17 September 2025 saw me visiting the University of Coventry for the Enhancing Inclusion for Neurodivergent Students in Mathematics and Statistics workshop. This was held in collaboration with the University of Bath and funded by the London Mathematical Society (LMS). The event was held at the Library, a wonderful building with silent and group study spaces, promotions for mental health and well-being, study skills, IT skills and home to the writing skills centre and maths and stats support centre (SIGMA).
Judy Hornigold, Independent Educational Consultant specialising in maths and learners with dyscalculia and dyslexia, introduced us to the key concepts of the day:
- Delphi definition of dyslexia
- Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, ADHD and other neurodivergent conditions can co-occur.
- About 6% of the population may have Dyscalculia compared with 10% of the population with Dyslexia. They can co-exist. Someone with Dyscalculia usually struggles with numerical magnitude processing.
- UDL principles can really help us prepare for our neurodivergent students – plan for multiple means of engagement, representation (text represented through diagrams, flow charts, mind maps or other visuals, videos etc), action and expression.
- Tiny tweaks can make a difference. Digitally accessible documents allow for font and colour change. Provide notes in advance. Create materials with smaller ‘chunks’.
- Highlight important points clearly (a callout in the notes for instance) and repeat important points clearly.
- Make the abstract concrete through examples and tactiles where possible
- A whole person approach is needed, not just strategies for someone to learn the maths and stats. Support students to develop a growth mindset, help them reframe anxieties and develop progress strategies. (The Maths Anxiety Research Group at Derby University.)
- Students experience extra cognitive load and may have to ‘overlearn’ as one strategy that helps them to develop automaticity, something neurotypicals may take for granted.
After a break, we had short presentations from 3 practitioners:
Emma Cliffe (University of Bath)
A long-time contributor and supporter of the Jisc Accessible Maths Working Group, Emma has been a promoter of accessible maths for the longest time. She is also head of the Mathematics Resource Centre (MASH) at Uni of Bath. She used 4 student personas to explain how she approached adaptations to teaching for the various students’ challenges. Key to successful adaptations were using as many tactile and visual techniques as possible and encouraging the students to experiment to find out what worked for them. Her stash of manipulatives made me slightly jealous, as someone who is constantly collecting equipment to create a more tactile experience for the VI students I support!
She also showed some digital tools useful to students who needed to visualise and manipulate in 3D, for example, geogebra. An interesting point I hadn’t considered was how helpful colourised equations could be in enhancing structure in an equation. I followed a link to her source for this (Visual explanations of mathematics by Matt Hall) and was drawn into how annotated equations could be a wonderful explainer and notetaking strategy for students. This handwritten student note beautifully illustrates the use of colour and annotations combined into a learning strategy.
Judy mentioned how organising information into smaller chunks can be a helpful strategy. Emma illustrated this with a flowchart ‘chunked’ into steps to reduce the overwhelm that can come from a complex figure – sequencing flow diagrams. Her guide to equation entry in Word is a vital resource I’ll be adding to our own Accessible Equations site, especially in the section, Notetaking Maths for students.
Jonathan Fine (Open University, retired)
Jonathan provided an entertaining and tactile insight into how Pythagoras’ theorem could be introduced and proved to anyone with sight impairments. He brought along some tactiles he had made and split us into two groups to solve the puzzle together. Playing with such tactiles can be very useful for vision-impaired students but it can also help neurodiverse students, turning abstract concepts into something concrete. The activity also illustrated how working in a peer group could help everyone with their maths.
The Mathsgear site was mentioned as a good source for more tactiles. I think the site is going to be a big drain on my pocket money!
Jonathan very kindly provided a follow-up video after the event to demonstrate how the tactiles work. (Credit goes to Maurice Laisnez who found this proof in 1939.) Feel free to contact Jonathan about his tactiles.
Balvir Bains (Loughborough University)
With her experience as an engineer, Balvir is well suited to working with Sports students at Loughborough Uni who are worried about maths. She explains things in practical terms and with concrete examples to help students understand how the maths applies to what they are learning in their discipline, or in their everyday lives.
Other speakers and discussions
We had some lovely insights into the work of two of Coventry Uni’s specialist study skills tutors, Dove and Louise. It was really helpful hearing about their contact time with students and their varied approaches to supporting students. Empathy was the key message they put across, with the quote from Henry Ford:
“If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”
They introduced the idea of the Autism Wheel (so many people think of autism in terms of a spectrum) which can better encapsulate the range of traits that may be exhibited by different autistic people. They shared the irony of being so willing to help that you can overwhelm someone with too much variety and choice; less can be more in this case and small concrete steps are often best.
We had discussions at our tables reflecting on top strategies from our own practice. Jonathan very gamely held up our contributions for presentation to the room. Our top tips or takeaways were to make things concrete, provide 1:1 appointments, and to encourage peer support activities.
During Q&A, I asked if anyone had found the best font to support coding and maths. It’s a real dilemma for students who need to use a sans-serif font – they still need to be able to tell apart characters like the letter i, the letter l and the number 1 and a serif is usually the way you can do it. Some programming software will have syntax highlighting, colourising parts of code and that can be helpful. Jonathan very kindly followed up with an email sharing the Hyperlegible® font. It’s also available via Google Fonts.One of the best bits of the day for me was meeting Jonathan and Emma in person, two people I have worked with through the Jisc Accessible Maths Working Group over the years. Emma informed me that the sigma Network will be focusing more on the neurodiversity space for Maths and Stats now that the Jisc Accessible Maths Working Group is there to look after the ‘technical accessibility’ part. Both aspects need to come together in practice, of course. However, it makes sense to specialise and support colleagues in these two areas with specific advice where possible.
It was a well-organised event, with time for a visit to Coventry Uni’s sigma or Maths Skills Centre and networking. Many thanks to Dr Yamuna Dass and her team for organising a very fruitful workshop!
Having read this far, what are your key takeaways for supporting neurodivergent students in maths and stat?