How Creative Practice can be used to Co-create Effective Learning Environments with Neurodivergent Students

Beaumont, Christina (2026) How Creative Practice can be used to Co-create Effective Learning Environments with Neurodivergent Students. Doctoral thesis, Liverpool Hope University.

Text Christina Beaumont Final THESIS 20210653.pdf Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (12MB)

Abstract

Neurodivergent people make up between 15-20% of the population in the UK (Doyle, 2020). Despite being a significant minority, schools in Britain consistently fail to meet the needs of neurodivergent students, who are unfairly disadvantaged by a neurotypical education
system. This study uses critical participatory action research (CPAR) to explore the role of creative practice in producing learning environments that are more accessible to all students. Engaging with CPAR through creative practice, 9 year 11 neurodivergent student co-researchers played an active role in shaping their own learning environments, where the open and exploratory nature of the process gave them the freedom to direct their own learning according to their individual interests and needs. These ‘cripped’ educational spaces allowed non-normative subjectivities to be valued and foregrounded as providing unique insight into different ways of understanding the world. Creative practice supplied multiple entry points and modes of participation to support a variety of pedagogical
relationships, and promoted autonomous learning through horizontal power structures. Over four cycles of CPAR, the student co-researchers engaged with creative processes to develop confidence and motivation, eventually taking the lead to co-produce more effective
educational environments for themselves and their peers.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Additional Information and Comments:	Copyright © The Author 2026. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request.
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Education and Social Sciences > School of Education
SWORD Depositor:	RISE Symplectic
Depositing User:	RISE Symplectic
Date Deposited:	28 Sep 2026 08:20
Last Modified:	28 Sep 2026 08:20
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/4988

Actions (login required)

View Item