Friendship and Neurodivergent Children
About this episode
In this tenth episode Dr Caron Carter talks to Dr Luke Beardon about Friendship and Neurodivergent children. Terms and concepts such as neurodivergent and neurodivergence, equality and equity, reasonable adjustments and diverging sociality are discussed. In summary, this episode explores what friendship means to neurodivergent children and how we might listen and support.
Guest speaker
Luke is the Course Leader for the Post Graduate Certificate in Autism at Sheffield Hallam University, and supervisor of several Doctoral students, a co-editor of five books on autism and sole author of an additional seven books (eighth in press) with several other publications in journals and books.
He has spoken at numerous National and International conferences on a variety of autism related topics and has addressed parliament in Westminster and the United Nations in New York. With multiple awards and media appearances Luke is passionate about all things related to autism.
Sacha Powell is the Chief Executive Officer of the Froebel Trust – a charity that works across the UK and internationally to promote and advance 
Professor Tina Bruce CBE is an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Roehampton where she was Head of the Froebel Nursery Research School and then Director of the Centre for Early Childhood Studies. She studied at the Froebel Educational Institute (which has since become part of the University of Roehampton) at London University and at Manchester University where she trained to work with children with hearing impairments.
Dr Stella Louis is an internationally renowned freelance Early Years consultant, trainer, and author, who has worked with individual nursery settings, parents, nursery schools, local authorities, governments, and charities all over the world. 
Kate Adams is Professor of Education at Leeds Trinity University, Leeds, UK. After graduating from university, she embarked on a career in primary teaching in England before moving into academia. Kate’s research advocates for consideration of the whole child, with a specialist focus on children’s spirituality, uncovering the often-silenced voices of children of all faiths and none. Kate’s current research focuses on friendship, considering the potential spiritual aspects of these important relationships. A key focus of this research is on the phenomenon of childhood ‘imaginary’ friends which take a human form, which she explores from different perspectives. Kate has published widely for over two decades through research papers, articles, and books including Unseen Worlds: Looking through the lens of childhood, and The Spiritual Dimension of Childhood. She has served on the Board of Directors for the International Association for the Study of Dreams and as Co-Chair of the International Association for Children’s Spirituality and is on the editorial board for The International Journal for Children’s Spirituality and the Journal of Religious Education.
Professor Christine Pascal, PhD, MSocSc specialises in early childhood research and evaluation projects using mixed methods which are flexible in approach and close to practice. Currently she is President of the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) and was previously President of the British Association for Early Childhood Education from 1994-1997 (and is now Vice President). She has also done extensive work at government level to support the development of early years policy, has served as a ministerial advisor, and an Early Years Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Select Committee on Education. She has written extensively on early childhood development and the quality of early education services and served as an Expert Advisor to Tickell’s review of the EYFS. In the past 3 years she has delivered a number of early years policy and evidence reviews for clients including The Sutton Trust, Teach First, and Early Education. 
Professor Tony Bertram, PhD, MEd, BEd established, with Chris Pascal, the Centre for Research in Early Childhood, becoming a research Professor in Early Childhood International Development in 2003. He is Editor in Chief of the European Early Childhood Education Research Journal and was its elected President from 1992-2007. He has been a member of the Ministerial Early Education Advisory Group (EEAG), which advised the government on the development of the Foundation Stage curriculum and has extensive experience in leading early childhood research and evaluation projects which combine quantitative and qualitative data generation and analysis for the improvement of policy and practice in the early childhood sector, nationally and internationally. 
Alison Clark is Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of South-Eastern Norway (USN) and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Thomas Coram Research Unit, UCL Institute of Education, London. Together with Professor Peter Moss, she developed the Mosaic approach (Clark and Moss, 2001; Clark, 2017), a methodology for listening to and engaging with young children’s views and experiences and now widely developed and adapted by researchers and educators. Recent research includes the ‘Slow knowledge and the unhurried child’ study funded by the Froebel Trust and published by Routledge (Clark, 2023). Alison is currently engaged in research around ‘slow practices’ in early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Scotland, Norway and Japan. She combines her academic work with her practice as a visual artist and lives in Orkney, Scotland.