Description
How the learning works
Seeing Differently is a three-part learning journey, with each stage building on the previous one.
You will not receive all of the learning at once. Instead, you move through a supported cycle of learning, reflection, tutor conversation and application.
Part 1: Making Sense
Begin with the online learning, exploring sensory integration and your own sensory experiences. Use Sensory Ladders® to start noticing what sensory integration can mean in everyday life.
Then join your Part 1 tutor group to talk through what you have noticed, ask questions and learn alongside others.
Part 2: Shaped by Experience
After your Part 1 tutor group, Part 2 opens.
You build on the foundations by exploring how development, neurodiversity, disability, trauma, sensory deprivation and life experience may shape sensory experience and participation. Sensory Spiders™ help you explore patterns without rushing towards a single explanation.
Your Part 2 tutor group gives you another opportunity to bring observations into conversation, hear different perspectives and deepen your thinking.
Part 3: See the Pattern. Shape the Support
After your Part 2 tutor group, Part 3 opens.
Now you begin bringing information together through case-based learning, Sensory Grids™ and the PEAR TREE™ Lens.
Rather than being given the answer, you practise noticing what is known, what is assumed, what else you might need to ask and what could support participation.
Following your Part 3 tutor group, you apply the learning to a person you support in your own practice. This final case application helps you bring the whole journey together and is submitted as part of completing the course and receiving your certificate.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the three part Seeing Differently series, participants will be able to:
- describe the foundations of sensory integration and explain how the sensory systems, brain and body contribute to regulation, development and participation in everyday life
- recognise how sensory integration may influence a person’s ability to engage in activities including learning, relationships, self-care, work, rest, play and community life
- explore how development, neurodiversity, disability, trauma, deprivation and life experience may shape sensory experience and patterns of participation across the lifespan
- use Sensory Ladders®, Sensory Spiders™ and Sensory Grids™ as collaborative tools to support observation, reflection, communication and shared understanding
- distinguish observation from interpretation, noticing what can be seen, heard or reported before moving towards assumptions, explanations or labels
- use the PEAR TREE® Lens to consider the interaction between the Person, Environment, Activity and Relational Response when exploring participation
- recognise patterns in sensory experience while remaining curious about multiple possible explanations rather than attributing a response to sensory processing alone
- work in co-production with people, families and wider teams to explore what supports, challenges or changes participation in everyday life
- identify practical changes to environments, activities, communication and relational approaches that may support participation within their own role and scope of practice
- Consider sensory-informed approaches to regulation and wellbeing for both the people they support and themselves
- bring together sensory information, lived experience, observation and contextual information through case-based learning to develop thoughtful, participation-focused support
- communicate sensory observations and ideas more clearly within health, education and social care teams, recognising the contribution of different professions and perspectives
- recognise the boundaries of workshop-level sensory integration knowledge and identify when more specialist assessment, clinical reasoning or Ayres Sensory Integration training may be required
Learn. Notice. Connect. Apply.
Each stage follows the same principle:
Learn something → notice something differently → explore it with others → apply it to real life → build the next layer of understanding.
This paced approach gives you time to think, try, reflect and return with questions, rather than simply completing content.
The aim is not just to know more about sensory integration.
It is to become more confident in what you notice, more thoughtful about what you assume, more curious about what you ask, and clearer about what you can safely contribute within your own role.
