigates the implications of the neurodiversity paradigm for inclusive classrooms and presents flexi- schooling and adaptive teaching as possibilities to cater for individual needs and barrier reduction in the classroom.
The term Neurodiversity is currently used in different contexts. Once as a political term to address social injustice and as a form of empowerment (eg. Rivera 2022). It’s also used, as a scientific term which connects neurological and sociological research, to provide insights in the diversity of humankind based on the individual perception and interaction with the environment (e.g. Kapp et al. 2013; Alcorn et al. 2024). Judy Singer (1999) coined the phrase as a dimension of heterogeneity like race, class or gender. As a consequence neurodivergent individuals face barriers in an environment that is not suited for their needs. The environment often meets the needs of a ‘norm’ in society. This norm can be seen as a social construction (Berger & Luckmann 2011), which is challenged by the concept of neurodiversity, as everyone perceives and interacts differently with the environment. The neurodiversity-paradigm not only aims towards overcoming pathological categories as descriptions for neurominorities (Walker 2014), but also shifts the perspective towards individual needs and barriers for participation.
In a research-project on sensory and social barriers for children in inclusive classrooms Hümpfer-Gerhards et al (2024) found that all children face barriers in education. While the mean level of subjective impact was higher for neurodivergent students, almost all students described barriers in their learning environment which could keep them from learning. Closer insights into this research will be provided in the presentation.
In a broad understanding of inclusion this means that schools are obligated to take learning barriers in a neurodiverse classroom seriously and find measures to reduce them, thus providing ‘reasonable accommodations’ as it’s put in the UN-CRPD Art. 24. In addition, UN-SDG 4 – Quality Education – calls for “inclusive and equitable quality education’ (2015). In this sense the neurodiversity paradigm is a call for action for schools internationally to reduce barriers for all students, as neurodiversity affects everyone.

Following these thoughts this presentation will investigate the question: Which measures could help schools to provide reasonable accommodations in neurodiverse classes?

We will propose flexi-schooling and adaptive teaching as possibilities for schools to conquer this challenge.
Studies show that homeschooling and flexi-schooling are often not voluntary schooling concepts for children, but arise out of necessity. Many children have bad experiences and do not encounter an inclusive setting, but rather overburdened teachers and exclusion from school For some parents, flexi-schooling is then the last option. Although it arose out of necessity, families of neurodivergent children in particular report very positively about the possibility of being in contact with the school and at the same time adapting the learning situation at home to the child's individual needs.
The presentation will discuss what implications this has for families and schools, what opportunities flexibility brings and what limits exist.

Adaptive teaching as a concept aims to cater for individual needs in heterogeneous classes. The aim is to provide and maintain the best possible circumstances for individual learning and understanding (Beck, et al 2008; Welskop & Moser 2020). This is based on knowledge about the individual needs and barriers, to apply practical competences to adapt accordingly. This presentation will follow the four dimensions for adaptive teaching suggested by Beck (2008) and apply them to the neurodiversity paradigm.

The project schAUT (Hümpfer-Gerhards, et al. 2024) developed a questionnaire to provide insight into subjective barriers for students in inclusive education. The project is based on the findings of 27 general barriers for autistic individuals in society by Enthinderungsselbsthilfe (2008). Examples for these general barriers in schools were generated through Qualitative Content Analysis (Mayring 2010) via an online survey (n=700), by identifying the most mentioned barriers. The four most frequently mentioned examples were transformed into items for a quantitative questionnaire. A first version of the questionnaire with 100 items was tested via an online survey (N=2400; n=366 up to 20 years), where the participants were asked to answer the question “how would you like this?” for each item on a 5 level bipolar scale with the two endpoints being "I think it's great" and "It's so bad that I can't do anything anymore". Through explanatory factor analysis (PCA) eight factors could be identified. To reduce the number, items with low loadings and cross-loadings were excluded. For all eight groups there was an acceptable reliability (Cronbach alpha between 0.7 and 0.92). The mean item difficulty was above 0.5, which showed that there were hardly any positive evaluations. As a consequence, for another pre-survey (N=960) the scale was shifted to a unipolar scale between ‘I don’t mind at all’ and "It's so bad that I can't do anything anymore". The question was altered accordingly to ‘How much would this bother you?’. Items with a discriminatory power above 0.4 were selected for a final version of the instrument, where each of the 25 original barriers were represented by two items. This questionnaire was then conducted in a two-phase testing in 19 schools (N=1024) over one year with first/second, fifth/sixth and seventh/eighth year students. Another source for our presentation is a literature review on flexi-schooling (Richter et al., 2025) which shows both the potential of flexi-schooling as well as challenges. Flexi-Schooling requires different prerequisites and a high level of motivation and commitment from families and schools. This seems to mean that it is often not implemented in practice but remains a theoretical approach, despite its potential.

The collected data from the schAUT project showed an overall higher subjective barrier-sensitivity for autistic students. However almost all participants felt impaired by some barriers. The average rating on the barriers differed significantly. For barriers with a lower average we could see individual spikes for some autistic and non-autistic participants. This implies that in addition to barriers with a general high average for all students, neurotypical students might be highly affected by specific barriers as well. Reduction of individual barriers thus becomes crucial in providing ‘reasonable accommodation’ for every student, to ensure a chance of learning. We argue that this might be seen as complying to the needs of a neurodiverse classroom. As the data suggests that one-fits-all approaches are not suited to ensure a barrier-reduced learning environment we will investigate flexi-schooling and adaptive teaching as pathways towards a neurodiverse classroom. While flexi-schooling radically questions the idea of learning at school, adaptive teaching focuses on the specific situation at school. Flexi-schooling invites to think about flexibilization in many aspects of school and adaptive teaching could be an approach to make teaching flexible and individually suitable for neurodiverse classrooms. Both concepts require an exploration of teachers' own attitudes and their view on students and their own work. They are complex and question given structures in order to break down barriers for all students.

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