The Autistic Me

As is often the case, I write a blog on a topic I'm not currently exploring in my research… only to discover that I'm about to delve into the depths of that exact topic for an academic article or presentation. Only a few weeks ago, I confessed that I had not maintained an active awareness of research on cognitive empathy and business communications. Much business scholarship on empathy studies "normal" (statistically representative and generalizable) groups. Seldom do I stumble upon detailed discussion of autistic traits in the workplace and the challenges those present. Those discussions more frequently appear in psychology journals or publications with a narrow focus on autism. Having acknowledged my lack of awareness, being steeped in the rhetoric of economics for a potential book project, today I stumbled right back into autism while preparing for an academic presentation.  My Carnegie Mellon University colleague Anita Woolley, along withThomas W. Malo...

I want to thank several autistic self-advocates for asking me to address the topic of collaboration and "peer work" more often and more forcefully. To challenge dominant pedagogies is no small risk in academia. I'm not rejecting group work, because we do need to foster interpersonal skills, but I am arguing the social skills must never dominate how we grade another academic discipline. If you teach science, grade science. If you teach writing, grade writing. Don't make "plays well with others" the major source of a grade. My students do group projects and work in teams (pairs). But, I do not make that collaborative effort part of the grade. I value teaching students to work well with others, yes, but grading social skills? I am the least qualified person imaginable to evaluate social skills. I facilitate collaboration, but I am not going to try to grade it on a "A-F" or point scale. Outside of teaching, I am a freelance writer and editor. I a...

Autism Society National Conference  July 10-13, 2013 David L. Lawrence Convention Center Pittsburgh, PA http://www.autism-society.org/get-involved/conference/conference-sessions.html Title: Collaboration Conundrum: Mastering Group Projects At School and Beyond Content Area: Social Skills Target Audience: Adolescence and Adulthood Understanding Level: Intermediate Description: Schools and workplaces embrace collaboration, assuming that groups engaged in brainstorming, crowdsourcing, and agile development produce better ideas than individuals. Although new scholarship raises questions about the benefits of collaboration (Cain 2012), our cultural bias towards extroversion and social interaction means navigating collaborative projects is an important life skill for autistic students and adults. Schools claim to appreciate different learning styles, but they overlook different social styles. This presentation explores how autistic people can succeed in collaborative...

I am cross-posting this blog because it overlaps issues important to the autism community, rhetoric instructors, and those teaching with technology. It is a personal issue, for me, and one that reminds me how apart from "normal" society and dominant pedagogies I am as someone with a neurological challenge. The following contains generalities, and there are always exceptions to generalities. But, my experiences and those of adults with cognitive differences I have interviewed do support my claims. Contrary to what some might assume, many teachers in the humanities (though certainly not all) are extroverts. I've found the opposite is true in most science and technology fields, with the introverts outnumbering the extroverts. Statistically, there are personality traits that dominate various disciplines. There are political views that dominate, too. There are scholarly studies of the political views of professors (Gross and Simmons, 2007) and personality types within dis...

Autistics aren't the only people who work best when allowed to work alone. Unfortunately, we are most likely to struggle with  The Rise of the New Groupthink . Susan Cain, writing in the New York Times, advocates for solitude and silence. She is the author of the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking . Cain is responding to the faddish embrace of the belief that groups are always better than individuals. The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki, was published in 2004. Around that time, the idea of "crowdsourcing" took off with various "great minds" embracing this statement: Specialized expertise tends to be over valued. In fact, large groups, structured properly, can be smarter than the smartest member of a group. On average, the wisdom of crowds will come up with a better answer than any individual could provide. Thankfully, Daniel Tammet (see the book Embracing the Wide Sky ) and others have critiqued this statement...