I have done a field course with students who have ADHD and autism.

Autism is interesting because it makes you realise what those students find challenging and how much thought and preparation you must put into actually making the fieldwork fully inclusive for them. It also highlights how much students can gain from engaging with and participating in field work. I know of at least one student who had been completely excluded from fieldwork previously as the institution simply didn’t feel they were able to support the student properly. The only alternative was for them simply not to be included in fieldwork. Thus, enabling a student to come on a fieldtrip was fantastic. When you work with students with autism, you realise there is no ‘off the shelf’ strategy that you can apply to fieldwork as every student is so different. With neurodiverse conditions there are a lot of things that are unseen, so you are relying on the student to first of all disclose and secondly communicate with you very clearly what the challenges are and how you best work with them to mitigate against those challenges.