Breakout session - Neuro-inclusion: From research to practice

Most education organisations in New Zealand will tell you they support neurodivergent learners. Far fewer can show you how. This presentation tells the story of what happens when research becomes practice. Between 2023 and 2025, I undertook a substantial body of research into appreciating and supporting neurodiversity, examining how education and employment settings identify, accommodate, and include neurodivergent people across New Zealand and internationally. The findings were, in many respects, uncomfortable. Whilst good intentions were common, consistent, evidenced, structural support was not. The research produced calls to action across policy, assessment design, workforce capability, and the lived experience of learners, with implications spanning pre-vocational and vocational education, industry, and government. The Neurodiversity-Supportive Standard (NSS) is an outcome that GAC developed in response to that research. Launched in Paris in June 2026, it is structured around seven principles and four recognition levels, and is flexible enough to be applicable worldwide. The NSS gives organisations a clear, independently assessable framework for building genuine neuro-inclusive practice rather than simply claiming it. It is not a checklist. It is a development pathway. This session traces the full arc from research question to working standard, and asks what it takes for New Zealand's tertiary and training sector to move from awareness to accountability.