Paradigm washing: when universities adopt our language but not neurodivergent liberation

If you don’t want to make the change, don’t use our language.

A huge welcome to all the new subscribers who joined after my webinar on the neurodiversity paradigm with the Australian Disability Clearinghouse on Education and Training (ADCET) this week! Brilliant to have you here. You’ve landed in a space where lived experience meets professional practice in the disability and inclusion world – weekly(ish) content on all things accessibility, inclusion, policy, and cultural change.

Thank you for your commitment to inclusion: I see you.

When I first reached out to ADCET to pitch this session, I’ll admit that I was a bit amped up. Wide eyes, high eyebrows, typing at lightspeed.

I’d just finished listening to a webinar by Sonny Jane Wise about the neurodiversity paradigm: it was an excellent example of accessible public communication on complex concepts as neurodiversity, biopower, biocertification, and epistemic justice. I learned a lot, particularly about the importance of recognising the Mad Pride movement in neurodiversity work and understanding the experiences of those most marginalised by traditional psychiatric practices.

But most significantly, Sonny’s presentation reminded me that it’s not too much to ask for institutions to really get to grips with what neuro-affirming practice actually is.

At the same time, I was navigating a really frustrating experience completing my Certificate IV in Training and Assessment through a large RTO (more on that in the coming weeks). I was reviewing old and outdated website content on autistic and ADHD student support. I was seeing the language of the neurodiversity paradigm everywhere, but still coming up against the same old barriers as a neurodivergent student myself.

So I wrote an email to ADCET:

I’ve noticed a core barrier to delivering contemporary support to neurodivergent students: a lack of understanding of the neurodiversity paradigm. Over a very short period of time, many universities were happy to adopt the language of this paradigm, without shifting their practice or assumptions underpinning their delivery of services or supports. I’m calling this ‘paradigm washing’. It’s like a university committing to reducing their emissions by asking people to talk about climate change, but not reducing their expenditure on vehicle fleets or making structural changes to enable a more eco-friendly campus.

I think this issue is mostly due to a lack of understanding, not a genuine desire to marginalise us. I think ADCET can play a role here to shift this understanding: a real and accurate understanding of the core principles of the neurodiversity paradigm is what is needed to deliver real support to university students in ways that are effective, sustainable, and ethical.

In my travels, I haven’t found any neurodiversity paradigm resources that strike the appropriate balance between theory and practice for them to be useful for disability practitioners and/or student support staff in an Australian context. This would be an attempt at creating something to shift our conversations to a more productive discourse that importantly, isn’t just a shift in our language (which is what we are currently seeing), but a shift in action and beliefs.

[I am not claiming to have coined the concept or paradigm washing: at the time of writing this email, I hadn’t seen it used anywhere else; however, I have since seen variations of ‘neurodiversity-washing’ and similar phrases around the world wide web!]

In line with what I have come to rely on from ADCET, they welcomed this proposal with enthusiasm and solidarity. They locked in a date straight away, and we ended up with over 500 registrations Australia-wide.

We’d hit a nerve.

The webinar recording is now available through ADCET if you want to revisit the session or share it with colleagues. I’ll shortly be working through the answers to the questions we didn’t get to during the session, so keep an eye out for those. In the meantime, this post is about paradigm washing: what it is, where I can see it happening, and what we need to do about it.

In case you missed it: the Neurodiversity Paradigm ✨

The concepts of ‘neurodivergent’, ‘neurodiversity’, and ‘neurotype’ have been defined and developed by a range of scholars and advocates, including Kassiane Asasumasu, Judy Singer, and Nick Walker. They emerged from advocacy and community movements and continue to evolve today. Together, these ideas aim to describe experiences of cognitive diversity and functioning, particularly for those who diverge from neuronormative standards: that is, the collection of beliefs about a ‘right’ way to function, where those who do not meet these standards are pathologised and marginalised.

Collectively, these concepts sit within what Nick Walker coined as the ‘neurodiversity paradigm’, building on decades of work by autistic advocates and the broader disability rights movement. Walker identified three core principles that underpin this paradigm:

First: Neurodiversity is the fact of natural human variation. Just as we have diversity in ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and culture, we have diversity in how our brains are wired and how we process the world. This diversity has always existed, and always will.

Second: There is no ‘normal’ brain. The idea that there’s one ‘right’ or ‘healthy’ way for minds to function is a cultural fiction. It’s no more valid than claiming there’s one normal ethnicity or one right culture.

Third: The social dynamics around neurodiversity mirror other forms of human diversity. This includes power inequalities, marginalisation, and also the creative and innovative potential that emerges when we embrace rather than suppress difference.

Sonny Jane Wise puts it brilliantly: “The neurodiversity paradigm is about understanding ourselves and others outside of the DSM (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).” It’s a foundational reframing of how we think about human cognitive diversity, rather than a collection of symptoms and diagnoses.

Over the past few years, I’ve watched universities enthusiastically adopt neurodiversity paradigm language. Support service webpages proclaim they’re “neurodiversity-affirming.” Marketing materials showcase “neurodiverse-friendly [sic]” study groups. Staff attend training on “supporting neurodivergent students.” Policy documents reference our commitment to “celebrating neurodiversity.”

On the surface, this looks like progress. Maybe we’re finally recognising cognitive diversity as natural variation rather than pathology? Or perhaps, even moving away from deficit-based thinking? Could we be embracing the neurodiversity paradigm as a sector?

It’s just the pathology paradigm wearing a pair of glasses and a moustache 🥸

Unfortunately, when you look closer, the actual systems haven’t shifted an inch. We still require formal diagnoses and medical reports to access support, and to categorise students by diagnoses in our reporting. We still frame support as the pursuit of fixing individual deficits, expecting students to adapt to our structures rather than questioning why those structures exclude in the first place. We still respond to crisis with risk management and exclusion rather than care and connection.

In reality, these processes still reflect the traditional (and dominant) pathology paradigm. This competing paradigm is grounded in three assumptions:

First: there’s something wrong or different about an individual physically or mentally that needs diagnosing and treating. The issue and the impetus for support is a result of the student’s characteristics, not features of our systems.

Second: professionals know better than individuals about what they need. Psychiatric expertise or clinical evidence and theory (biocertification) trumps lived experience every time.

Third: success means the student learns to function within our existing structures, not that we adapt those structures. Neuronormativity decides what those structures and thresholds are, and the goal is conformity.

Beware the wave of paradigm washing 🌊

You know how companies pop a rainbow flag on their logo during Pride month while doing nothing to address homophobia in their workplace? Or how organisations proclaim their commitment to sustainability whilst continuing practices that trash the environment?

That’s greenwashing and rainbow-washing at work – performative allyship that uses the language of liberation while maintaining oppressive systems.

Higher education is doing the same thing with the neurodiversity paradigm. This is paradigm washing.

We’re performing acceptance by co-opting the language of the paradigm, while maintaining the very systems and assumptions that pathologise and marginalise neurodivergent students. And it’s dangerous: these assumptions produce individualistic solutions to collective and systemic problems.

We are seeing rising numbers of students approaching services for help with poorly designed assessments, inaccessible teaching, and unintuitive university processes. The pathology paradigm tells us that when students experience challenges at university, the issue is their capacity, and that we can fix that with individual adjustments. This results in overworked disability practitioners, band-aid fixes, and students who don’t get what they really need. Every student needs to have their own individual diagnostic paperwork to access what is, really, a copied-and-pasted learning access plan with standard adjustments that don’t get to the heart of what makes higher education inaccessible for so many of us. I know: I have one.

And, the worst bit? We do all of this while still using neurodiversity-coded language. We wear the clothes of inclusion and signal neuro-affirming practice, but students still experience the cold hand of pathology-driven approaches demanding paperwork and crude categorisation of diagnostic assumptions.

Moving from window-dressing to paradigm shift 💭

We have an alternative. The neurodiversity movement encourages us to expect and plan for the diversity of cognitive functioning in our student populations - this is a collective, relational experience.

Genuine paradigm shift would be building Universal Design for Learning (UDL) into courses, making flexibility and adaptability the norm rather than the exception. Reducing diagnosis requirements and trusting students about their needs. Collecting data on accommodation requests and asking what systemic barriers this reveals rather than just processing individual adjustments in isolation. Designing assessment that doesn’t assume one way of knowing or demonstrating knowledge. Flexible deadlines and pathways to award (or non-award, if desired) in our programs and courses.

It’s even rewriting academic integrity frameworks to acknowledge that many neurodivergent students have been failed by education systems their entire lives. Harm reduction approaches to crisis rather than risk management and exclusion. Building student leadership into institutional governance rather than tokenising us in consultations.

These steps allow us to assume and understand diversity, rather than homogeneity. They allow students to approach learning in a way that works for them, rather than leaving them stuck with default approaches based on diagnostic categories that cannot capture the true diversity of experiences for each individual neurotype.

Real commitment to the neurodiversity paradigm means trusting lived experience over professional assessment. It means prioritising access over gatekeeping. It means embracing uncertainty rather than control.

That’s uncomfortable, and I get it. It requires admitting that much of what we’ve been doing – with the best intentions – has been causing harm.

This doesn’t mean abandoning academic rigour or lowering standards. What it does mean is building systems that don’t require conformity to neuronormative expectations to succeed.

An invitation to do better 💌

Here’s what I’d like to say to universities right now: I understand the constraints you’re working within. Getting rid of diagnostic paperwork as a ticket to support might feel scary. I know funding is tied to diagnoses. I know that implementing UDL is challenging, complex, and long-term work. Paradigm shift is slow, messy, and uncomfortable.

But if we’re going to use the language of the neurodiversity paradigm – a framework developed by and for neurodivergent people to challenge the systems that marginalise us – we need to be honest about what that requires.

The neurodiversity paradigm asks us to examine our foundational assumptions about whose ways of being are valued. It asks us to be willing to transfer power to neurodivergent students. It asks us to dismantle the systems that require us to prove our worthiness.

If you don’t want to make the change, don’t use our language.

Moving forward

We don’t expect perfection. I work within these systems too, and I know how hard it is to create change from the inside. There will be compromises, slow progress, and frustrating setbacks.

But we can push against those constraints. We can name when systems are creating barriers. We can document the impact of policies on students. We can advocate for change even when it’s slow. We can find creative workarounds within existing structures. We can build relationships with students based on trust rather than control.

What we can’t do is pretend that adopting better language is the same as doing better work.

The neurodiversity paradigm demands structural change. If you’re ready for that conversation, awesome. If you’re not quite there yet, that’s worth being honest about.

Either way, let’s stop pretending that paradigm washing is progress.

Can you see examples of paradigm washing in your university? What do you think drives this? Join the conversation in the comments: it’s part of the contribution you can make to paradigm shift.