Exploring the perspectives of Australian neurodivergent university students
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Simpson, Kate
Paynter, Jessica
Easte, Cathy
Fowler, James
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More Australian students who are neurodivergent are entering post-secondary education. Experiences of higher education varies for these students. We investigated the university experience of 33 neurodivergent undergraduates in higher education through individual semi-structured interviews. Participants were enrolled in Education or Health Sciences. Data were analysed using thematic analysis and three major themes were identified: lived perspectives at university, connections to learning at university, and achieving academic success at university. Experiences at university included mixed results, with some students enjoying university and achieving academic success but for others, higher education is challenging. Findings identify reported benefits that contribute to student academic success in post-secondary education and recommendations to further enhance the university experience for neurodivergent students. The findings link to the growing body of research in this important area to ensure that neurodivergent students flourish in higher education.
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The Australian Educational Researcher
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© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Education
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Gibbs, K; Simpson, K; Paynter, J; Easte, C; Fowler, J, Exploring the perspectives of Australian neurodivergent university students, The Australian Educational Researcher, 2025