What 800+ Educators Say Is Blocking Neurodiversity-Affirming Behavior Support

Traditional behavior management, like the use of rewards and punishments as motivators, tends to be ineffective with autistic and ADHD students because it assumes every student is motivated by the same things. Neurodiversity-affirming behavior strategies view behavior as communication and build on students’ strengths instead of measuring them against a neurotypical baseline. Instead of trying to figure out how to stop a behavior, neurodiversity-affirming strategies focus on understanding what need the behavior is communicating.

The need for neurodiversity-affirming behavior management was reinforced by poll and chat data during Social Cipher’s webinar, “Addressing Challenging Behaviors: Neurodiversity-Affirming Strategies for Schools," presented by clinical psychologist Dr. Lucas Harrington and school leadership consultant Duncan Scherer. The webinar attracted 2,700+ registrants and 800+ live attendees from 40 states and 5 countries. Their job titles included:

• Superintendents
• District-level coordinators, specialists, and directors
• School administrators
• General education and special education teachers
• Paraprofessionals
• Counselors
• Related service providers (SLPs, OTs, social workers, etc.)

The wide range in location and job titles shows that the challenges schools are facing are not specific to any one place or role.

How familiar are educators with neurodiversity-affirming practices?

Familiarity with neurodiversity-affirming practices varied widely among attendees. About 26% of attendees described themselves as very familiar with the topic, 51% were somewhat familiar, 15% not very familiar, and 8% were not familiar at all.

Not sure if you’re using neurodiversity-affirming tools and practices? Check out Is This Neurodiversity-Affirming? A Quick Checklist for Evaluating Resources and Classroom Practices.

What barriers do schools face in implementing neurodiversity-affirming practices?

Even when educators support the shift to neurodiversity-affirming practices, several barriers stand in the way of putting them into practice consistently. When polled on their biggest barriers or anticipated barriers, attendees selected access to resources (~42%), teacher buy-in (~33%), and administrator support (~13%) with the remainder selecting “other” and sharing in the chat.

Barrier 1: Access to resources (~42%)

Access to resources was the number one barrier that educators and related service providers face or anticipate facing when implementing neurodiversity-affirming strategies. Attendees explained further in the chat that they were concerned about:

• Not enough staff
• Class sizes too large to manage individual needs
• Not enough time to build relationships and individualize everything
• Classes that combine neurotypical and neurodivergent students without additional support

Many teachers pointed to a lack of teaching assistants and high student-to-staff ratios as the root of the problem, not a lack of will to implement it. One attendee described having twenty-five students, a quarter of whom were neurodivergent, without additional support. Another described the same challenge with twenty-three students. Several also named time itself as the scarce resource because so much of the school day is already spent preparing for state assessments.

An interesting insight that was mentioned by several attendees was that staff do not always thoroughly read the students’ IEPs and 504 plans. They noted that behavior management systems are often applied schoolwide without considering what each individual student’s plan says. This is not a traditional resource problem like time and funding, but it is a gap in how information that already exists gets shared and used by the adults actually working with the student every day.

What can schools do to improve access to resources?

Full staffing and smaller class sizes are not realistic for every school right away, especially with a national decline in the number of people entering the teaching profession. Schools cannot solve this problem on their own. However, they can look at resources that build capacity without requiring more time from an already overextended staff.  Neurodiversity-affirming support depends on students being able to recognize and communicate their needs, a skill that schools build through social and emotional learning. Giving students a direct way to practice that skill takes some of the weight off staff who are already stretched thin.

A tool like Social Cipher’s social and emotional learning (SEL) curriculum and online game was designed specifically for this and specifically for neurodiverse classrooms. It gives students a way to practice self-regulation and self-advocacy directly through characters and scenarios that reflect real-life experience. As a low-prep tool, it can be used by any adult working with a student, whether they are substitute teachers, paraprofessionals, teachers, or therapists. The skills students learn from Social Cipher are the same skills that reduce behavior incidents, which is what often pulls staff time away from everything else.

Barrier 2: Teacher Buy-In (~33%)

The second most-cited barrier was teacher buy-in. Attendees named “teacher mindset” directly multiple times, and said that traditional behaviorism is the default approach that is hard to move away from. The chat conversation suggested this is less about disagreeing with neurodiversity-affirming strategies and more so about competing mindsets on how schools should operate.

What can schools do to increase teacher buy-in?

Since the data shows that resistance is rooted more in habit and mindset than in disagreement, repeated exposure to new strategies tends to work better than a single-day training. Teachers need the chance to see a strategy modeled in a real classroom moment, not just presented once in a workshop, before they will trust it enough to use it themselves.

This lines up with what attendees asked for. When polled on what training topics would be most useful for their staff, the top answer by far was practical training on creating a neurodiversity-affirming classroom. They viewed this as more important than a general introduction to neurodivergence and district-level policy training. This implies that they do not need to be convinced of the value of neurodiversity-affirming practices. They need practical strategies and realistic examples of how to implement them.

That kind of ongoing reinforcement is easier to build into professional development that extends past a single workshop. A neurodiversity-affirming PD series with an initial session followed by continued practice, whether through coaching, follow-up sessions, or a shared classroom tool teachers can return to, gives staff repeated exposure to a strategy in action instead of a one-time introduction they are expected to use without support.

Barrier 3: Administrative Support (~13%)

Several attendees pointed out that there is a results-first culture around discipline and that administrators often frame behavioral challenges as classroom management issues rather than something that requires a different approach. They explained that administrators are often overly punitive by default and quick to discipline before considering what a behavior might be communicating. Attendees also shared that their administrators had not been trained on neurodiversity-affirming practices, so they did not understand the importance of “simple” things like giving advance notice for schedule changes, which is a common behavior trigger for neurodivergent students.

What can administrators do to provide more support?

Administrators need the same training that teachers are asking for. An administrator who understands why schedule changes can be triggering for neurodivergent students will view the resulting behavior as a form of communication instead of a discipline problem. An administrator who has seen a de-escalation strategy work, either during a demonstration or in a real classroom, is better equipped to support a teacher using it and less likely to default to a discipline-first response when a similar situation is reported to their office.

How can Social Cipher support your school?

• Our free Guide to Addressing Challenging Behaviors in Special Education identifies the need behind common behaviors and gives action steps to address them using neurodiversity-affirming strategies.
• Our Professional Development sessions give school staff the repeated, hands-on exposure to neurodiversity-affirming strategies that attendees said they needed most.
• Our free Pilot Program gives your school hands-on experience with the Social Cipher SEL curriculum and online game, so you can see the impact before committing.

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