Open Society

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LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.

Parkway Program, Philadelphia, in which 140 hs student volunteers were selected by lot and allowed to choose their own subjects and use city insts and businesses as classrooms, marks 1st anniv; illus; program is designed as alternative means of educ for youths who find conventional schools repressive and is directed towards students who want coll educ as well as those who do not; school meets state standards by requiring credits in broad subjects and using certified teachers; parents and students' reaction to program is favorable but parents reserve final judgment until students take coll entrance exams; project is being financed by $100,000 Ford Foundation grant; 10,000 students have applied for 500 openings in program this yr

Popular autism advocate, Pete Wharmby, reflects on his journey towards becoming an author, self-doubt, and the magic of special interests.

Cover artist: Lauren Nassef For intersectional representations of disabled kids leading complex lives—sometimes painful, sometimes funny, never sentimentally inspirational—a vital collection. – Kirkus, starred review Warrior. Actor. Friend. Heroine. Traveler. Sister. Magician. Lover. Biker. In this stunning anthology, #1 New York Times-bestselling author Marieke Nijkamp teams up with fellow disabled authors to create a collection […]

diversebooks.org

Find up-to-date diverse books. Build a positive school climate. Develop a gender and LGBTQ+ inclusive school. Provide windows and mirrors for your students.

Welcoming Schools secondary book lists are designed to help educators create classrooms, libraries and schools that are affirming of LGBTQ+ students, families and staff with high quality literature. A key…

Recommended books for educators and parents/ guardians on LGBTQ topics, bullying, transgender children and diversity.

Liberatory Design is a creative problem-solving approach and practice that centers equity and supports us to design for liberation. It is made up of mindsets and modes.

Disabled people have long been integral to design, but we are frequently viewed as mere “inspiration.”

Today’s episode is on design with my guest Liz Jackson, co-founder of Project Thisten and founder of The Disabled List, a design organization that engages in disability as a creative practic…

The increasing demand for equitable higher education necessitates changes in how to consider and develop inclusive university settings. Using a systems-thinking lens, this article examines the whol...

The website of Robin Rendle, a designer and writer from the UK.

I’ve spent the week out reporting a complicated story in Southern Utah — one that required a whole lot of time in the car. Today, driving the four hours back to the closest airport, I listened to a set of podcasts that started me thinking about what we’re actually talking about, and around, when we talk about what happened between Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

To guide and sustain a practice of collecting links.

The power of writing and journalism in bringing solidarity to justice struggles.

An independent collection of bi, pan, and m-spec media. Discover books new and old, uncover queer history, and access free research assistance!

A blog about Autism, Neurodiversity, being Autistic and a parent of Autistic children.

Hyperlexia is defined as the co-occurrence of advanced reading skills relative to comprehension skills or general intelligence, the early acquisition …

Behaviors characterized as restricted and repetitive (RRBs) in autism manifest in diverse ways, from motor mannerisms to intense interests, and are diagnostically defined as interfering with functioning. A variety of early autism interventions target RRBs as preoccupying young autistic children to the detriment of exploration and learning opportunities. In an exploratory study, we developed a novel stimulating play situation including objects of potential interest to autistic children, then investigated repetitive behaviors and object explorations in 49 autistic and 43 age-matched typical young children (20–69 months). Autistic children displayed significantly increased overall frequency and duration of repetitive behaviors, as well as increased specific repetitive behaviors. However, groups did not significantly differ in frequency and duration of overall object explorations, in number of different objects explored, or in explorations of specific objects. Exploratory analyses found similar or greater exploration of literacy-related objects in autistic compared to typical children. Correlations between repetitive behaviors and object explorations (their frequency and duration) revealed positive, not negative, associations in both groups. Our findings, from a novel situation incorporating potential autistic interests, suggest that RRBs do not necessarily displace exploration and its possibilities for learning in autism.

Hyperlexia is when a child learns to read very early. Learn more about what causes it, what to expect, and more.

Having intense or “special” interests and a tendency to focus in depth to the exclusion of other inputs, is associated with autistic cognition, sometimes framed as “monotropism”. Despite some drawb...

November 26, 2018 The Why Axis By Alfie Kohn It shouldn't be surprising that progressive teachers are often called upon to defend what they're doing. Sometimes they're asked reasonable questions by open-minded parents who simply

A central diagnostic and anecdotal feature of autism is difficulty with social communication. We take the position that communication is a two-way, intersubjective phenomenon—as described by the double empathy problem—and offer up relevance theory (a cognitive account of utterance interpretation) as a means of explaining such communication difficulties. Based on a set of proposed heuristics for successful and rapid interpretation of intended meaning, relevance theory positions communication as contingent on shared—and, importantly, mutually recognized—“relevance.” Given that autistic and non-autistic people may have sometimes markedly different embodied experiences of the world, we argue that what is most salient to each interlocutor may be mismatched. Relevance theory would predict that where this salient information is not (mutually) recognized or adjusted for, mutual understanding may be more effortful to achieve. This paper presents the findings from a small-scale, linguistic ethnographic study of autistic communication featuring eight core autistic participants. Each core autistic participant engaged in three naturalistic conversations around the topic of loneliness with: (1) a familiar, chosen conversation partner; (2) a non-autistic stranger and (3) an autistic stranger. Relevance theory is utilized as a frame for the linguistic analysis of the interactions. Mutual understanding was unexpectedly high across all types of conversation pairings. In conversations involv...

Often when we discuss Autism, and a strengths-based approach to Autism, we invoke the term “neurodiversity”. But what is neurodiversity, how is it related to Autism, and what does it mean for the way we think about Autism?

While the idea of treating sex and gender as unrelated factors may result from an attempt to validate and support transgender identities, it actually perpetuates harmful cultural beliefs about the validity of sex assignment and the static nature of biological sex, which remove agency from trans and