What is neurodiversity and how does it affect my learners?”
Imagine walking through a garden. You see tulips, sunflowers, roses, and wild daisies. Each plant is beautiful in its own way, but also different. Different shapes, colours, scents, and ways of growing — but together, they make the garden more interesting, more resilient, more alive.
We would never look at a sunflower and say it’s a broken tulip. We don’t call a rose a “disordered daisy.” We understand that biodiversity — the variety of life in our garden — is what makes ecosystems thrive. And just like nature needs all kinds of plants, the human world needs all kinds of minds.
The same happens for human brains. No one brain is exactly the same as the next one, and some brains even stand out. Some find it easier to process the written word than others, while others are more visual or have a higher capacity for pattern recognition. Some are more active and constantly on the move, while other brains might be more focused on detail.
Just like we talk about biodiversity when referring to nature, we talk about neurodiversity when referring to the human brain. This means understanding that different brains process information in different ways, and that no brain needs to be called disordered, difficult, or broken.
Neurodiversity includes ALL brains — and therefore ALL your students — because each student has their own, personal brain, and that brain might be different from other students’ brains in the room.
Does this mean that in my classroom of 20 students I have 20 different brains processing information in 20 different ways? Not really.
In general, we can say that the vast majority of the population has a brain that processes information in a rather similar way. And since it’s the majority, we call it a neurotypical brain. These account for about 80% of the population.
The remaining 20% are students who process information differently. These are the students of whom we would say they have a neurodivergent condition. They “diverge” from what is considered “typical.” These are students with dyslexia, ADHD, autism, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, etc. These are also the students who are still, many times, referred to as having learning difficulties, having a disorder, or even a disability.
But we have already seen that just like a rose is not a disabled tulip, a dyslexic, ADHD, or autistic brain should also not be considered disabled.
Yet we still talk about these conditions in such a disdaining way — teachers, therapists, policymakers, other students, and parents.
Just imagine what it does to the self-esteem of a 10-year-old student who happens to have dyslexia and is told that she has a learning disability. Or telling a 16-year-old boy with ADHD that he has a disorder. This doesn’t just make them feel different (which they are); it makes them feel inferior, flawed, broken, disabled.
Is that what we truly want for our students?
If instead of approaching this child with self-esteem-crushing rhetoric, we acknowledge their neurological differences — with both their weaknesses and their strengths — focusing not only on what they can’t do but also, and most of all, on where they excel, the self-worth of that child will rise and, with the right support, their academic performance will too.
Because despite all the challenges that a dyslexic, ADHD, or autistic brain can bring, it also provides the student with amazing strengths and opportunities.
Just like the famous dyslexic entrepreneur and billionaire Sir Richard Branson says:
“I am who I am not despite my dyslexia, but thanks to it.”
So, what are these conditions really? And how do they affect language learning?
This is a question to which all teachers should have the answer.
But before going there, let’s talk about possibly the main problem that many neurodivergent people face: a lack of diagnosis. Research suggests that up to 80% of dyslexic students go through school without ever being diagnosed. The same can be said about ADHD.
This is why it is so important that teachers — who are at the forefront of our educational system — are equipped with the knowledge and tools to recognise possible signs of neurodivergent conditions in the classroom.
Let’s start with dyslexia, which is the most prevalent condition, but possibly also the most difficult to recognise in students. Estimates suggest that between 10% and 20% of the population has a dyslexic brain, which means an average of 1 out of 6 students in your classroom.
The main issue that students with dyslexia face is phonological awareness and a lack of decoding skills. This makes interpreting written information very difficult for them. It also has a negative effect on their writing skills. This does not mean that they can’t read or write, or that they can’t learn — but it does mean that it is harder for them, and they will need more time and effort to reach the same results as a neurotypical student.
Another issue for students with dyslexia is a reduced working memory capacity. This is the brain’s ability to hold and manipulate different chunks of information over short periods of time — an essential skill for learning a new language. For students with dyslexia, working memory is often less efficient, which can make tasks like remembering new vocabulary, following multi-step instructions, or decoding unfamiliar grammar structures more difficult.
But as mentioned before, all neurodivergent conditions also come with very specific strengths. Students with dyslexia are usually very — and sometimes highly — creative. Not always in an artistic sense, but in the way their brain can think outside the box, recognise patterns, and see opportunities or solutions that others simply don’t see — unless the dyslexic student points them out.
This makes it less surprising that while the prevalence of dyslexia in the general population is around 10–20%, research suggests that among self-made millionaires this figure rises to around 40%.
So yes, your dyslexic student might be slower at reading and writing — but she is also more likely than the rest of the class to become a millionaire.
What about ADHD?
This condition comes in three subtypes:
I’ve actually just made a mistake. I talked about attention “deficit,” as we always do, because that’s the name of the condition. But when you talk to a person with ADHD, they will tell you that their issue is not a deficit of attention — it’s what to do with all the attention they have. It’s about where to put their focus.
Students with ADHD are usually the more restless ones — those who find it difficult (not to say impossible) to sit still. They are the students who will pay attention and be fully engaged when the topic is interesting to them, but who will completely zone out when it isn’t. They might find it difficult to concentrate when there are too many distractions; they may forget things like homework or assignments, and organising work — whether for homework or exams — can be a nightmare.
But it’s also likely that they are very talkative, inventive, willing to take on new tasks, energetic, and extremely hardworking (when the topic interests them, of course).
You will also find students with autistic traits in your classes, often combined with other neurodivergent conditions. These students may prefer working alone; pair or group work can be overwhelming for them. They might find it difficult to understand sarcasm, figurative language, or humour. They thrive on routine, clear instructions, and clear expectations, and they are often very strong at focusing on detail.
Our classrooms are like beautiful gardens. They are full of different flowers, and each flower has its own needs. But as we will see in other articles, what works specifically for your neurodivergent students also enhances the results of the rest of the class. Creating a neurodiversity-friendly learning environment is therefore not about doing something different for each student — it’s about inclusivity and doing things that work for all.