Re-examining Assessment for Learning (AfL): What is the impact of neurodiversity?

In 2014, I followed an interdisciplinary arts project called ‘Songlines’, delivered over two terms by The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. It aimed to:   create an inclusive opportunity for students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) stimulate social cohesion and personal development between two groups of young people made up of fifteen participants each. One group had been clinically diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) and one group had not. As a postgraduate student, I used emerging neuroscientific advances into AS to analyse the project critically and to identify working methods that recognised all the participants on an equal level. I was attempting to find an alternative to similar projects documented in the literature, which had ‘disabled’ impaired individuals by failing to cater for their needs. These unsatisfactory examples continue to stimulate fierce cultural and educational policy debate (Arts Council England, 2013; S