The concept of neurodiversity has travelled rapidly across academic, professional, and public domains over the past two decades as a framework that challenges deficit-oriented perspectives on cognitive and behavioural differences (Singer, 2017). It is now invoked in educational policies, therapeutic discourses, and online activism. Nonetheless,  its meanings and implications remain contested (Rosqvist et al., 2020). This symposium brings together scholars who examine how the term is used, negotiated, and transformed in different contexts and by different actors. Our shared premise is that neurodiversity is not only a descriptive or scientific concept but a communicative and political one; it reflects and shapes relationships between knowledge, identity, and inclusion.

Drawing on different perspectives within the field of education, the symposium brings together four papers that approach neurodiversity as a discursive and relational construct. Rather than treating it as a fixed descriptor of individual variation, the contributions explore how neurodiversity becomes meaningful through specific practices of communication and interpretation. They share a focus on the productive tensions that arise when a concept rooted in advocacy and social justice enters institutional frameworks of diagnosis, pedagogy, and policy. Although contributors to the symposium have different contextual foci, including clinical language research, classroom practice, labour market and public discourse, they reveal how neurodiversity functions as a flexible but contested concept that impacts scientific knowledge, lived experience, and social values (Kapp, 2020).

The first contribution shows how the concept of neurodiversity is being received in a national context (Germany), where it is both welcomed as empowering and, at the same time, viewed critically and discussed controversially – both within the discipline of educational science.

The second contribution highlights tensions between neurodiversity principles and diagnostic practices for Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), showing how Irish clinicians and parents navigate eligibility-driven systems in contexts of low DLD awareness. It reveals how current support systems undermine neurodiversity-affirming inclusion, urging teacher education and more flexible, needs-based support systems.

The third contribution focuses on the implementation of LEANS in Flemish classroom practice. LEANS is an educational programme designed to foster neurodiversity discourse among pupils aged 8–11 and their teachers. This multiple-case study involving 11 teachers across six schools revealed initial signs of enhanced neurodiversity knowledge, attitudes, and behavioral intentions among participants, alongside preliminary evidence of classroom transfer, albeit with recommendations for contextual adaptation due to material complexity.

The last contribution demonstrates that, despite an emerging recognition of neurodivergent employees’ value for innovation and organisational performance, they continue to encounter discrimination, a persistent preference for neuromajority workers, and reduced well‑being. It concludes that systematically challenging ableism through education and co-produced initiatives with neurodivergent stakeholders is essential for cultivating workplaces that more fully support the fundamental psychological need for relatedness.

Taken together, the four papers trace a continuum from biomedical definitions to pedagogical enactments to socio‑political discourses. The different national contexts reveal varying degrees and effects in dealing with neurodiversity, which on the one hand underlines its embeddedness in national discourses and structures and at the same time invites exchange and questioning.

By foregrounding discourse and translation, the symposium contributes to ECER’s ongoing conversations about inclusion, identity, and the politics of educational language. It argues that how we speak about neurodiversity—what metaphors we choose, what boundaries we draw—matters as much as what we say. “Talking about neurodiversity,” in this sense, is both the object of analysis and a call for reflexive practice: an invitation to rethink inclusion not as the assimilation of difference into normality, but as the collective negotiation of meaning through which all learners can find recognition and belonging.

Kapp, S. K. (Ed.). (2020). Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement: Stories from the Frontline. Springer Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8437-0 Rosqvist, H. B., Chown, N., & Stenning, A. (Eds). (2020). Neurodiversity Studies: A New Critical Paradigm (1st edn). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429322297 Singer, J. (2017). NeuroDiversity: The Birth of an Idea (2.).