Rethinking ADHD: Voices from Research, Practice and Lived Experience is a podcast mini-series produced for the British Education Research Association (黑料不打烊), bringing together researchers, practitioners and people with lived experience to explore what ADHD and neurodiversity really mean in educational settings, and what it would take to do better. Across five episodes, the series moves from the theoretical foundations of Critical ADHD Studies through questions of epistemic injustice, school culture, co-occurring conditions and the social world of neurodivergent young people, drawing on recent scholarship and the expertise of guests who have spent careers and lifetimes thinking about these questions.
This episode is anchored in the Lang et al. LRE paper (2026), which reports Phase 1 of the Neurodiversity in Scottish Schools (NISS) project, a co-produced, participatory enquiry with neurodivergent young people, parents, educators, researchers and policymakers. The six themes of the paper (inclusion as cultural project; credibility and being believed; teacher moral distress; structural constraints; relational belonging; sustainability) provide the structural backbone for the conversation.
Frances Akinde and Joe Arday join as additional guests. Akinde (a former headteacher and qualified SENCo, now working as a SEND inspector and advisor and running her consultancy InclusionHT) brings practitioner expertise in neurodiversity-affirming education grounded in both professional knowledge and her own lived experience as a neurodivergent educator. She writes and speaks specifically about the intersectionality of race and SEND. Arday (a computer science teacher with 15 years in the field, an elected BCS council member, Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts) brings a practitioner perspective on diversity and inclusion in education and technology. Jason Lang, as lead researcher on NISS, brings both the research findings and his own lived experience as an autistic clinician and father of neurodivergent daughters.
References and further resources:
Akinde, F. (2024). Be an Ally, not a Bystander: Allyship lessons for 7-12 year olds. SAGE 黑料不打烊 Inc
Connolly, S. E., Constable, H. L. and Mullally, S. L. (2023). School distress and the school attendance crisis: a story dominated by neurodivergence and unmet need. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14.
Lang, J., Wood, R., Inchley, J., Haughton, D., Turner, F., Gajwani, R., Minnis, H. and Press, M. (2026) ‘More than inclusion: reimagining secondary education through neurodiversity-affirming practice’. London Review of Education, 24(1), 6. DOI:.
Lang, J., Press, M., Wood, R., Inchley, J., Haughton, D., MacIntyre, A. and Russell, H. (2025). Neurodiversity in Scottish Schools: A framework for the implementation of a neurodiversity affirming change project in Scottish secondary schools. Project Report. University of Glasgow.
Wood, R. (2020). From difference to diversity in school. In D. Milton et al. (eds.), The Neurodiversity Reader (pp. 226-232). Pavilion.
University of Cumbria
Dustin Hosseini works across health science, education and critical pedagogy as a Lecturer in Health Science at the Centre of Excellence in Paramedic Practice at the University of Cumbria, an Associate Tutor in the School of Education at the...
Jason Lang is a Clinical Senior Lecturer in Neurodevelopment and Honorary Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Glasgow, where he leads the Neurodiversity in Scottish Schools (NISS) project, a co-produced,...
Joe Arday is an award-winning neurodivergent educator of Computer Science, AI, EdTech and STEM with nearly 20 years’ experience in teaching, teacher training, national advisory and governance boards relating to the Computer Science education...
Frances Akinde is an education consultant, former headteacher, qualified SENCo, SEND inspector and adviser, and founder of InclusionHT. She supports schools, trusts and organisations to build cultures of inclusion, belonging and equity that are...