EPC introduces a new framework for engineering education
The Engineering Professors’ Council is pleased to publish Towards Neuroinclusive Engineering Education: The EPC Maturity Framework, a new discipline-specific tool designed to help engineering faculties understand, strengthen, and embed neuroinclusive practice across engineering education.
Engineering education has long been concerned with widening participation, improving student outcomes, and ensuring that graduates are equipped to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing profession. Yet one important dimension of inclusion has remained comparatively overlooked: cognitive accessibility for neurodivergent learners. As the framework argues, neurodivergent students are present in every engineering cohort, but many remain unseen by systems that rely heavily on formal diagnosis and reactive support mechanisms.
This publication marks an important step in moving the conversation beyond awareness. Rather than presenting neuroinclusion as a matter of individual adjustment or compliance, the framework positions it as a question of educational quality, student success, and institutional effectiveness.
Professor Amanda Kirby writes:
“The real strength of the EPC model is that it links inclusion to measurable outcomes: retention, attainment, student satisfaction, graduate readiness, complaints, adjustment demand and institutional performance. Neuroinclusion should not be considered as a side project. It is about educational quality, workforce readiness, productivity and human potential.”
Read the full report: Towards Neuroinclusive Engineering Education: The EPC Maturity Framework
Why engineering needs a discipline-specific approach
The framework emerged from a simple but important observation: engineering education presents a unique combination of opportunities and challenges for neurodivergent students. High cognitive demand, multiple learning environments, practical laboratories, workshop activity, group projects, accreditation requirements, and tightly sequenced curricula create a distinctive educational context. Generic inclusion frameworks can provide useful principles, but they rarely capture the realities of studying engineering.
At the same time, evidence suggests that engineering attracts significant cognitive diversity. The framework highlights research indicating higher prevalence of dyslexia and autism-related traits within engineering populations than in the wider public, reinforcing the importance of viewing neurodiversity not as a niche concern but as a core characteristic of the discipline itself.
Importantly, the framework challenges a common institutional assumption that support should begin only after diagnosis. Given the substantial delays many students face in accessing formal assessment, the report argues that engineering faculties must focus on designing learning environments that are cognitively accessible from the outset. Neuroinclusion, in this view, becomes a feature of educational design rather than a response to individual disclosure.
Developed with students, academics and professional services colleagues
The EPC Neuroinclusion Maturity Framework was developed through an extensive co-design process involving more than 100 participants from 32 institutions, including neurodivergent students, academics, and professional services staff. The process combined collaborative workshops, a modified Delphi method, and institutional testing to ensure that diverse perspectives shaped the final model.
This collaborative approach reflects one of the framework’s central messages: neuroinclusion is a property of systems rather than individuals. Sustainable progress depends on bringing together those who experience barriers with those who design and operate educational environments.
A practical tool for change
At the centre of the publication is the EPC Neuroinclusion Maturity Framework itself.
Organised around four stages of maturity and seven key domains, the framework provides a structured way for departments and faculties to identify their current position, set realistic aspirations, and plan meaningful improvement. The seven domains encompass:
- Leadership and capability
- Funding and impact
- Transitions and progression
- Learning and teaching
- Assessment
- Learning environments
- Student experience
Rather than functioning as a ranking mechanism or compliance checklist, the framework is intended as a developmental tool. It recognises that institutions begin from different starting points and encourages evidence-based discussion about what meaningful progress looks like within a particular context.
One notable feature is its “staircase” model of maturity. Progression from isolated examples of good practice to systemic and sector-leading approaches is presented as cumulative rather than sequential. Importantly, the framework warns against remaining indefinitely at a stage characterised by individual champions and local successes. While such activity is valuable, reliance on isolated efforts can create inconsistency and place undue burdens on both students and staff. The framework therefore emphasises the importance of embedding inclusion within institutional systems and processes.
Linking inclusion to outcomes
A key strength of the framework is its explicit connection between neuroinclusive practice and measurable institutional outcomes.
The report highlights how more inclusive approaches can contribute to improved student retention, progression, attainment, satisfaction, and graduate readiness. By connecting inclusive design to outcomes that already matter to academic leaders and quality assurance processes, the framework provides a language that can support strategic decision making alongside educational improvement.
This benefits-led approach aligns closely with engineering’s own culture of continuous improvement. Neuroinclusion becomes not an additional initiative competing for attention, but a means of improving how engineering education is designed and delivered for all learners.
Looking ahead
The publication of the framework represents the beginning, rather than the conclusion, of this work. Over the coming year, institutional case studies will explore how the framework is used in practice, helping to build a growing evidence base around implementation and impact. The EPC is also establishin a Neuroinclusion Community of Practice to support shared learning, collaboration, and ongoing refinement of the framework.
Engineering depends upon diverse ways of thinking. If the profession is to address the complex technical, social, and environmental challenges it faces, it must ensure that engineering education enables all students to contribute their talents fully.
The EPC Neuroinclusion Maturity Framework offers a practical, evidence-informed route towards that goal.
