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In this paper we seek to restory what has been storied as “the problem of ADHD”. Informed by calls for a critical ADHD studies, we explore the possibilities of ADHD collective autoethnographic storytelling. Together we (en)counter narratives of ADHD. Within our collective writing space, from our ADHD/AuDHD bodyminds, we seek to re-story our ADHD/AuDHD. We map a field of critical ADHD research within social sciences and point out problems of outsider perspectives, stressing a need for insider perspectives. Our data consist of collective authoethnographic writings about ADHD. From the data we have explored our experiences of (En)Countering ADHD narratives, and a transition process which we refer to as from ”broken NT-scholars” to neurodivergent scholars, stressing the importance of ADHD:ers as independent as well as collective agents, and ADHD as epistemological standpoint within research.

This article examines the introduction of social sciences, particularly psychology, to the emerging arena of technical assistance and training in the establishment of Swedish aid in the 60s and 70s. Departing from the assumption of Swedish aid workers as situated at the intersection between conflicting ideals, such as philanthropic, miliary, anti-imperialist, business and statal discourses, the purpose is to further unfold what ideological tensions were at play in early literature written for AWs, experts and volunteers. With inspiration from the concept of ‘psy disciplines’, three argumentative textbooks written by scholars and practitioners in 1965–1973 are studied. The research questions ask: What kind of discourses were brought to the local Swedish context of technical assistance and development training when advocating for psy expertise in this new vocation? How are they merging with other ideological tensions within development assistance? How can we understand them in their historical context and in the light of research on development training? The results show a linkage between psy theories and the recruitment practices of the American Peace Corps, travelling to and merging with the Swedish context in specific ways.

In this paper we explore our own experiences of barriers to learning and academic knowledge production in academia and higher education. Our analyses are based on our collective autoethnographical accounts from our own experiences of ADHD and higher education, with a particular focus on post graduate education and our experiences of ADHD peer support in academic knowledge production. In our analysis, we have distinguished between three different dimensions of academia for ADHD graduate students and faculty: as a place of structural violence and vulnerability; as enabling or disabling, and as a place for neurodivergent community formation. There are few ADHD-centered traditions of learning within education. By ADHD-centered we refer to perspectives within education and support informed by an ADHD insider-perspective. We therefore stress the possibilities of ADHD learning informed by the emerging field of critical ADHD studies.  

Folk high school teachers work many hours in fluid ways with no clear distinction between working hours and leisure time. Pedagogically, they are often described as being value driven and participant focused. Creating interests, involving, motivating, giving recognition to, challenging, and creating possibilities for participants to grow as human beings is important for the teachers. In this chapter, we mobilise empirical examples to explore if these aspects are connected to a particular understanding of what learning is and should be, a mutual/embedded exploration process where both participants and teachers are challenged and grow as persons and where collaboration and the collective are prerequisites. This particular perspective on learning appears far removed from the traditional subject-based classroom of child education. We describe and discuss the work of folk high school teachers in Sweden, and problematise the work conditions of this diverse group of teachers.

This article builds on a classroom study and interviews with facilitators and students on a travelling Folk High School course on global justice and development, an education that raises awareness about colonial history and contemporality. The study explores how the concept of being 'in and against' presents itself in the narratives of the research participants, and what those narratives can say about institutional and global conditions for transnational popular educational engagement. The results mirror the ambiguities of criticising the global, structural, and institutional conditions, while also relying on the same prerequisites, to conduct the course. It shows how working in and against the classroom, as expressed from the differentperspectives of the students and the facilitators, entails countering both global and institutional material orders as well as prevailing hegemonic knowledge, and working in and against a gendered, classed, and racialized classroom.

Literature on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has historically come from a cognitive deficit approach and lacked community authorship. In contrast, this article utilises a neurodiversity framework to explore ADHD as a cognitive difference through ADHDers' experiences. Specifically, here we analyse collective autoethnographic writings from neurodivergent academic researchers writing to one other about their experiences of intensity and variable attention or interest-based attention. Through the process of collective writing, we started to rename and restory our experiences, which has enabled us to understand intensity and variable attention as a valuable facet of human diversity, with both strengths and challenges. This project offers an example of how community-based research can elucidate individual experiences as ADHD/AuDHD researchers, facilitate exploration of varied experiences with intensity and attention and increase self-awareness and ability to give and receive neuroaffirmative support.

Under de senaste årtiondena har antalet barn, unga och också vuxna som får en neuropsykiatrisk diagnos ökat markant i Sverige. Inom skolan brukar neuropsykiatriska funktionsnedsättningar (NPF) ses som å ena sidan en psykiatrisk fråga, å andra sidan en social eller pedagogisk fråga. Ofta beskrivs det med utgångspunkt i ett utifrånperspektiv på NPF. Det är dock sällan som NPF lyfts som en normkritisk fråga om makt, eller ur ett inifrånperspektiv. I det här kapitlet tar vi avstamp i den framväxande internationella neurodiversitetsrörelsen, som leds av neuronormbrytare själva, och diskuterar hur ett neurodiversitetsperspektiv kan användas inom normkritisk pedagogik.

PURPOSE: In this paper, we explore and contrast the Swedish state and NGO arguments for initiating two changes in national educational degree objectives in Swedish teacher education: one regarding sex and cohabitation education, and the other regarding support for pupils with ʻneuropsychiatric difficultiesʼ such as autism and ADHD (here referred to as neurodivergent pupils).

APPROACH: Using critical policy analysis, we compare the arguments from the government as well as responding bodies for introducing the two objectives, with a focus on neurodivergent pupils.

RESULTS: Our findings suggest that discourses concerning sex and cohabitation education for all pupils and support for pupils with ʻneuropsychiatric difficultiesʼ respectively derive from different educational ideologies and reproduce different ideas about pupils as active citizens versus passive objects of interventions. The objective of sex and cohabitation education is framed within a norm critical discourse putting forward reflexivity and identity, and where pupils are active subjects to be involved in the process. In contrast, neurodivergence is framed within a deficit approach as neurobiological, individual impairment, and a special educational problem that should be managed by professionals. It is seen as a risk for school failure, where neurodivergent pupils are passive objects of professional discovery and support.

CONCLUSION: In a Swedish educational policy landscape, stressing the importance of educating pupils in line with ideas of children as right-bearers, our exploration illustrates how ʻall pupilsʼ versus neurodivergent pupils, within teacher education, are positioned as belonging to different categories of citizens: as active subjects of rights, versus passive subjects of care. This perception of neurodivergence, we argue, hampers progress towards embracing neurodivergence as a social category, and neurodivergent pupils as political subjects.

Detta kapitel behandlar begreppet normkritik och vad det innebär att anlägga ett normkritiskt perspektiv inom utbildning. Frågor som diskuteras är vad normer är, hur de skapas och varför det är viktigt att synliggöra och utmana dem. I grund och botten är det en fråga om makt, om att privilegieras eller marginaliseras. Efter en genomgång av olika förståelser av normkritiska perspektiv redogör kapitlet för två nyligen avslutade forskningsprojekt för att visa olika sammanhang och sätt som normkritik kan användas på inom såväl forskning som utbildning.