More-than-gender? Moving beyond gendered expectations of divergent learners in early childhood education

In this paper, we explore how neurodivergent ways of being in early education are often gendered. The intersectionalities of gender and neurodivergence often lead to fixed expectations that perpetuate binary interpretations, pathologisations, missed diagnoses and a lack of curated support. Girls tend to be schooled from a young age in performing socially acceptable roles that delineate them as ‘good’ girls. Yet normative expectations can be highly challenging for girls' bodies and brains labelled ‘neurodivergent’ because they function differently. We argue that all divergent bodies desire/require space for sensory-kinaesthetic-movement-haptic-cognitive experiences to function well. The paper shares two stories of young girls in UK settings who don’t speak. Each ‘neurodivergent’ storying resists expectations of how a body should be within oppressive learning systems that regulate according to gendered rules. Extending our PhD research, we trouble traditional figurations of ‘girl’ and suggest alternative ways educators might teach-care for them. We think-with how relational arts-based methodologies and pedagogies can improvise, transform and activate encounters of alterity that sense the productivities of what a (girl’s) differently functioning body can do. We wonder how educational environments might move beyond gendered models of divergence and conclude with a proposal for ‘more-than’ early childhood pedagogies.