Since publishing Key Practices for Fostering Engaged Learning: A Guide for Faculty and Staff in 2023, I’ve had several opportunities to brainstorm with educators about how the key practices apply in their higher education settings and with their diverse students. Concurrently, the Center for Engaged Learning has been hosting a three-year research seminar on Affirming and Inclusive Engaged Learning for Neurodivergent Students, with really smart scholars asking interesting questions about how to create meaningful learning opportunities and welcoming spaces for all students. Those intersecting conversations prompted this blog post on not only offering feedback, but also more comprehensively creating feedback cultures with (not for) neurodivergent students. 

Importance of a Feedback Culture 

Requesting and processing feedback are learned skills. While we might have experience with sensory feedback loops (e.g., Yikes! The asphalt is hot on a sunny day. The grass feels better to walk on. I’ll remember that for future sunny days.), working with feedback for many higher education learning experiences benefits from explicit instruction and practice. 

When colleges and universities cultivate feedback cultures, they routinize feedback as a recurring practice. Students encounter feedback in and beyond the classroom, as workplace supervisors, student organization advisors, and others model practices for requesting, offering, and responding to feedback. And this feedback doesn’t always have to focus on areas for improvement. Feedback cultures also can routinize giving positive feedback in sincere ways, reinforcing what students are doing well (Hamdani and Biagi 2022). 

Moreover, relationships matter in offering and responding to feedback because they help educators learn how to tailor feedback to the individual (Hamdani and Biagi 2022). Relationship-rich feedback cultures provide opportunities to learn from neurodivergent students and adjust feedback practices, representative of a more inclusive ecological system (Butcher and Lane 2024). 

Timing of Feedback 

The timing of feedback matters—for all students, but deliberate timing can make feedback practices even more inclusive. Faculty and staff working with neurodivergent students should give learners opportunities to close the loop and put the feedback into practice in a future activity or task. Other key practices for fostering engaged learning—reflection and transfer—can support learners’ development of an action plan for applying the feedback. 

For example, faculty could time returning corrective feedback on an assignment directly before the next iteration of the task (or similar projects or activities) so that the learner can immediately apply that feedback without accumulating anxiety about it (Hamdani and Biagi 2022). That might mean delaying feedback slightly until faculty can model reading feedback, reflecting on how the feedback transfers to the next related task, and mapping an action plan—a written reminder of how the learner will apply the feedback before they submit their next project. 

Content of Feedback 

The content of feedback also matters. In Key Practices for Fostering Engaged Learning, I share Bill Hart-Davidson’s feedback heuristic of Describe—Evaluate—Suggest: 

• Describe what you see the draft or final version accomplishing or doing. 
• Evaluate the materials in relation to the assignment or project criteria. 
• Suggest specific strategies for revision to better align with the stated criteria. 

Neurodivergent learners might appreciate feedback cultures that use this heuristic as a recurring pattern for feedback, especially if the evaluation integrates data or examples from the project. Example-driven feedback can anchor the feedback to specific sections or characteristics of the project, moving abstract feedback to a more concrete evaluation. 

In addition, feedback should be linked to explicit performance expectations—assignment criteria, task goals, and so forth—not unstated or hidden assumptions about what constitutes a good project or performance. If you find yourself commenting on elements that aren’t explicitly named in the criteria, ask yourself: 

• Is this quality or characteristic my priority for this project? If yes, I need to add it as an explicit expectation. If no, perhaps commenting on it isn’t the best use of my time and might muddy priorities in my feedback. 
• Do learners need to enact this quality or characteristic to be successful in this field? If yes, where can I teach students this element and give them opportunities to practice it when it can be an explicitly named expectation? 

Within feedback cultures, we also can normalize asking for the types of feedback that are most helpful to our current needs. For example, while working on this blog post, I shared a draft with critical friends and asked for feedback on the ideas I had included in an outline. Were there ideas they thought I needed to add? From their personal experience, were there feedback strategies they wished I would include? My draft readers didn’t provide feedback on sentence-level structures or organization, because those weren’t the types of feedback I needed in that moment. 

Style 

For all learners, clear and direct feedback helps focus on priorities for revision or for application to future projects. While many of us have learned the strategy of providing a feedback sandwich (positive feedback—constructive feedback—positive feedback), this organization can create feedback murkiness. Some learners report sometimes missing constructive feedback for growth when so much space is given to positive comments. Others question the sincerity of the positive feedback because they recognize the formula. 

While feedback should include acknowledgement of what is working in relation to the criteria, other organizational strategies might be more effective. For example, feedback could follow the organization of stated criteria from assignment or project guidelines, which helps link feedback and explicit examples to the shared expectations for the project. This strategy can be paired with Describe—Evaluate—Suggest to describe how the draft is functioning, evaluate it in relation to the criteria, and suggest specific strategies, which can include continuing more of the same if the draft aligns well with the criteria. 

Finally, alternate grading and feedback practices like contract grading and ungrading might be well-suited to inclusive engaged learning. I encourage you to read my colleague’s post if you are considering any of these practices. 

References 

Butcher, Luke, and Stevie Lane. 2024. “Nuerodivergent (Autism and ADHD) Student Experiences of Access and Inclusion in Higher Education: An Ecological Systems Theory Perspective.” Higher Education 90, 243-263. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-024-01319-6.

Hamdani, Maria, and Shannon Biagi. 2022. “Providing Performance Feedback to Support Neurodiverse Employees.” MIT Sloan Management Review. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/providing-performance-feedback-to-support-neurodiverse-employees/.

About the Author

Jessie L. Moore is Director of the Center for Engaged Learning and Professor of English: Professional Writing & Rhetoric at Elon University. She is the author of Key Practices for Fostering Engaged Learning: A Guide for Faculty and Staff (Stylus Publishing, 2023) and co-editor of five edited collections on engaged learning topics. As CEL’s Director, Jessie leads planning, implementation, and assessment of the Center’s research seminars, which support multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary inquiry on high-impact pedagogies and other focused engaged learning topics. Jessie also co-edit’s Teaching & Learning Inquiry, the flagship publication of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

How to Cite This Post

Moore, Jessie L. 2025. “Creating Feedback Cultures with Neurodivergent Students.” Center for Engaged Learning (blog). September 23, 2025. https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/creating-feedback-cultures-with-neurodivergent-students.