Q&A: 6 Questions with Maria Hugh

Maria Hugh is an assistant professor of special education at KU and an affiliated investigator at the KU Center on Disabilities (KUCD). Prior to joining KU, she earned her doctorate in educational psychology at the University of Minnesota, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington, and was an early interventionist and autism specialist working with children, families, and educators.

Tell us about your role at the Life Span Institute. 

I'm fortunate to get to do a breadth of things in my role here. I am a tenure-line assistant professor in the Department of Special Education and an investigator with KUCD as part of the Life Span Institute.

For those roles, my research and teaching aim to improve learning opportunities and experiences for children with developmental disabilities. I teach predominantly in our early childhood special education courses for future early childhood unified teachers. We focus on the years of birth through age 8 and are studying methods for individualizing interventions for students with significant support needs, along with assessments for young kids with disabilities.

I also teach educational researchers in our doctoral programs about the methods we can use to build, study, and test strategies to support practitioners and educators to better serve kids with disabilities and their families.

What are you most proud of in your work?

I feel lucky to have a lot that I'm proud of. The things that really make my heart and spirit feel good are the connections with community members who are the ultimate stakeholders and shareholders of my teaching and research.

This past year, some of the highlights that brought me that joy and pride have included continued collaborations with my colleagues at KUCD to teach and use neurodiversity-affirming approaches in our work. Colleagues who are self-advocates have been key to reshaping our research methods and strategies for supporting teachers and pre-service practitioners, and then, we’re also analyzing the data together.

It's multi-part, this privilege and experience I get to have with the community, research, and teaching. In my research I’m both proud that what I’m doing is informed by folks with lived experiences, and my research and teaching have improved as a result. As a non-autistic person, input from people with lived experience is crucial, and learning what we are already doing that is on track with strengths-based approaches is validating. But it’s also been really helpful to keep me grounded and challenged when I need to adapt my approach. Those collaborations are my most favorite things.

Last year, in my master’s course on teaching young children with significant individualized support needs, one of our students brought the community partnership and impact full circle. She learned about Assistive Technology for Kansans based at KU and how adapting toys to be accessible can help kids with disabilities. She brought what she learned back home and her son was able to adapt toys to help other kids.

I love my research grants and projects and those opportunities to do mentorship and build curricula. Ultimately, being a part of opportunities for learning for other folks as they advance in their careers is really exciting for me.

What prepared you to do this work?

I was fortunate to be part of a community and activities that were inclusive growing up. I loved being a part of that. I always felt like I was better from being there.

I also saw the stark juxtaposition when I wasn't in those environments, and I saw there are things that we're doing in this more inclusive space that we could do over here in this second space that would make it more inclusive or accessible.

I've been fortunate to have substantial investment in my scientific training and in my educator training. As an undergraduate, I was a research assistant and a project coordinator for research projects, and I learned a lot about research, assessment and being systematic in that context. 

I had rich training through two OSEP — Office of Special Education Programs Grant Opportunities — training grants for my master’s and doctorate programs. I was also privileged to have postdoctoral fellowship through the Institute of Education Sciences, where I learned implementation science and mixed methods.

Over time, I’ve worked with a lot of different educators, families and kids because I worked as an autism specialist across two states. That was enriching and helped me learn so much about their different contexts, like what it looked like for this rural school versus this urban school. Every family's home is different. Every family's experience is different.

So altogether, that built up to how I do what I do today.

What do people not understand about what you do? 

Some of my work is about who understands; What do teachers understand versus what do kids and families understand?

I think what’s not understood is how there’s not a shared knowledge base that we can leverage — a way to combine the teacher’s training with the family's personal experience. I would say this 'collective expertise' is rarely used or even studied.

Along with that comes the challenge of deciding what to do and how to do it. In the field of neurodiversity-affirming practice, which focuses on supporting autistic people's natural strengths, we are currently at the awareness level. We’re just starting to recognize as researchers that the kids themselves, or autistic adults, have the best ideas about what they actually need.

Brains can operate in different ways, with what we call different neurotypes. For a long time, our culture and education systems have focused only on the “typical” way a brain develops, treating other ways as "wrong.” But these other neurotypes aren't broken; they just process the world differently than how we expected and have built a lot of our society around. Instead of forcing kids to change how they learn, we should be adapting our teaching to support how their brains actually work.

There are immense strengths in these different ways of thinking, but they often clash with how traditional schools are designed. For example, many autistic children communicate differently than non-autistic people. A traditional approach might force a child to make eye contact or wave in a very specific way. However, forcing eye contact can be uncomfortable or overwhelming for an autistic student. Doing that is not affirming. It’s asking them to ignore their own needs to make others comfortable.

I hypothesize that if we move toward an equal partnership where we truly work together, which includes learning from autistic students and adults about what works for me,  we can finally optimize the support kids are getting.

Who do you hope is helped through your work?

It really goes back to when I was 14. At my high school, you could take child development and work at the childcare center on campus. I found I naturally liked to be with the kids who weren't playing the same way as most others. We found out later that one of those children was autistic, but because he saw things differently, I realized the only way I could learn was to try and see things how he was doing them.

That experience taught me to slow down and learn from the child. I think of that toddler often, but I also think of the families I worked with later through state-based services or Medicaid. They were often told things about their child’s potential that just didn't match what I knew was possible for that kid or that system. I carry those families with me, too.

Today, I work closely with young autistic kids and their families who have minimal spoken language. My approach is to engage and play with them in ways that they want to play. When they have found a connection with me, it’s because I'm not really pushing them to do something. I'm joining them. That's always what I've loved, finding that connection by meeting them where they are.

I hope my work ripples out so that all children with autism receive better services. A part of that is impacting the environment around the child. For example, having non-autistic peers better understand autism so that they become better friends with people who might think differently or talk differently than them.

But I’m also interested in empowering our teachers and school-based providers. A lot of educators are struggling, and I want to be able to equip them with the skills they need to help these kids. It might sound cheesy, but they are truly the backbone of the world and here in the U.S. Everything falls apart if we do not have education. If we can support the teachers, we create a more supportive world for the students.

Who are you when you’re at home?

I am a lot of the same person, except that I'm not working. I'm a parent to two young kids. One of them received early intervention and it was neat to be on the other side as a family receiving exceptional support and teaching from those providers. I have dogs, I have a spouse, and so, we're wandering around Lawrence doing things, like going to the Lawrence Farmer’s Market, and to dance class at Lawrence Parks and Rec.

I like to create and connect with community. I'm in a song circle, which we're starting to open to the community as a way to share connection and community and healing. I'm also trying to start sewing again.