Summary of "Toward a Critical ASD Pedagogy of Insight: Teaching, Researching, and Valuing the Social Literacies of Neurodiverse Students”

Shannon Walters provides the results of a case study of two undergraduate students with self-identified Asperger Syndrome (AS) and explores their experience in a first-year writing course. Walters proposes “a methodology based on the concept of ASD as insight, rooted in disability studies, in which the perspectives of neurodiverse students are prioritized (340). The findings reveal that traditional writing methods, such as engaging in the inventing, drafting, and revising writing process are not effective for all students’ writing success. Also, Walters shares and discusses with the two students how valuing these students social writing outside of the classroom is a more effective technique than imposing traditional or “neurotypical” writing pedagogy.

Question/Problem: “1. How do students with AS characterize themselves as writers inside and outside of the classroom? 2. How do students with AS describe their experiences in their first-year writing courses? 3. What do AS students’ perceptions, experiences, and reflections show about how or why they are succeeding and/or struggling in first-year writing?” (343).

Research in the Teaching of English, Vol. , No. 4, May 2015 pp. 340-360

Qualitative study/ analysis of 2 case studies

Study Description: Number of participants: 2 volunteer first-year writing students (college undergraduates) with self-identified Asperger Syndrome. Both volunteers were from “white, middle-class socioeconomic backgrounds and had experience with homeschooling” (345). Length of study: Walters met with the two volunteers five times over the course of a semester for 60-90-minute-long sessions. Measurement Tool: Walters collected data from “semi-structured individual interviews with each participant and from participants’ course work and writing” (343). Setting: The first volunteer took the first-year writing course as an accelerated 6-week summer program that met every day.  The second volunteer took a home-school version in which he was able to take one college class from home per semester in which an instructor worked with him one-on-one to modify the projects and assessments. Research Design: After transcribing the interviews (spoken and written), Walters coded the data into categories such as “(1) drafting, revising and peer review; (2) writing as a social activity; (3) writing in a community; (4) critical litearcies; (5) creativity; and (6) participants’ self-reported writing strengths and weaknesses” (343).  Then, Walters used critical disability theory to read and systematically analyze the speakers’ insights regarding their experiences writing in the course.  Walters made sure to give voice and agency to the volunteers, instead of her own analysis, to insure the self-advocacy of the volunteers with AS.

Findings: 1. Both volunteers struggled with the traditional “writing process” pedagogy of Invent, Draft and revise.  The first volunteer spoke of limited time, and the second volunteer spoke of too much time given for revising which wasn’t needed (347).  Students with AS may not experience the same writing stages as most neurotypical writers. 2. Both volunteers struggled with writing about assignment topics that were not of interest to them. This is also true for many neurotypical students but “the degree” to which the students with AS struggled was substantial, especially in comparison with the level of writing they were able to produce when choosing their own topics (349). 3. “Students struggle not necessarily because they have As, but more often experience difficulty because their courses do not support neurodiverse approaches to writing” (349). 4. Both volunteers excelled with writing as a social activity when it was of choice and interest to them, and both volunteers did not participate when forced into a peer-review group in class that was not meaningful or authentic to them (350). 5.  Despite the misconception that students with AS do not value socializing, both volunteers described the value of social interaction on their writing and asked for this expectation to be redefined in terms of how social activity could benefit their writing (353).

Implications: 1.  The traditional “Writing Process” cannot be taught as a one-size-fits-all approach. This seems like an obvious implication, but writing teachers need to understand they are teaching writers, and not necessarily just the skills of writing. Each human is different.  2. Teachers of writing may want to explore more “post-process theories and genre-blended approaches. to invite more participation from neurodiverse students” (356).  3. Both volunteers with AS shared a use of lists that was quite significant to their writing process. This strategy can be explored as a support for students in their writing (354).