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Abstract This experimental paper explores a form of neurodiversity‐affirming qualitative data analysis labelled a polyphony of (analytical) scores and creative methodologies utilised in our research project. Our data examples come from a federally funded research study which co‐designed sensory pedagogies for autistic students interested in computational thinking (CT). Four middle‐school teachers, or teacher fellows (TF), from diverse disciplines were recruited to develop neurodiverse CT mini curriculum and pedagogies for middle‐school students interested in STEM. Teacher fellows worked with the research team to co‐design teaching and learning materials and technology to explore computational thinking. The research team and teacher fellows attended workshops that included creative ensemble activities using digital‐physical musical technologies and CT concepts. Data from these workshops were used to create two polyphonic score compositions as ways to interact with data. A video creation addressed how TFs were impacted during the development and implementation of neurodiverse pedagogies. Quotes and keywords extracted for the video creation reflect how silence and sound collapse and expand in a rhizomatic fashion, indicating how TFs experience messiness, exploration, atypicality and more, which fully represent neurodiversity. The score analysis enabled us to diversify participants' experiences with neurodiverse pedagogies and illustrated the affective dimensions of musical composition as a form of data analysis. 

We, a team of teachers and researchers, share examples of collectively playable instruments that challenge normative assumptions about intention and agency in digital musical instruments. These instruments enliven neurodiverse sensemaking in participatory design and STEAM learning. Through a multiyear research-practice partnership (RPP), we collaborated with teaching fellows to co-design a curriculum for neurodiverse middle school students that activates computational thinking (CT). This collaboration led to a web-based, quasi-modular interface connected to wearable music sensors. We situate our work within the growing literature on participatory design of collaborative accessible digital musical instruments (CADMIs). We describe how our co-design methods address the complex demands of ecosystemic thinking, sensitive to the varied entanglements that complicate traditional human-computer interaction (HCI) design and evaluation methods. Our pedagogical and methodological approach diverges from deficit-focused strategies that aim to develop neurotypical communication skills in neurodivergent individuals. Instead, we promote cross-neurotype collaboration without presuming a single mode of "correct" communication. Furthermore, we surface the potential of CADMIs by linking this notion to a pluralization of agency that extends beyond one-to-one body-sensor relationships. We develop accessible instruments within neurodiversity and autism contexts, avoiding reification of mindbody relations and recognizing them as dynamic, field-like, and embedded in facilitative relations for these communities. 

We develop computing practices for neurodiverse learners. While many researchers in special education adopt a behavioral perspective, we leverage a neurodiversity perspective that is more widely accepted within the autism community itself. We report on an initial phase of a research-practice partnership with a pilot cohort of four middle school teachers with whom we are co-designing embodied musical practices using networked Internet of Things (IoT) wearables with embedded inertial measurement units (IMUs). Our culturally and epistemically diverse teaching fellows work with diverse student populations (Black, Brown, Native American, neurodivergent) at Title 1 schools. The neurodiversity perspective sensitizes our co-design to tactile, kinetic, sensory, and ensemble energies that overflow neurotypical learning modalities, which typically privilege screen- based interaction, cognitivism, and isolation. We find “wearable music” to be an inclusive, mobile, and mobilizing computing approach that foregrounds embodied interactions in fun and engaging group activities surfacing computational thinking (CT). In later phases of this research, our teaching fellows will run workshops for additional educators, scaling the curriculum for implementation and evaluation in many more classrooms. 

Slides associated with panel about ASU-NERC Partnership for Neurodiverse Computational Thinking and Telematic Embodied Learning. 

This work-in-progress briefly outlines the theoretical background, methods, and preliminary results of a qualitative study conducted with gender, romantic, and sexual minority (GRSM) students immersed in higher education spaces. We elaborate on the efficacy of our innovative qualitative methodologies through the use of AI-human art-making interactions during our interviews, which helped to produce richer qualitative data from our participants. Our methodology was constructed using a Foucauldian theoretical framework to inform the framework of this study, focusing explicitly on GRSM students’ experiences with power in higher education and when using technology, as well as the ways in which they resist power through the use of technology and AI-generated visual media.