Three design heuristics for leveraging stimming pedagogically: offer stim affordances, legitimize stims as discursive resource, and leverage stims as epistemic actions¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 3 claims (3 for) · 1 study (1 theoretical), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 3 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article proposes three guiding heuristics for instructional design that embraces stimming rather than suppressing it. First, offering stim affordances means instrumenting stimming with media that facilitate stimming activity; second, legitimizing stims as a discursive resource means treating stims as multimodal utterances within classroom interaction; third, leveraging stims as epistemic actions means instrumentalizing stimming so it is functionally superimposed with thinking in meaningful activity. The authors state: "We draw examples from the BBM design to propose and elaborate upon three guiding heuristics for pedagogical design: offering stim affordances (“Instrumenting Stimming” section), legitimizing stims as a discursive resource (“Interactional Stimming” section), and leveraging stims as epistemic actions (“Instrumentalizing Stimming” section)." Depathologizing and normalizing stimming is positioned as freeing cognitive resources currently spent on suppression.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Learning contexts must depathologize and normalize stimming, and provide media that facilitate stimming activity

Constraints¶

• The heuristics are proposed as conceptual guidance illustrated by one exploratory design (BBM), not yet validated at scale

Target Learners¶

• all learners
• with particular attention to neurodivergent children marginalized for their stims

Target Learning Goals¶

• integrating self-regulatory movement with curricular content learning
• inclusive participation in classroom discourse

Affordances¶

• Multi E Model Of Stimming

Claims¶

• Stimming can serve as an interactional and communicative resource in collaborative activity, including in academic tasks [+W]
• Stimming and fidgeting are associated with improved cognitive performance, while suppressing stimming consumes cognitive resources [+M]
• Infant stereotyped repetitive movements precede and scaffold the development of goal-directed motor skills [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Balance Board Math Bbm

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Sofia Tancredi, Dor Abrahamson. (2024). Stimming as Thinking: a Critical Reevaluation of Self-Stimulatory Behavior as an Epistemic Resource for Inclusive Education. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09904-y