Full Transcript for Research Frontiers - The psychology of education

So it was a a combination of my academic life and my personal life. So I was studying cognitive anthropology and looking at how development can be different in different cultures. But at the same time, as I was doing that, one of my very good friends was going through the process of getting her own autism.  00:02:36  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Diagnosis in her 20s and I became very passionate about finding out why she'd been missed, why she hadn't had the support previously, and I was kind of using the things I was learning about in terms of different cultures, to think about the differences within our own society.  00:02:52  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  So I did a masters to convert to psychology so that I could pursue that that interest and that passion and that's led me to where I am now.  00:03:00 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  You've covered it slightly there, but is it possible to maybe just expand a little bit more on how you made the decision to go down the academic route as opposed to?  00:03:07 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Going down and say.  00:03:08 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  The more practical route for example.  00:03:09  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Going straight to work, I wanted to do the conversion course initially because I was planning to train to be an educational psychologist so that I could go into schools and try and support.  00:03:18  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Particularly those autistic girls and gender diverse children who I knew weren't being picked up by the traditional systems and being recognised very well. But then when I started trying to do that background research, I realized there was almost no research out there on which to base better practice. So I.  00:03:37  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Moved over towards wanting to do the research that I was.  00:03:40  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Hoping to base practice on that didn't exist and that's still kind of what drives the work I do now is trying to improve the evidence base and find the evidence for what works for autistic people so that we can put it into practice across education and across society.  00:03:56 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Sarah, let's bring you in. Could you tell us a little more about your own studies and what you're currently involved in as a very recent graduate of the MSC? Sarah, let's bring.  00:04:04 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  You can. Could you tell us a little more about your own studies and what you're currently involved in as a very recent graduate of the MSC. Psychology of education?  00:04:11 Sarah Boon  Program. Yeah. So I think how I kind of got involved in the program was after finishing my undergraduate, I did end up working in education, although that wasn't what I initially planned. And just noticing that, you know how students don't all learn in the same way.  00:04:24 Sarah Boon  And there's so much more to consider beneath the surface and you.  00:04:28 Sarah Boon  Actually think so? I think that's originally how I got interested in the subject area. Shortly after I applied have been accepted onto

the course and that's when I was one of those girls who was missed and got my autism diagnosis myself at 24. So that's definitely kind of really helped as well doing the MSA, growing my career and kind of get.  00:04:48 Sarah Boon  The job as well.  00:04:49 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  The next question was sort of about what your journey was into this area, and I think you touched on it a bit with your answer, but did you have a clear path in mind even before when you started your undergraduate studies? Is this what you?  00:04:59 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Thought you'd be or has it changed?  00:05:01 Sarah Boon  Ohh no, it changed like my undergraduate again is completely different from psychology. It was a management degree and I think because I had four years between finishing undergraduate and starting the Masters.  00:05:13 Sarah Boon  And I think that's kind of more I figured out what.  00:05:15 Sarah Boon  Direction I wanted.  00:05:16 Sarah Boon  My career to go in, so which is why I did the MSC conversion.  00:05:19 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  First, you just going back to you and I wonder if you could just tell us a bit about how autism has been covered in recent history and how advances in research and study have changed attitudes towards.  00:05:28  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Autism. So I.  00:05:30  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Think autism is in a real state of.  00:05:32  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Flux at the moment as an academic discipline.  00:05:35  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  There's been a very clear set of standard approaches to autism and autistic people for probably the last 70 years, and it's translated into some of the stereotypes that culture tends to hold about autistic people in, often very harmful ways. There's a lot of stigma and a lot of stereotypes about autistic people out there in the last.  00:05:56  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Five or ten years that has been hugely challenged and is being changed and that has come mostly from autistic people and the autistic community challenging researchers, getting them to think about things differently, going out and becoming the academics themselves.  00:06:12  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  So there's huge advances happening at the moment. I think it's one of the most kind of rapidly changing and developing fields or areas of psychology that I know of, which is really exciting.  00:06:24 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  You've both touched on the idea of women getting later life diagnosis and and that's something that I've seen certainly more widely. I wonder if you could just talk a bit about that.  00:06:32 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  And how this research is now helping people who maybe have completely misunderstood their whole lives.  00:06:37  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Autism was assumed to be a male condition right back from the the 1940s, when it was first identified, and that's because we do tend to see more boys who get.  00:06:47  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Diagnosis and boys and men tend to get their diagnosis earlier in life because they fit with the stereotypes that people have, or they're more likely to fit with the stereotypes people have. And so because those early studies had majority male participants, people built up a majority male picture of what autism was, and that meant that the diagnostic criteria was based on.  00:07:08  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  That picture and then, unsurprisingly, the diagnostic criteria based on boys and men are better at noticing and identifying boys and men. So girls and women kind of got excluded from that conversation from the beginning. It's only really in the last 20 years that it started to be recognised that actually autistic girls and women do exist.  00:07:28  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Than they exist in much greater.  00:07:29  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Numbers than people previously thought. Often they can have a slightly different presentation, so we tend to talk more about kind of an internalising or an externalising presentation of autism, where externalising is kind.  00:07:43  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Of the the.  00:07:43  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Historical stereotype. So things like expressing frustration through meltdowns or physical behaviours, very obvious discomfort with things like eye.  00:07:52  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Tact, quite clear social difficulties sometimes, whereas an internalising presentation is more when people try to hide the difficulties or the challenges they're having in understanding what's going on or in making friends, they're more likely to be anxious and internalise their feelings that they're having.  00:08:13 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Felicity, kind of from an academic point of view, and Sarah maybe from a more practical point of view, what do you feel is not being done for autistic people in the wider world of education?  00:08:20 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  And and how do you think these potential shortfalls could?  00:08:23 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Be made-up?  00:08:24  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  That's a big question. So I think kind of training teachers in the modern understanding of autism and in the neurodiversity approach to autism, rather than saying it's kind of a pathology that needs an intervention because then not only you helping get those diagnosis.  00:08:41  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Earlier, which is really important for accessing support.  00:08:44  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Thought and just the self knowledge and kind of understanding who you are in the world, which is important, but it can mean that schools are then able to support then your diverse learners better and their autistic learners better if the the staff have that training. So actually one of the projects I'm doing at the moment is putting them together training for university.  00:09:04  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Staff on how to support autistic students at university because there's lots of aspects of university that are strictly for everybody, but potentially more tricky if you're autistic and at the moment they're just as a real kind of lack of.  00:09:17  Dr

Felicity Sedgewick  Knowledge. I think most people are now.  00:09:19  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Kind of aware.  00:09:21  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  The tortoises exists, but it's moving beyond that awareness and into understanding and acceptance that it's gonna make the biggest difference for autistic people in education.  00:09:31 Sarah Boon  Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think with the education side of things, the environment is so important. I think it's why this is like systemic changes. I mean, I'm speaking really idealistically here, but.  00:09:42 Sarah Boon  You know I.  00:09:42 Sarah Boon  Think schools kind of almost just needs to change how they operate so that when an autistic student comes in, you know, chances are it's not going to get to the point where their needs are not being met.  00:09:53 Sarah Boon  And then everyone starts talking about intervention, and it's just an environment.  00:09:57 Sarah Boon  Where you know they feel safe belonging and you know they can just go in now, which is the point of school that so often there's so many barriers in.  00:10:04 Sarah Boon  Education.  00:10:05 Sarah Boon  For autistic students that are quite often at the root of it's the stomach, even if it doesn't necessarily look like it on the outside, and I think they wouldn't just help autistic students. I think sometimes I'd help.  00:10:16 Sarah Boon  A lot of other students, well, whether they've got another neurodivergent condition or when you're typical. So I think there's so much to do in terms of schools being able to actually meet children's needs. And I think as well, feel some level of emotional safety, I think.  00:10:33 Sarah Boon  Quite often that's almost non-existent and people won't typically think that about the school, but it's very different when when an autistic, you can be quite vulnerable socially among your peers, you can be completely misunderstood by teachers, and again, that can escalate pretty quickly for some people. I think most people just do see autism through those stereotypes, and it's just.  00:10:54 Sarah Boon  Let's make them appear less autistic and not be fine, but that has huge consequences and mental health, so it's looking at the wider picture, you know, like, what's the impact?  00:11:03 Sarah Boon  To this later on down the line.  00:11:05 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  I guess what you're saying kind of speaks to a trend over the last 20 years, which is, you know, it's not a group of people.  00:11:11 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Being talked to is.  00:11:12 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  A group of people actually advocating for themselves and being part of the research and diagnosis. I don't know quite what the word is.  00:11:20  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  The revolution.  00:11:22 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  I wonder if you.  00:11:23 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Could just talk a bit about that.  00:11:24  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Yes, I think that's one of the biggest changes and definitely one of the drivers of all the change we're seeing is the fact that more and more particularly early career researchers are really committed to doing what's called participatory research. So when you work with the.  00:11:40  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  People that you want to understand, you want to help to design research that is not only more accessible for them, but research that addresses the things that they care about and that matter, and that will actually make a difference. So that's why or it's part of why there's been a big shift towards understanding things like masking because from autistic people we know that.  00:12:01  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  A lot of autistic people are working very hard to mask a lot of their natural behaviours and responses.  00:12:08  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Pretty much all of the time they're around other people, and that's exhausting. And we now know that the more of that you do, the worse your mental health is. It's it's having a really, really major impact and it's something that until a few years ago until researchers started really listening to autistic people, we just weren't looking at. I know my projects now are all.  00:12:28  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  As participatory.  00:12:29 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  I can make them and Sarah, what brought you to study at Bristol? Was it somewhere you'd always want to study or whether other factors involved? And what keeps you here?  00:12:37 Sarah Boon  So in terms of the program, so I think it was in those kind of in between years to undergraduate and starting and again a kind of life and work experience that is what brought me specifically to study psychology. But I think as well that I was.  00:12:49 Sarah Boon  Kind of looking.  00:12:50 Sarah Boon  Like different universities, I think I really like the course at Bristol and as well because obviously it's the predated masters and you have to study certain subjects. Most other universities you had almost no options in terms of choosing what you can study there. Bristol, you could and that was something that was quite unique.  00:13:10 Sarah Boon  That person that I really liked was having some sort of level of flexibility and being able to kind of focus on that area of interest, but also I think Bristol's a lovely city and I think it's a really nice place to study and live. So I think that also that they attracted me to Bristol as well.  00:13:35 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  How? How about you feeling, Steve? What brought you to Bristol? And what keeps you here?  00:13:39  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  So some of Sarah I knew I really liked the city. I actually did the masters. I'm now the program director for quite a few years ago now. So I knew I loved the city and I knew the department a bit. Although there's been quite a lot of change in the nearly a decade since I'd been there, I knew that.  00:13:58  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  I really liked the university, I liked the focus on research, so I saw this as an opportunity and as a place where I could develop both sides of of my career because I really love

teaching and I think actually.  00:14:11  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  One of the nicest things is getting to do research and then tell people about it and try and, you know, talk to people about it, teach people about it, teach them about why I think it matters and why. Hopefully it does matter and the impact it will have. So yeah, it was that the fact that our teaching is so research driven and research aware was the thing I I really like about.  00:14:31  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Being here and teaching on this.  00:14:33 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Course Sarah has the masters changed the direction of your life in.  00:14:36 Sarah Boon  Any way? Yeah, I think it definitely opened up opportunity that wouldn't have been there before because even for my current role, I had to have a relevant degree. And obviously this master is very relevant. When my undergraduate wouldn't have been. So I I doubt I'd be.  00:14:36  Hi.  00:14:49 Sarah Boon  In the current role I am.  00:14:51 Sarah Boon  I think also I do advisory consultancy work but I could meet all the scenario. Sometimes that is quite academic. So I think as well, having studied psychology at masters level, it's kind of been really invaluable in that and it's kind of opened up those opportunities as well. So it's kind of different aspects of my career. It certainly helped with for sure.  00:15:12 Sarah Boon  Yeah, it's definitely opened up opportunities. You know, I'm really enjoying, you know, it's kind of put me on a path that I wanted to be in. So yeah.  00:15:19 Sarah Boon  The mask has definitely helped with that.  00:15:20 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  And Felicity, are there moments in your own?  00:15:22 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Research of which your particular.  00:15:24 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  World, what would you like to shine a light on in?  00:15:26  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Your own work. So I think one of the pieces I've done recently that I'm really proud of was looking at Autistic peoples communication preferences. So me and another researcher at Bristol called Philippa Howard worked together to ask quite a lot of autistic people. I think it was nearly 200 in the end.  00:15:46  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  To rank their preferences for mode of communication in different settings, what we found was that people really, really hated using the phone. Autistic people really hated having to make calls or having to rely on calls in pretty much every setting that we gave them. The rest of the answers were a bit more varied. Generally, the better they knew the people they were interacting with.  00:16:07  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  The more likely they were to say, I prefer talking in person, so friends, family, established colleagues, for example.  00:16:15  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  If it was something official, they tended to prefer communicating in writing, particularly e-mail, and we found that out not just from the rankings, but because we also asked them why have you given this answer. So in that kind of qualitative responses,

where we found some really important things that we wouldn't have known otherwise. So people saying, you know, they hate using the phone.  00:16:35  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Is a fairly expected finding, potentially lots of us don't love phone calls, particularly unexpected ones.  00:16:42  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  But actually in their reasons for why and what impact this had, people were saying things like I've missed out on healthcare because I cannot make the phone call to organise the appointment or I've missed out on counselling to help with my mental health because they wanted to do it over the phone and that I just can't do it actually talking to people.  00:17:02  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Revealed the massive impact.  00:17:04  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  That communication mode is having on people. Our recommendation would be that any organization, any institution, any public service should have an option that is not just reliant on phone calls, because if you do, you are excluding a significant portion of the population. You know between one and 2% of everybody in the UK is autistic.  00:17:24  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  So I think that's been one of the pieces of work I've done recently that feels like it has really major implications for policy and for practice, which I think is really important.  00:17:34 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  OK, great. And and how do you hope your research will be realized in the world? Do you have goals and aims in mind or do you think it's going to be a vastly different landscape from now?  00:17:42  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  The future, I am sure it will be better than it is today, cause we are moving in that direction. I would hope that my work can be part of that move in the right direction, so something like that phone study, I would hope that it does just become part of the evidence base for making sure that every public service has live chat.  00:18:02  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Option rather than relying on phones, for example.  00:18:06  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  And in terms of the training for higher education staff, I would love it in an ideal world, if that became mandatory, so that if you are interacting with students at university, you should have training on autism and neurodiversity and how to best support and interact with those students so that autistic and your diverse.  00:18:25  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Students have the same experience of university as anybody else, so that it no longer results in it being a barrier or being a difficulty.  00:18:34 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Something I'm getting from both your answers is a sense of optimism that wasn't there, say, 1020 years ago. Yeah, I'm going to ask how our program of education like this contributes.  00:18:42  To that.  00:18:42  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  I hope we create students who are making positive change in the world, as I said, particularly because a lot of our students are people who are working alongside their studies and so there are people who are in schools who

are in mental health services, who are in youth work, charities.  00:18:58  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  And so hopefully the things we're teaching them are kind of having a positive change from the moment they learn the lesson in effect because the next day they go back into work and they can think actually I know about sensory over stimulation now. So when I've got an autistic child in my classroom who's really struggling, I will.  00:19:18  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Turn off the overhead lights and hopefully that will help them with their sensory stimulation and their emotional regulation a bit. Also, because we are a conversion course once you've graduated from our course, you're qualified to apply for educational psychologist or clinical psychologist training, and hopefully we're sending people on into those.  00:19:38 Sarah Boon  Diagnostic and clinical roles. You've got this really informed grounding to that practice, I guess to a more practical level, guess my experiences as a student. I think it's kind of really essential to have these conversations. I'm very much kind of evolved about the wide autistic community and I would say.  00:19:57 Sarah Boon  Almost every autistic adult at this point I've spoken to is traumatized in some way.  00:20:02 Sarah Boon  Whether it's education, healthcare services or they've got several bad experiences. And again, that really needs to change. And I think there is that starting that shift and there are certainly programs that aim to address those issues, but it definitely is in its infancy teaching about current research and the latest.  00:20:22 Sarah Boon  I guess the shift as well from the kind of the pathologising of autism.  00:20:27 Sarah Boon  And seeing it as a disorder by default, without actually taking into consideration the autistic person's reality of varying autism, I think that's something psychology is happening. This it's made assumptions from the outside has caused a lot of harm. I think being aware of assumptions around autism and people, you know who don't think and behave.  00:20:47 Sarah Boon  Perhaps in typical ways is kind of a huge thing as well going into practice without understanding of what these people or kind of what we're experiencing and as well, you know.  00:21:00 Sarah Boon  What can actually do to help? I think as well it's really important to understand that history just so that mistakes they get made again. And so that the practice that's done harm the past isn't repeated.  00:21:11 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Felicity, you mentioned before that you noticed a gap in the academic literature and you went out there and you dressed that gap. And I wonder how your research now feeds into your teaching and feeds into the.  00:21:20 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Itself in a very.  00:21:21  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Direct way. I'm just about to run for the first time this year's Masters Unit that is specifically about understanding autism and autistic people and thinking about how we improve practice in schools. I've run a version of that with our undergraduate students as well for the last couple of years, so that's very definitely.  00:21:40  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  The direct impact on my teaching more broadly, we as a team are in the process of reviewing our psychology masters to try and follow more.  00:21:50  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Of those neurodiversity affirming principles and things like participatory research being more built in, so we're updating our teaching in line with the newest research all the time, and not just sort of updating individual slides with individual studies, but actually thinking about how we approach.  00:22:10  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  The whole way.  00:22:11  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  We teach and the kind of concepts we're bringing into our teaching. So yeah, I think it's a fairly direct and quite all-encompassing way that the research is coming into our teaching and comes.  00:22:22  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Into the program.  00:22:22  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  I'm Sarah.  00:22:23 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  As a recent graduate, I wonder if.  00:22:24 Sarah Boon  You talked about in terms of what you're teaching. You know, I think I remember we were always encouraged to read the most recent things coming out in psychology as well. And if we were focusing on older stuff, it's kind of understanding and critiquing why perhaps it wasn't, why, you know, what issues did it create? What problems are you solving as well? And I think that's really useful.  00:22:45 Sarah Boon  So obviously research as well as not putting those gaps. And I think that was really helpful in terms of learning how to see where the gaps are and then what you can do get more specifically in a dissertation.  00:22:57 Sarah Boon  To fill the gap in knowledge. So then you're building the knowledge that can go on as well, which is really what I can see here is about.  00:23:04 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Sarah, can you offer any words of wisdom or advice so far from prospective students or lessons you've learned which could come?  00:23:08 Sarah Boon  Mm-hmm.  00:23:10 Sarah Boon  In useful question I think and there are a lot of people had a preconceptual start in the courses. Ohh I've never studied psychology before.  00:23:11  The.  00:23:19 Sarah Boon  But if only one was like, I'd never said you technology before. And I think as well as I think if you're really motivated to get in that area or you're really interested in the subject, I'd say go for it as well. But kind of understand the level of commitment and masters is so whether you're doing that full time or part time, I did it full time and it basically you have to treat it like a.  00:23:38 Sarah Boon  Full time job in terms of how much you put into it, I think to really get the most.  00:23:42 Sarah Boon  Out of it and as well, obviously you need work life balance, but you know it's quite intense doing a whole degree in a year, I will say. But again it was worth it for me and I'm really glad I did it. So I

think I was just thinking about if you really wanna do it, do it, but think about kind of practically how can you make it work in your life so.  00:24:02 Sarah Boon  They made it with people who did it part time as well, so there's always an option too.  00:24:06 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Felicity, by way of rounding things off with an eye to the future and what's to come? What are your hopes for the future of study and education, psychology and neurodivergence.  00:24:15  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  My hopes for the future or sort of what I think is coming down the line is.  00:24:19  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  A real increase in autistic lead research, and I think that's going to continue to really massively impact the benefit that research has. There's been a lot of research that's kind of been because people were interested in it, kind of from an academic perspective and now we're starting to think about what it is that matters.  00:24:37  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  In the real world.  00:24:39  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  And I think there's huge amounts of opportunity within that framework within education and looking at no divergences in education.  00:24:47  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  And trying to take kind of a strength based approach to neurodiversity in education and look at at what is it that these children and young people and students are good at? What is it about their neurotypes that we can help them learn to work with, to succeed and to thrive, rather than saying that these aspects of how your brain works?  00:25:08  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Are wrong because they're different and we need to change them. So I think, yeah, that move to.  00:25:13  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Towards a strength based approach in education is going to be potentially transformative for those young people coming through our education system in the next few years.  00:25:24 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  It's been super fascinating to chat with you. Thanks.  00:25:26 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  For sharing your time and knowledge with us on.  00:25:28 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Research frontiers. Cool.  00:25:29  Nope.  00:25:34 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Thank you for listening to research frontiers from Bristol University. We hope you found inspiration, information, answers and more in all of these great.  00:25:41 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Questions. Don't forget to check in over at www.bristol.ac.uk/study/postgraduate for more details on Bristol courses and information about Bristol University. Also keep the podcast nearby, subscribe to research frontiers wherever you get your favorite podcasts, and please do share with people who might benefit to you. Thank you for listening to research.  00:26:02 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  It is.  Audio file  The psychology of education 2.mp3    Transcript  00:00:00 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  From the University of Bristol, you are listening to research frontiers. Hello, and welcome to Research Frontiers, a podcast series from the University of Bristol. I'm your host, Ruby Lavinia. And throughout this series, I'll be joined by a collection of Bristol sport leaders taking a deep dive into the research and university.  00:00:21 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Which is changing the world and enriching the education of students who study here, or contributors will include some of the university's most inspiring minds and the students who love them.  00:00:31 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Throughout these conversations, we'll uncover the transformative power of research both on our society and in solving global challenges, as well as in the future education of students.  00:00:43 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  I'll focus for.  00:00:43 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  This episode, however, is mental health and education psychology with relation to autism.  00:00:48 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  I'm joined by.  00:00:49 Ruby Lott-Lavigna   Dr Felicity Sedgewick, lecturer and lead researcher at Bristol, who specialises in the areas of mental health and autism and education.  00:00:56 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Also joined by an alumna of Bristol University, Sarah Boon.  00:01:03 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Felicity, just to kick off, could you introduce us to your research and what you've been covering in recent and current projects?  00:01:09  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  My research focuses on autistic people's experiences of relationships, mental health, and how gender affects those things. So looking at gender differences within autistic people.  00:01:21  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Previously I've done work looking at things like teenagers, friendships and autistic women's friendships and romantic relationships. Currently, my work is more focused on mental health and I've been looking at the mental health of autistic students at the university and looking at.  00:01:37  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Training staff so that we can support our artistic students.  00:01:40  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Better.  00:01:40 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  And how did you find yourself involved in the area of education and psychology? Do you recall the path that led?  00:01:46 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  You here? Yes.  00:01:47  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  I took a slightly non traditional path to getting here, so my undergraduate degree was actually in archaeology and social anthropology, but I became really interested in the social anthropology side of how childhood.  00:02:00  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Can be different in different cultures and from there that led me into psychology and psychology of education, looking at how childhood can be different for people who are developing differently within our own culture and sort of looking at autism and that.  00:02:13  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Framework.  00:02:14 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  How do you find the connection with autism and neurodivergence in your?  00:02:17  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Studies. So it was a a combination of my academic life and my personal life. So I was studying cognitive anthropology and looking at how development can be different in different cultures. But at the same time, as I was doing that, one of my very

good friends was going through the process of getting her own autism.  00:02:36  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Diagnosis in her 20s and I became very passionate about finding out why she'd been missed, why she hadn't had the support previously, and I was kind of using the things I was learning about in terms of different cultures, to think about the differences within our own society.  00:02:52  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  So I did a masters to convert to psychology so that I could pursue that that interest and that passion and that's led me to where I am now.  00:03:00 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  You've covered it slightly there, but is it possible to maybe just expand a little bit more on how you made the decision to go down the academic route as opposed to?  00:03:07 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Going down and say.  00:03:08 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  The more practical route for example.  00:03:09  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Going straight to work, I wanted to do the conversion course initially because I was planning to train to be an educational psychologist so that I could go into schools and try and support.  00:03:18  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Particularly those autistic girls and gender diverse children who I knew weren't being picked up by the traditional systems and being recognised very well. But then when I started trying to do that background research, I realized there was almost no research out there on which to base better practice. So I.  00:03:37  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Moved over towards wanting to do the research that I was.  00:03:40  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Hoping to base practice on that didn't exist and that's still kind of what drives the work I do now is trying to improve the evidence base and find the evidence for what works for autistic people so that we can put it into practice across education and across society.  00:03:56 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Sarah, let's bring you in. Could you tell us a little more about your own studies and what you're currently involved in as a very recent graduate of the MSC? Sarah, let's bring.  00:04:04 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  You can. Could you tell us a little more about your own studies and what you're currently involved in as a very recent graduate of the MSC. Psychology of education?  00:04:11 Sarah Boon  Program. Yeah. So I think how I kind of got involved in the program was after finishing my undergraduate, I did end up working in education, although that wasn't what I initially planned. And just noticing that, you know how students don't all learn in the same way.  00:04:24 Sarah Boon  And there's so much more to consider beneath the surface and you.  00:04:28 Sarah Boon  Actually think so? I think that's originally how I got interested in the subject area. Shortly after I applied have been accepted onto the course and that's when I was one of those girls who was missed and got my autism diagnosis myself at 24. So that's definitely kind of really helped as well doing the MSA, growing my career and kind of get.  00:04:48 Sarah Boon  The job as well.  00:04:49 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  The next question was sort of about what your journey was into this area, and I think you touched on it a bit with your answer, but did you have a clear path in mind even before when you started your undergraduate studies? Is this what you?  00:04:59 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Thought you'd be or has it changed?  00:05:01 Sarah Boon  Ohh no, it changed like my undergraduate again is completely different from psychology. It was a management degree and I think because I had four years between finishing undergraduate and starting the Masters.  00:05:13 Sarah Boon  And I think that's kind of more I figured out what.  00:05:15 Sarah Boon  Direction I wanted.  00:05:16 Sarah Boon  My career to go in, so which is why I did the MSC conversion.  00:05:19 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  First, you just going back to you and I wonder if you could just tell us a bit about how autism has been covered in recent history and how advances in research and study have changed attitudes towards.  00:05:28  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Autism. So I.  00:05:30  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Think autism is in a real state of.  00:05:32  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Flux at the moment as an academic discipline.  00:05:35  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  There's been a very clear set of standard approaches to autism and autistic people for probably the last 70 years, and it's translated into some of the stereotypes that culture tends to hold about autistic people in, often very harmful ways. There's a lot of stigma and a lot of stereotypes about autistic people out there in the last.  00:05:56  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Five or ten years that has been hugely challenged and is being changed and that has come mostly from autistic people and the autistic community challenging researchers, getting them to think about things differently, going out and becoming the academics themselves.  00:06:12  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  So there's huge advances happening at the moment. I think it's one of the most kind of rapidly changing and developing fields or areas of psychology that I know of, which is really exciting.  00:06:24 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  You've both touched on the idea of women getting later life diagnosis and and that's something that I've seen certainly more widely. I wonder if you could just talk a bit about that.  00:06:32 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  And how this research is now helping people who maybe have completely misunderstood their whole lives.  00:06:37  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Autism was assumed to be a male condition right back from the the 1940s, when it was first identified, and that's because we do tend to see more boys who get.  00:06:47  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Diagnosis and boys and men tend to get their diagnosis earlier in life because they fit with the stereotypes that people have, or they're more likely to fit with the stereotypes people have. And so because those early studies had majority male participants, people built up a majority male picture of what autism was, and

that meant that the diagnostic criteria was based on.  00:07:08  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  That picture and then, unsurprisingly, the diagnostic criteria based on boys and men are better at noticing and identifying boys and men. So girls and women kind of got excluded from that conversation from the beginning. It's only really in the last 20 years that it started to be recognised that actually autistic girls and women do exist.  00:07:28  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Than they exist in much greater.  00:07:29  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Numbers than people previously thought. Often they can have a slightly different presentation, so we tend to talk more about kind of an internalising or an externalising presentation of autism, where externalising is kind.  00:07:43  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Of the the.  00:07:43  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Historical stereotype. So things like expressing frustration through meltdowns or physical behaviours, very obvious discomfort with things like eye.  00:07:52  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Tact, quite clear social difficulties sometimes, whereas an internalising presentation is more when people try to hide the difficulties or the challenges they're having in understanding what's going on or in making friends, they're more likely to be anxious and internalise their feelings that they're having.  00:08:13 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Felicity, kind of from an academic point of view, and Sarah maybe from a more practical point of view, what do you feel is not being done for autistic people in the wider world of education?  00:08:20 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  And and how do you think these potential shortfalls could?  00:08:23 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Be made-up?  00:08:24  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  That's a big question. So I think kind of training teachers in the modern understanding of autism and in the neurodiversity approach to autism, rather than saying it's kind of a pathology that needs an intervention because then not only you helping get those diagnosis.  00:08:41  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Earlier, which is really important for accessing support.  00:08:44  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Thought and just the self knowledge and kind of understanding who you are in the world, which is important, but it can mean that schools are then able to support then your diverse learners better and their autistic learners better if the the staff have that training. So actually one of the projects I'm doing at the moment is putting them together training for university.  00:09:04  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Staff on how to support autistic students at university because there's lots of aspects of university that are strictly for everybody, but potentially more tricky if you're autistic and at the moment they're just as a real kind of lack of.  00:09:17  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Knowledge. I think most people are now.  00:09:19  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Kind of aware.  00:09:21  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  The tortoises exists, but it's moving beyond that awareness and into understanding and acceptance that it's gonna make the biggest difference for autistic people in education.  00:09:31 Sarah Boon  Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think with the education side of things, the environment is so important. I think it's why this is like systemic changes. I mean, I'm speaking really idealistically here, but.  00:09:42 Sarah Boon  You know I.  00:09:42 Sarah Boon  Think schools kind of almost just needs to change how they operate so that when an autistic student comes in, you know, chances are it's not going to get to the point where their needs are not being met.  00:09:53 Sarah Boon  And then everyone starts talking about intervention, and it's just an environment.  00:09:57 Sarah Boon  Where you know they feel safe belonging and you know they can just go in now, which is the point of school that so often there's so many barriers in.  00:10:04 Sarah Boon  Education.  00:10:05 Sarah Boon  For autistic students that are quite often at the root of it's the stomach, even if it doesn't necessarily look like it on the outside, and I think they wouldn't just help autistic students. I think sometimes I'd help.  00:10:16 Sarah Boon  A lot of other students, well, whether they've got another neurodivergent condition or when you're typical. So I think there's so much to do in terms of schools being able to actually meet children's needs. And I think as well, feel some level of emotional safety, I think.  00:10:33 Sarah Boon  Quite often that's almost non-existent and people won't typically think that about the school, but it's very different when when an autistic, you can be quite vulnerable socially among your peers, you can be completely misunderstood by teachers, and again, that can escalate pretty quickly for some people. I think most people just do see autism through those stereotypes, and it's just.  00:10:54 Sarah Boon  Let's make them appear less autistic and not be fine, but that has huge consequences and mental health, so it's looking at the wider picture, you know, like, what's the impact?  00:11:03 Sarah Boon  To this later on down the line.  00:11:05 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  I guess what you're saying kind of speaks to a trend over the last 20 years, which is, you know, it's not a group of people.  00:11:11 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Being talked to is.  00:11:12 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  A group of people actually advocating for themselves and being part of the research and diagnosis. I don't know quite what the word is.  00:11:20  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  The revolution.  00:11:22 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  I wonder if you.  00:11:23 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Could just talk a bit about that.  00:11:24  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Yes, I think that's one of the biggest changes and definitely one of the drivers of all the change we're seeing is the fact that more and more particularly early career researchers are really committed to doing what's called participatory research. So when you work with the.  00:11:40  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  People that you want to understand, you want to help

to design research that is not only more accessible for them, but research that addresses the things that they care about and that matter, and that will actually make a difference. So that's why or it's part of why there's been a big shift towards understanding things like masking because from autistic people we know that.  00:12:01  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  A lot of autistic people are working very hard to mask a lot of their natural behaviours and responses.  00:12:08  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Pretty much all of the time they're around other people, and that's exhausting. And we now know that the more of that you do, the worse your mental health is. It's it's having a really, really major impact and it's something that until a few years ago until researchers started really listening to autistic people, we just weren't looking at. I know my projects now are all.  00:12:28  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  As participatory.  00:12:29 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  I can make them and Sarah, what brought you to study at Bristol? Was it somewhere you'd always want to study or whether other factors involved? And what keeps you here?  00:12:37 Sarah Boon  So in terms of the program, so I think it was in those kind of in between years to undergraduate and starting and again a kind of life and work experience that is what brought me specifically to study psychology. But I think as well that I was.  00:12:49 Sarah Boon  Kind of looking.  00:12:50 Sarah Boon  Like different universities, I think I really like the course at Bristol and as well because obviously it's the predated masters and you have to study certain subjects. Most other universities you had almost no options in terms of choosing what you can study there. Bristol, you could and that was something that was quite unique.  00:13:10 Sarah Boon  That person that I really liked was having some sort of level of flexibility and being able to kind of focus on that area of interest, but also I think Bristol's a lovely city and I think it's a really nice place to study and live. So I think that also that they attracted me to Bristol as well.  00:13:35 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  How? How about you feeling, Steve? What brought you to Bristol? And what keeps you here?  00:13:39  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  So some of Sarah I knew I really liked the city. I actually did the masters. I'm now the program director for quite a few years ago now. So I knew I loved the city and I knew the department a bit. Although there's been quite a lot of change in the nearly a decade since I'd been there, I knew that.  00:13:58  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  I really liked the university, I liked the focus on research, so I saw this as an opportunity and as a place where I could develop both sides of of my career because I really love teaching and I think actually.  00:14:11  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  One of the nicest things is getting to do research and then tell people about it and try and, you know, talk to people about it, teach people about it, teach them about why I think it matters and why. Hopefully it does matter and the impact it will have. So yeah, it was that the fact that our teaching is so research driven and research aware was the thing I I really like about.  00:14:31  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Being here and teaching on this.  00:14:33 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Course Sarah has the masters changed the direction of your life in.  00:14:36 Sarah Boon  Any way? Yeah, I think it definitely opened up opportunity that wouldn't have been there before because even for my current role, I had to have a relevant degree. And obviously this master is very relevant. When my undergraduate wouldn't have been. So I I doubt I'd be.  00:14:36  Hi.  00:14:49 Sarah Boon  In the current role I am.  00:14:51 Sarah Boon  I think also I do advisory consultancy work but I could meet all the scenario. Sometimes that is quite academic. So I think as well, having studied psychology at masters level, it's kind of been really invaluable in that and it's kind of opened up those opportunities as well. So it's kind of different aspects of my career. It certainly helped with for sure.  00:15:12 Sarah Boon  Yeah, it's definitely opened up opportunities. You know, I'm really enjoying, you know, it's kind of put me on a path that I wanted to be in. So yeah.  00:15:19 Sarah Boon  The mask has definitely helped with that.  00:15:20 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  And Felicity, are there moments in your own?  00:15:22 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Research of which your particular.  00:15:24 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  World, what would you like to shine a light on in?  00:15:26  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Your own work. So I think one of the pieces I've done recently that I'm really proud of was looking at Autistic peoples communication preferences. So me and another researcher at Bristol called Philippa Howard worked together to ask quite a lot of autistic people. I think it was nearly 200 in the end.  00:15:46  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  To rank their preferences for mode of communication in different settings, what we found was that people really, really hated using the phone. Autistic people really hated having to make calls or having to rely on calls in pretty much every setting that we gave them. The rest of the answers were a bit more varied. Generally, the better they knew the people they were interacting with.  00:16:07  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  The more likely they were to say, I prefer talking in person, so friends, family, established colleagues, for example.  00:16:15  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  If it was something official, they tended to prefer communicating in writing, particularly e-mail, and we found that out not just from the rankings, but because we also asked them why have you given this answer. So in that kind of qualitative responses, where we found some really important things that we wouldn't have known otherwise. So people saying, you know, they hate using the phone.  00:16:35  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Is a fairly expected finding, potentially lots of us don't

love phone calls, particularly unexpected ones.  00:16:42  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  But actually in their reasons for why and what impact this had, people were saying things like I've missed out on healthcare because I cannot make the phone call to organise the appointment or I've missed out on counselling to help with my mental health because they wanted to do it over the phone and that I just can't do it actually talking to people.  00:17:02  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Revealed the massive impact.  00:17:04  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  That communication mode is having on people. Our recommendation would be that any organization, any institution, any public service should have an option that is not just reliant on phone calls, because if you do, you are excluding a significant portion of the population. You know between one and 2% of everybody in the UK is autistic.  00:17:24  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  So I think that's been one of the pieces of work I've done recently that feels like it has really major implications for policy and for practice, which I think is really important.  00:17:34 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  OK, great. And and how do you hope your research will be realized in the world? Do you have goals and aims in mind or do you think it's going to be a vastly different landscape from now?  00:17:42  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  The future, I am sure it will be better than it is today, cause we are moving in that direction. I would hope that my work can be part of that move in the right direction, so something like that phone study, I would hope that it does just become part of the evidence base for making sure that every public service has live chat.  00:18:02  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Option rather than relying on phones, for example.  00:18:06  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  And in terms of the training for higher education staff, I would love it in an ideal world, if that became mandatory, so that if you are interacting with students at university, you should have training on autism and neurodiversity and how to best support and interact with those students so that autistic and your diverse.  00:18:25  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Students have the same experience of university as anybody else, so that it no longer results in it being a barrier or being a difficulty.  00:18:34 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Something I'm getting from both your answers is a sense of optimism that wasn't there, say, 1020 years ago. Yeah, I'm going to ask how our program of education like this contributes.  00:18:42  To that.  00:18:42  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  I hope we create students who are making positive change in the world, as I said, particularly because a lot of our students are people who are working alongside their studies and so there are people who are in schools who are in mental health services, who are in youth work, charities.  00:18:58  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  And so hopefully the things we're teaching them are kind of having a positive change from the moment they learn the lesson in effect

because the next day they go back into work and they can think actually I know about sensory over stimulation now. So when I've got an autistic child in my classroom who's really struggling, I will.  00:19:18  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Turn off the overhead lights and hopefully that will help them with their sensory stimulation and their emotional regulation a bit. Also, because we are a conversion course once you've graduated from our course, you're qualified to apply for educational psychologist or clinical psychologist training, and hopefully we're sending people on into those.  00:19:38 Sarah Boon  Diagnostic and clinical roles. You've got this really informed grounding to that practice, I guess to a more practical level, guess my experiences as a student. I think it's kind of really essential to have these conversations. I'm very much kind of evolved about the wide autistic community and I would say.  00:19:57 Sarah Boon  Almost every autistic adult at this point I've spoken to is traumatized in some way.  00:20:02 Sarah Boon  Whether it's education, healthcare services or they've got several bad experiences. And again, that really needs to change. And I think there is that starting that shift and there are certainly programs that aim to address those issues, but it definitely is in its infancy teaching about current research and the latest.  00:20:22 Sarah Boon  I guess the shift as well from the kind of the pathologising of autism.  00:20:27 Sarah Boon  And seeing it as a disorder by default, without actually taking into consideration the autistic person's reality of varying autism, I think that's something psychology is happening. This it's made assumptions from the outside has caused a lot of harm. I think being aware of assumptions around autism and people, you know who don't think and behave.  00:20:47 Sarah Boon  Perhaps in typical ways is kind of a huge thing as well going into practice without understanding of what these people or kind of what we're experiencing and as well, you know.  00:21:00 Sarah Boon  What can actually do to help? I think as well it's really important to understand that history just so that mistakes they get made again. And so that the practice that's done harm the past isn't repeated.  00:21:11 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Felicity, you mentioned before that you noticed a gap in the academic literature and you went out there and you dressed that gap. And I wonder how your research now feeds into your teaching and feeds into the.  00:21:20 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Itself in a very.  00:21:21  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Direct way. I'm just about to run for the first time this year's Masters Unit that is specifically about understanding autism and autistic people and thinking about how we improve practice in schools. I've run a version of that with our undergraduate students as well for the last couple of years, so that's very definitely.  00:21:40  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  The direct impact on my teaching more broadly, we as a team are

in the process of reviewing our psychology masters to try and follow more.  00:21:50  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Of those neurodiversity affirming principles and things like participatory research being more built in, so we're updating our teaching in line with the newest research all the time, and not just sort of updating individual slides with individual studies, but actually thinking about how we approach.  00:22:10  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  The whole way.  00:22:11  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  We teach and the kind of concepts we're bringing into our teaching. So yeah, I think it's a fairly direct and quite all-encompassing way that the research is coming into our teaching and comes.  00:22:22  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Into the program.  00:22:22  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  I'm Sarah.  00:22:23 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  As a recent graduate, I wonder if.  00:22:24 Sarah Boon  You talked about in terms of what you're teaching. You know, I think I remember we were always encouraged to read the most recent things coming out in psychology as well. And if we were focusing on older stuff, it's kind of understanding and critiquing why perhaps it wasn't, why, you know, what issues did it create? What problems are you solving as well? And I think that's really useful.  00:22:45 Sarah Boon  So obviously research as well as not putting those gaps. And I think that was really helpful in terms of learning how to see where the gaps are and then what you can do get more specifically in a dissertation.  00:22:57 Sarah Boon  To fill the gap in knowledge. So then you're building the knowledge that can go on as well, which is really what I can see here is about.  00:23:04 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Sarah, can you offer any words of wisdom or advice so far from prospective students or lessons you've learned which could come?  00:23:08 Sarah Boon  Mm-hmm.  00:23:10 Sarah Boon  In useful question I think and there are a lot of people had a preconceptual start in the courses. Ohh I've never studied psychology before.  00:23:11  The.  00:23:19 Sarah Boon  But if only one was like, I'd never said you technology before. And I think as well as I think if you're really motivated to get in that area or you're really interested in the subject, I'd say go for it as well. But kind of understand the level of commitment and masters is so whether you're doing that full time or part time, I did it full time and it basically you have to treat it like a.  00:23:38 Sarah Boon  Full time job in terms of how much you put into it, I think to really get the most.  00:23:42 Sarah Boon  Out of it and as well, obviously you need work life balance, but you know it's quite intense doing a whole degree in a year, I will say. But again it was worth it for me and I'm really glad I did it. So I think I was just thinking about if you really wanna do it, do it, but think about kind of practically how can you make it work in your life so.  00:24:02 Sarah Boon  They made it with people who did it part time as well, so there's always an option too.  00:24:06 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Felicity, by way of rounding things off with an eye to the future and what's to come? What are your hopes for the future of study and education, psychology and neurodivergence.  00:24:15  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  My hopes for the future or sort of what I think is coming down the line is.  00:24:19  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  A real increase in autistic lead research, and I think that's going to continue to really massively impact the benefit that research has. There's been a lot of research that's kind of been because people were interested in it, kind of from an academic perspective and now we're starting to think about what it is that matters.  00:24:37  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  In the real world.  00:24:39  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  And I think there's huge amounts of opportunity within that framework within education and looking at no divergences in education.  00:24:47  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  And trying to take kind of a strength based approach to neurodiversity in education and look at at what is it that these children and young people and students are good at? What is it about their neurotypes that we can help them learn to work with, to succeed and to thrive, rather than saying that these aspects of how your brain works?  00:25:08  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Are wrong because they're different and we need to change them. So I think, yeah, that move to.  00:25:13  Dr Felicity Sedgewick  Towards a strength based approach in education is going to be potentially transformative for those young people coming through our education system in the next few years.  00:25:24 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  It's been super fascinating to chat with you. Thanks.  00:25:26 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  For sharing your time and knowledge with us on.  00:25:28 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Research frontiers. Cool.  00:25:29  Nope.  00:25:34 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Thank you for listening to research frontiers from Bristol University. We hope you found inspiration, information, answers and more in all of these great.  00:25:41 Ruby Lott-Lavigna  Questions. Don't forget to check in over at www.bristol.ac.uk/study/postgraduate for more details on Bristol courses and information about Bristol University. Also keep the podcast nearby, subscribe to research frontiers wherever you get your favorite podcasts, and please do share with people who might benefit to you. Thank you for listening to research frontiers