Learning in Many Ways —Affirming Education for Every Learner
By Kit Louis.
There is increasing recognition across education, psychology, and therapeutic fields that the categories we often rely on — “neurotypical” and “neurodivergent” — can be more limiting than helpful. While these terms offer useful lenses, they can also reinforce a false binary. Human cognition is inherently varied. Each person processes, senses, regulates, interprets, and expresses in ways shaped by biology, development, environment, culture, and lived experience. In that sense, learning differences are not deviations from a norm; they are expressions of human diversity.
This is the foundation of affirming education: an approach that recognises diverse neurocognitive profiles as natural variations rather than deficits requiring correction. It encourages strength-based practices, learner agency, and the redesign of learning environments to reflect the full spectrum of ways in which humans understand their world (Zaks, 2025). It is an approach that concerns not only teachers and therapists, but also school leaders and policymakers — the people who hold the levers that shape curriculum, resource allocation, and systemic direction.
Why affirming education matters
The reality is that many educational systems still rely heavily on narrow academic indicators such as reading, writing, and mathematical fluency. These domains are important, but they do not capture the broader landscape of human learning. Humans learn through movement, image, sound, story, symbolic play, sensory exploration, and embodied interaction. When these modalities are treated as peripheral — “enrichment,” “remedial support,” or “extra-curricular” — we diminish the strengths of many learners.
Multidisciplinary expressive modalities as core strengths
Creative and expressive modalities are not secondary. Research illustrates their impact: creative arts therapy in schools enhances belonging, emotional regulation, and engagement for diverse learners (Hannigan, Grima-Farrell & Wardman, 2019). Neurodivergent-affirming therapeutic arts practices validate lived experience and support self-expression without pathologising difference (Pinney, 2022). Higher education studies have also highlighted how neurodiversity-affirming environments particularly support students in creative and sensory-rich disciplines (Breslin, 2024). These modalities align with how many students — including those with complex learning profiles — make meaning.
How learning takes shape in practice
A simple example demonstrates this: a learner who struggles to retain abstract content through worksheets can often internalise the same concept when it is enacted through dramatic role-play, built through clay, expressed through drawing, or explored through musical rhythm. When curriculum design incorporates multiple paths of access, that learner’s difficulty is no longer interpreted as “inability” but as a mismatch between instructional mode and cognitive profile.
Neuroscience reinforces these principles. Research on embodied cognition shows that learning is most effectively consolidated when multiple neural systems — sensory, motor, affective, and cognitive — are activated together (Immordino-Yang & Damasio, 2007). In other words, learning deepens when it is experienced, not only observed. Expressive therapies have long emphasised this: art-making, movement, music, and drama activate integrated networks that support attention, memory, emotional regulation, and meaning-making.
Building systems that honour this diversity requires intentionality at multiple levels:
Teacher training grounded in neurodiversity-affirming principles:
Flexible curriculum frameworks
Curriculum might present core concepts in multiple pathways — e.g., a concept is introduced via a story, then explored via movement/drama, then applied in a hands-on art task, then reflected verbally, then extended via a collaborative performance. This gives learners choice and allows modality matching.
Inclusive assessment:
Environmental and cultural design:
Multidisciplinary collaboration:
Anchoring it in our human story
If we zoom out even further, human diversity becomes less surprising. We are a single species shaped by evolutionary adaptation, environmental pressure, and cultural variation. Differences in communication, sensory profiles, attention patterns, motor rhythms, and emotional expression reflect adaptive pathways, not deviations from a fixed standard. Our educational systems are most equitable when they acknowledge this continuum rather than dividing learners into categories of “typical” and “other.”
When education is designed through this lens, creative capacities such as drawing, building, moving, singing, dramatic play, and embodied exploration are no longer considered supplementary. They return to their rightful place as core components of learning — central to how human beings have always made sense of their world.
Closing thoughts
When education begins from the premise of “we are human learners, diverse in our modalities, capable in many ways,” then the divide between “neurotypical” and “neurodivergent” becomes less about “fit” and more about “how do we support each other’s ways of learning?”
This reflection is informed by my work in art therapy, creative education, and as a parent of young children, where I witness learners thrive when given multiple modalities to engage with ideas and express themselves. It is also informed by a hope that educational leaders and policymakers will continue pushing toward systems that honour the full spectrum of human learning — systems designed not for uniformity, but for humanity.
“The child has a hundred languages, a hundred hands, a hundred thoughts, a hundred ways of thinking, of playing, of speaking.” – Loris Malaguzzi, 1981
References
Breslin, H. (2024, November 29). Neurodiversity-affirming education is key to supporting students in the creative industries. Times Higher Education. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/neurodiversityaffirming-education-key-supporting-students-creative-industries
Hannigan, S., Grima-Farrell, C., & Wardman, N. (2019). Drawing on creative arts therapy approaches to enhance inclusive school cultures and student wellbeing. Issues in Educational Research, 29(3), 756–770.
Immordino-Yang, M. H., & Damasio, A. (2007). We feel, therefore we learn: The relevance of affective and social neuroscience to education. Mind, Brain, and Education, 1(1), 3–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-228X.2007.00004.x
Pinney, F. (2022). Neurodivergent-affirming therapeutic arts practice. Journal of Creative Arts Therapies, 17(2). https://www.jocat-online.org/a-22-pinney
Zaks, Z. (2025). Moving to a neurodiversity-affirming paradigm in clinical support, mental health therapy, and special education. Journal of Special Education & Innovation. Advance online publication.