2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The term 'neurodiversity' is seeing increased attention in popular discourse as more and more people become aware of the challenges neurodivergent people face in their day-to-day lives. These challenges range from individual experiences of discrimination to the inherent inaccessibility of institutions (such as higher education) as they are currently constructed. In addition to popular discourse, many are also engaging with neurodiversity in scholarly works. In engineering education in particular, the term has seen substantial growth in usage in only a short time. In this paper, I present trends in current engagement with ‘neurodiversity’ in engineering education research literature and a critique of these trends from a critical disability studies perspective, as well as suggestions for moving forward.

To identify engagement trends, I conducted a qualitative content analysis of engineering education research literature. The focus of the analysis was on theoretical or paradigmatic engagement (or the lack thereof). I collected articles for analysis through a keyword search of prominent English-language journals (JEE, IJEE, EJEE, AJEE) and conference proceedings (ASEE Annual Conference, FIE, AAEE Annual Conference, SEFI, IEEE EDUCON, IEEE CONTIE) using the root ‘neurodiv*’ to capture both the exact term as well as relevant derivatives (e.g. neurodivergent). After manually reviewing search results to remove erroneous content, I used a holistic coding approach based on how central the term’s use was to the article’s focus to sort the data for more detailed analysis. I deductively generated codes during this more detailed portion of study, which were refined and systemically applied to the body of articles as appropriate. In this paper, I present the resulting patterns.

While conducting the content analysis, I utilized memo-taking to capture my critical insights as they developed. To ground my work in a critical disability studies perspective, I revisited core works (especially those centered in the neurodiversity paradigm, which I will introduce and discuss) periodically during analysis as a prompt for further memos. These memos, alongside the patterns identified through content analysis as well as my own experiences as a neurodivergent engineering student, served as the basis from which I identified areas for disciplinary growth. My goal for this work is to encourage engineering education researchers to meaningfully engage with the neurodiversity paradigm in their work, in the hopes of moving beyond ableist research practices towards a radically inclusive discipline.