When working particularly with neurodivergent learners, I think it can be very tempting to want to step in too much, from a place of generosity and care- or we set up the scaffolds and forget to remove them over time, and we create a reliance on those scaffolds. Over the last few months, with students I’ve been working with for longer, I’ve been trying to make meaningful decisions about how to remove those scaffolds and how to build up more independence- particularly with writing, giving necessary struggle time, independent thinking time, and building in opportunities for assessment too, rather than just directed practice. Particularly as a tutor, this is hard, because there’s a bit of a misconception that proper teaching has to be completely hands-on at all times, and you’re conscious of where you’re adding value and demonstrating your worth as a teacher- when actually it might be the most sensible and helpful decision to take a step back in some moments.

I was really inspired by a talk by Sherelle Russell (2026) at ResearchED in Birmingham. The premise of her talk was “When Support Becomes a Ceiling: how to support disadvantaged students without lowering expectations”. This really illuminates a lot of the tension that many educators face- She reminds us that we are responsible for the teaching, not the thinking, and that we are responsible for creating the conditions for this. She forces us to question the ways in which we complete the intellectual work on their behalf. There are lots of nuances to this, but in a tangible sense, it might be that I’ve asked a student a question, I can see them being challenged by it, and I want to step in and immediately rephrase. Something as simple as giving thinking time could be a very powerful tool to enable inclusion and build a more positive sense of self-efficacy, or what Russell (2026) terms ‘epistemic identity’. It’s not just about providing opportunities for thinking, but helping students realise that they are indeed capable of that thinking.

There are so many other phrases of inspiration I could pick out from her talk, but ultimately we as educators, and perhaps this applies to parents too, need to reconcile what we mean by inclusion and supporting children, and reframe that conversation as: how do we empower students to own their ‘intellectual labour’ (Russell, 2026)? Again referencing Russell- she states that the core conditions for this are trust with uncertainty, pace, and consideration of what counts as good thinking. She doesn’t state exactly how we should move forward, other than that, as educators, we should take ownership and responsibility for how we make decisions in a classroom or tuition setting, and make sure those decisions are well informed, rather than just stepping in and giving them the answer as a default state of inclusion.

So I will certainly be grappling with this as I move forward into the new year, with new students and with students I’ve already built up that relationship with- thankfully I can say I have really wonderful relationships with my students, where that trust has been established, so I believe I can give myself permission to step back a bit. I also want to engage them in that type of metacognitive conversation, letting them know that I’m here for them, but that I’m deliberately going to challenge them in a particular moment. As Russell (2026) states, it’s about productive struggle, not abandonment. And the benefit of one-to-one or small-group tuition is that we have a better chance of really pinpointing where their understanding and skill level is, so that we can be more informed about what level of scaffold they need, with that empowerment perspective at the heart.

So as I’m working on and building packages over the summer, I want to make sure this core philosophy of inclusion and empowerment is embedded within all of my work. I’m currently delivering and designing self-paced courses for essay writing, where I model and demonstrate exactly what an examiner is looking for, but aim to also offer a lot of creative freedom within those packages. There’s a bit more development and refinement to be done, but I’m excited to see how the clarity of my instruction and description will support them, whilst leaving plenty of space for them to take ownership of their thinking.

Russell, S. (2026). When support becomes a ceiling [Conference presentation]. researchED, Birmingham, UK