A school’s mission is to develop the sense of the true, the sense of the good and the sense of the beautiful. And this happens through a rich journey made up of many “ingredients”. That is why there are so many subjects! Because development is the result of various elements which interact and stimulate the mind, the conscience, the affections, the body, etc. For example, if I study this Square, St Peter’s Square, I learn something about architecture, history, religion, even astronomy – the obelisk recalls the sun, you see few people know that this square is also a large sundial.
Thus we cultivate within ourselves the true, the good and the beautiful; and we learn that these three dimensions are never separated but rather are interwoven. If something is true, it is good and it is beautiful; if something is beautiful, it is good and it is true; if it is good, it is true and it is beautiful. And together these elements make us grow and help us to love life, even when we are unwell, even amid difficulties. True education makes us love life, and it opens us to the fullness of life!
-- Address of the Holy Father Pope Francis, May 10, 2014
The mission of education is to cultivate healthy, flourishing, and engaged children. In the Platonic tradition, education endeavors to nurture that which is true (logic and science), that which is ethical and just (goodness), and that which is beautiful (aesthetics). In the face of war and terror, planetary climate crises, global pandemics, and growing inequities, creating a more inclusive and sustainable world is education’s urgent challenge. In the words of Pope Francis, a “summons to solidarity” with the next generation, with each other, and with our ever more fragile planet is the ethical imperative of our times.
Including neuro-atypical and children with disabilities, perhaps better referred to as “complex learners,” is not an addendum but a critical aspect of addressing the challenge of educating all children and fostering their eudemonic development. The mission to educate all children is built on the imperative to extend solidarity, support, and learning opportunities to every member of our society, particularly those facing additional barriers to accessing opportunities to learn and quality education.
In this chapter, I first delve into the state of education[1] for all children, then evaluate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and youth in terms of education (Suárez-Orozco, 2023). Finally, I provide a framework for best practices for children with disabilities, focusing on neuro-atypical children and complex learners.
The Education Global Compact
Basic primary education in schools has become a normative ideal the world over. In the last five decades, schooling has emerged globally as the most critical societal institution for the next generation's education. There is much good news: “Enrolment of children in primary education is nearly universal. The gender gap has narrowed, and in some regions, girls tend to perform better in school than boys.”[2] Progress in children’s participation in schools is a laudable achievement. However, the work ahead is significant: “Enrollment does not translate directly into education, and education does not translate directly into good education, which is often the real catalyst for engaged citizenship, emotional awareness, human sensitivity, and a tolerance of the other, along with the enhanced potential for working collaboratively, productively, and innovatively” (Bloom & Ferranna, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022). Education is freedom and is “far and away the single most empowering investment for individuals. It is for that reason that the world has long regarded education as a basic human need and as a basic human right. However, we have not achieved universal education” (Sachs, 2022). Millions remain out of school, and illiteracy remains rampant: 781 million adults over the age of 15 remain illiterate – and women make up well over half of those who are illiterate.[3]
While much remains to be done, education is widely viewed as the Camino Real for sustainable development and a driver of wellness (Bloom & Ferranna, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022). “Seen as part of the global commons, knowledge, learning, and education represent humanity’s greatest renewable resource for responding to challenges and inventing alternatives” (Giannini, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022). Ample evidence suggests that education – almost any form that nurtures and supports basic literacy – generates powerful virtuous cycles.[4] As UNICEF researchers have concluded: “An education is perhaps a child’s strongest barrier against poverty, especially for girls. Educated girls are likely to marry later and have healthier children. They are more productive at home and better paid in the workplace, better able to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS, and more able to participate in decision-making at all levels. Additionally, this ... furthers [the sustainable development goals of] universal primary education and gender equality” (UNICEF, 2004).[5]
The values and virtues flowing from quality education have been named and memorialized in multiple covenants and declarations by some of the world’s most august bodies. The worthy ideals embodied in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the right to universal, free, and compulsory education, come to mind: Education shall be “directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948).
However, as various scholars have noted, the world has failed for over seven decades “to realize that right, and other rights in the Universal Declaration. There has been progress, but we should be more interested in the shortfall than the achievement, as children are losing their future prospects at our hands. The failures point us to the urgent work we have yet to do” (Sachs, 2022). The global data on educational disparities and their corollaries with health, wellness, wages, and the transition to the world of work points to a powerful truth: inequities in learning opportunities and educational outcomes generate bifurcated pathways. Today qua education, the rich are getting richer, and poor are getting poorer. In low-income countries, the elephant in the classroom is the disparity in financial resources.
Investments in quality education are at once ethical (see Hösle, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022) and intelligent policy. The returns to investments in education are measurable, profound, and multidirectional: “Education investments can promote health and longevity; reduce fertility and population growth rates; improve living standards; and, ultimately, enhance well-being at multiple levels, ranging from individuals to countries. The causal links are bidirectional: health investments and fertility reductions contribute to increasing the returns to education, and, as a result, induce more investment in education. This complexity implies that educational development is probably best approached multisectorally, through an integrated blend of health, population, and education policies” (Bloom & Ferranna, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022).[6]
Education is a moral, ethical, and civic endeavor. Since Plato and Aristotle, philosophers have pondered education and its purpose for the eudemonic flourishing of human beings. As the idea of educating all children in formal school settings took shape in the modern era, philosophers entered the conversation. In Kant’s moral philosophy, we become persons only in and with education. Indeed, education constitutes our humanity (see Hösle, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022). Over a century ago, Émile Durkheim began lecturing would-be teachers on moral values and collective consciousness, first articulating his enduring conceptual contribution to the social sciences: the moral nature of the relationships between the individual and society.
John Dewey is philosophy’s most influential voice in education. Dewey’s rich conceptual work evolved as the idea of universal, free, compulsory, non-denominational public education was becoming firmly rooted first in the United States and then elsewhere (see Rogers, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022). In Dewey’s early writings, education is constitutive of democratic citizenship. In a passage echoing Durkheim’s sentiments, Dewey wrote, “I believe that the school is primarily a social institution. Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race and to use his own powers for social ends. I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.”[7] The rise of fascism, Nazism, and the diffusion of authoritarian, anti-democratic ethos, redoubled Dewey’s focus on education and democracy. The social process in school, Dewey argued, must engage all children as active, hands-on, and involved citizen-learners, laying in place the pathway for renewal of the democratic ethos and eidos of each generation (see also Rogers, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022).[8] Perhaps more than any other philosopher, Dewey set a tone during the formative years of education as a democratic practice and field of inquiry (see Rogers, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022).[9] Horace Mann was a leading voice trumpeting the importance of public education for democracy. He argued that civic education “instruction respecting the nature and functions of the government” must be provided in “common schools” open to all.[10] Such schools not only would present civic knowledge but afford opportunities for social interaction and shared deliberation through which all “parties can become intelligible to each other.”[11]
However, even as Mann envisioned public schools as sites for preparing citizens to participate in political life, he worried that a fractious partisanship might undermine the democratic project of common schooling. “If the tempest of political strife were to be let loose upon our Common Schools, they would be overwhelmed with sudden ruin. Let it be once understood, that the schoolroom is a legitimate theatre for party politics, and with what violence will hostile partisans struggle to gain possession of the stage, and to play their parts upon it!”[12]
While Jerome Brunner and his students at Harvard, such as Howard Gardner, Patricia Greenfield, and other leading psychologists, became increasingly influential in education and educational psychology by focusing on cognition and socioemotional learning, with the ascendancy of neoliberal economics, education inched away from its foundations in ethics, morals, civics, and psychology.[13] Indeed, throughout the last generation, education scholarship has become increasingly a province of economic empirical research and conceptual modeling, with economic development a sharp focus of concern.[14] But as Stefania Giannini has cautioned, “Development cannot be simply framed in terms of economic growth – human flourishing and the accessibility of lives of meaning and dignity must be primary concerns” (Giannini, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022).
Vittorio Hösle has articulated a plea for the re-coupling of education and ethics. His reflections cover the ethical claims for the right to an education and the disparate claim for re-engaging with ethics in education; he examines, seriatim, Who has a right to be educated? Who has a duty to educate? What should be taught in the curriculum? What are the challenges and opportunities in the teaching of ethics? Hösle argues that intrinsic to the moral evolution of our species “is the recognition that we share a common responsibility to educate all human beings, not only in order to help them maintain themselves as part of the global society but also to comprehend the complex nature of our world and to attain a greater depth by grasping moral values irreducible to self-interest as well as their ultimate source” (Hösle, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022).
A sense of purpose is a uniquely human achievement closely connected to the flourishing of potential and well-lived, directed life. When aligned with moral character, purpose generates a cascade of virtuous cycles – health and wellness, motivation, resilience, and other virtuous outcomes have been empirically linked to the sense of purpose. William Damon and Anne Colby have worked on the problem of purpose in education, its development in youth and throughout the life course, and what schools worldwide are doing to foster a sense of purpose in today’s students. They define purpose as “an active commitment to accomplish aims that are both meaningful to the self and of consequence to the world beyond the self.” They argue,
Purpose has long been identified in philosophy and theology as an essential component of a well-directed life. In recent years, support for this longstanding theoretical intuition has come from studies in psychological science and medicine that have documented important life benefits associated with purpose. Such benefits include: energy and motivation; resilience under pressure; a positive personal identity; emotional stability; academic and vocational achievement; faith and trust in the affirmative value of life; and a sense of direction that can withstand episodic periods of uncertainty and confusion.[15] . . . [and] contribute to energy and health throughout the lifespan[16] (Damon and Colby, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022).
As Pope Francis and ample research suggest, it is by nurturing socio-emotional learning –including patient listening[17] constructive dialogue and better mutual understanding,”[18] the values and virtues of engaged citizenship, and by imparting the new skills to prepare youth for the ever-evolving world of work, that schools become meaningful vehicles for collective empowerment and positive social action. “In order to educate, one has to be able to combine the language of the head with the language of the heart and the language of the hands. In this way, the student can think what he or she feels and does, can feel what he or she thinks and does, and can do what he or she feels and thinks” (Pope Francis, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022). Education must endeavor to inculcate in children and youth humane sensibilities, empathy and perspective taking, communication and collaboration skills, higher-order cognitive skills for critical thinking, and metacognitive abilities to become lifelong learners and civic agents. Today, paraphrasing the words of Damon and Colby (in Suárez-Orozco, 2022), fostering a sense of purpose in young people must be a vital part of the educational mission. A humanistic ethic of care (Giannini, this volume) – and not simply a reductive utilitarian logic of market efficiencies – must animate the work of education in troubled times.
Twenty-first-century economies and societies are predicated on increasing complexity and diversity – the twin corollaries of an ever-more-globally interconnected, miniaturized, and fragile world. We must mind the gap between what education is and what it needs to be to build a more humane, equitable, and sustainable future for all.
What are the most critical challenges to schools today?
First, quality education for all – from early childhood (Rinaldi; Udwin, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022) onwards remains an elusive mirage for millions of children, above all complex learners and children with disabilities. It is a scandal that before the COVID-19 pandemic, over 260 million children and youth were not enrolled in primary and secondary schools – the equivalent of Indonesia’s population, the world’s fourth most populous country. For those enrolled, the little education provided – especially in literacy (Katzir, 2022), will be vital but perhaps not enough to thrive to their full potential.[19] Too many children in low and lower-middle-income countries are falling further behind their peers in the wealthy nations. Special attention must be paid to the role of literacy (Wolf, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022) and the opportunities and limitations of new technologies (Barron, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022) to reach children who otherwise have little opportunities for formal learning.
The second challenge facing schools is unfolding at the vital link between the wealthy countries in the Northern Hemisphere and the metaphorical global South. Schools are struggling to properly educate and ease the transition and integration of large and growing numbers of immigrant and refugee youth (Yoshikawa et al.; Crul, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022) arriving in Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, and elsewhere; many immigrant and refugee youngsters are marginalized as racially, ethnically, religiously, and linguistically-marked minority groups. The learning complexities of immigrant and refugee children with disabilities are often overlooked and confounded with language and other cultural issues.
The third challenge schools face is educating students to address our ever-more fragile planet (Ramanathan et al.; Iyengar et al., in Suárez-Orozco, 2022). Unsustainable development is a global threat. The admirable Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4.7) to provide “education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles” remains elusive for most students.
At a time when education must communicate values, virtues, and purpose, we find ourselves reticent and unsure of how to proceed. However, when it comes to values and purpose (Damon & Colby, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022), children and youth are clamoring for an integral education outlined by Pope Francis (in Suárez-Orozco, 2022). We are proceeding with too much caution when education needs “a bold, humanistic vision, based on human rights, social justice, dignity, cultural and social diversity, and intellectual solidarity. This vision reaffirms universal ethical principles and the need to strengthen moral values in education and society. It starts with people of all ages and the analysis of development contexts. It is inclusive, equitable, and informed by interdisciplinary research across the sciences, arts, and humanities. Finally, it is participatory and international in scope” (Giannini, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022).
The world is facing multiple crises – war and terror, climate change, pandemics, racism and xenophobia, growing inequality, and extreme poverty. Stefania Giannini (in Suárez-Orozco, 2022) argues that “an education crisis mirrors a wider global crisis, one that is social, moral and environmental.” Tired-old claims, silver bullets, and magical thinking will no longer do. Nor will averting our gaze to growing inequities in education. Schools, the world over, must endeavor to educate the whole child for the whole world. “Through a humanistic and holistic vision of education and development, which cannot simply be framed in terms of economic growth, learners need the knowledge and the values to live meaningful and purposeful lives in harmony with others and the planet” (Ibid.) Schools need to be laboratories reclaiming the shared ethical principles of reciprocity, solidarity, equity, and inclusion and fighting all forms of discrimination, above all against students with disabilities and complex learners. However, children with disabilities, neuro-atypical children, and complex learners often face a significant undertow as they endeavor to learn.
The COVID-19 Effect
Millions of children and youth experienced COVID-19 damage and dislocations likely to mark their developmental pathways for years (Bloom and Yousafzai, in Suárez-Orozco, 2023). COVID-19 can be described as a long-lasting catastrophic shock removing them from the proscribed pathways that enable children and youth the world over to reach and master culturally determined milestones – in the maturational, socio-emotional, cognitive, and moral realms. Millions of youths are mourning and facing losses that are at once immediate and ambiguous. For millions of children, the pandemic represents a long-lasting “catastrophic education emergency,” robbing them of the daily attending school rituals with all that entails: learning opportunities, socializing with other children, seeking support from teachers, physical education, accessing health care and nutrition, and the various other scaffolds needed for developmentally appropriate socio-emotional, cognitive, and meta-cognitive growth. The pandemic stunned education systems with geologic force: by the decade's start, approximately 1.5 billion students were no longer attending in-person school as school closings became mandatory in 160 countries (see Giannini, in Suárez-Orozco, 2023). Moreover, as millions of children would eventually continue their learning remotely, UNICEF data suggest that “for at least 463 million children whose schools closed due to COVID-19, there was no such thing as ‘remote learning.’”[20] (Ibid.) Millions lacking electricity, technology, and internet access could not engage in online learning.
Indeed, during the COVID pandemic, it is estimated that over 830 million students did “not have access to a computer at home.” As Bridgit Barron notes, “Although unequal access to information technologies had been documented well before the COVID-19 pandemic, dramatic school closures have brought a significant digital divide into sharp relief and exposed the ongoing cost of inequities, as teachers across the world scrambled to continue the education of millions of children. Radio, television, and the internet were deployed in an attempt to connect schools and homes. Learners in rural areas, citizens from less affluent countries, families who have less wealth, and female students were the least likely to have access to any of these forms of remote learning” (Barron, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022).
UN data suggest that COVID-19 wiped out twenty years of gains as “100 million more children fail basic reading skills because of COVID-19.”[21] Two-thirds of those countries are in Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition, school closures disrupted immunization and other health services often provided at school and prevented many children from accessing the only nutritious meal of the day.
Researchers found that neuroatypical and complex learners experienced significant adverse COVID-related mental health, socio-emotional, and physical outcomes “(including [less] sleep, [poor] diets, [less] exercise, [more] use of electronic media; and increased symptoms of child neurodevelopmental disability [NDD] and comorbidities).”[22] As the world of education endeavors to move into a phase of recovery, the most vulnerable children, including complex learners and children with disabilities, face significant losses: Since its outbreak two years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education systems globally; affecting the most vulnerable learners the hardest. [T]he costs stand to be tremendous in terms of learning losses, health and well-being, and drop-out. Prioritizing education as a public good is crucial to avoid a generational catastrophe and drive a sustainable recovery. To be more resilient, equitable, and inclusive, education systems must transform, leveraging technology to benefit all learners and building on the innovations and partnerships catalyzed throughout this crisis. UNESCO, 2022.[23]
Bloom and Ferranna summarize COVID’s impact on education, “School closures and difficulties in implementing effective remote learning generally reduce the pleasure of learning, hinder children’s socialization opportunities, degrade the emotional and mental health of students, and increase the risk of domestic violence and abuse In addition, school closures disrupt immunization and other health services that are often provided at school and prevent many children from accessing the only nutritious meal of their day. School closures also exert considerable pressures on parents, who have to balance childcare, homeschooling, and work duties” (Bloom & Ferranna, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022).
The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare for the world the deepening inequalities of opportunities to learn that flow from disabilities, country-of-origin, race, ethnicity, and immigration background. COVID sent another 100 million human beings into deep poverty – brutally intensifying extreme poverty and reversing years of progress.[24]
Indeed, poverty is the other pandemic taking a heavy toll on children and youth across the world. The consequences on children are chilling, “different poverty indicators are associated with lower cognitive and academic performance during several stages of development. Psychological and neural evidence generated in recent years suggests the need to review the interpretations of these associations in the sense of deficit and to consider the occurrence of adaptive processes instead” (Lipina, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022). Poverty, war and terror, structural racism, unchecked climate change,[25] the “globalization of indifference,” an extreme form of which is modern child slavery, thwart the opportunities for healthy development and wilt the flourishing of millions of children. Indeed, they represent the most significant undertow towards meeting the UN millennial development goals of reaching universal primary education.[26]
Students with Disabilities and Complex Learners
Students with disabilities and complex learners are not from the other side of the moon. They partake in the joy of learning, discovery, and reflecting on themselves and the world. Their disparate abilities, gifts, and the unique challenges they face must be understood and incorporated into the global education compact. They, too, must be given all the relevant opportunities to learn. The education of children with disabilities, therefore, is not a separate agenda but a central part of the overarching goal to educate the whole child for the whole world, reclaiming the shared ethical principles of reciprocity, solidarity, equity, and inclusion, and fighting all forms of discrimination. This is the path towards building societies where everyone can flourish and contribute to the common good regardless of their abilities.
Integrating complex learners and students with disabilities into educational systems requires a multifaceted approach, focusing on accessibility to opportunities to learn, tailored learning strategies, supportive technologies, and data-informed continuous improvement (Gomez et al., in Suárez-Orozco, 2022). It involves reimagining and reengineering educational environments and pedagogies to accommodate diverse learning needs and abilities, ensuring every child can engage and benefit from educational opportunities. This approach is grounded in the global compact’s understanding that education is a fundamental human right and a key to unlocking the potential of every individual, contributing to their ability to lead fulfilling lives and participate meaningfully in society.
Educational institutions, educators, and policymakers must commit to continuously improving inclusive education practices. This requires investing in teacher training on inclusive pedagogies, enhancing the physical accessibility of schools, and providing appropriate learning materials and assistive technologies. Collaboration with families, communities, and organizations specializing in disability advocacy and support is essential to create an enabling environment that fosters the holistic development of complex learners and children with disabilities.
Educating students with learning differences, such as dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, children on the spectrum, and students with autism, represents a vital aspect of achieving a genuinely inclusive educational landscape. This commitment to inclusivity and equity demands an approach tailored to meet these students' unique learning needs and strengths, ensuring that the education system supports all learners in realizing their full potential.
Addressing the Needs of Students with Physical Disabilities
Educating students with physical disabilities necessitates a comprehensive, accessible, and inclusive approach, underscoring the broader commitment to equity and inclusivity in the educational landscape. Physical disabilities can range from serving students who are blind/visually impaired, students who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as mobility impairments, such as those requiring the use of a wheelchair, students facing fine motor skills challenges, affecting a student’s ability to write or manipulate small objects. Addressing these needs effectively involves creating an environment that is not only physically accessible but also accommodating to the diverse learning needs of these students. Key strategies include:
1. Accessible Infrastructure: Ensuring that school buildings, classrooms, and facilities are fully accessible for students with physical disabilities. This may include ramps, elevators, accessible restrooms, and classroom layouts that accommodate mobility aids and assistive devices.[27]
2. Assistive Technology and Devices: Leveraging technology to facilitate learning and communication. Assistive devices can range from specialized computers and software that aid communication to tools that assist with writing, reading, and other educational tasks.[28]
3. Adapted Curriculum Materials: Providing educational materials in formats accessible to students with physical disabilities. This may include textbooks in audio format, digital resources that can be navigated through assistive technology, or materials adapted for ease of use.[29]
4. Physical and Occupational Therapy: Integrating physical and occupational therapy services within the educational setting can support students’ physical well-being and enhance their ability to participate fully in academic and extracurricular activities.[30]
5. Inclusive Teaching Strategies: Employing teaching strategies that consider the physical and learning needs of students with disabilities. This involves flexible teaching methods, collaborative learning, and adapting assessment methods to ensure all students can effectively demonstrate their understanding and skills.[31]
6. Training for Educators and Staff: Providing ongoing professional development for educators, administrators, and support staff on the needs of students with physical disabilities and creating an inclusive and supportive learning environment.[32]
7. Collaboration with Families and Caregivers: Working closely with the families and caregivers of students with physical disabilities to understand their specific needs and strengths. This collaboration ensures that educational strategies align with the student’s support and care plan.[33]
8. Promoting Social Inclusion: Facilitating social inclusion within the school community through peer support programs, inclusive extracurricular activities, and awareness campaigns that promote understanding and respect for diversity.[34]
9. Personalized Learning Plans: Developing individualized learning plans that cater to the specific educational, physical, and health needs of students with physical disabilities. These plans [35] should be flexible and adaptive, allowing adjustments as students' needs evolve.
By addressing the needs of students with physical disabilities through these strategies, educational institutions can ensure that all students can learn, participate, and thrive in a supportive and accessible learning environment. This commitment to inclusivity benefits students with physical disabilities but enriches the educational experience for the entire school community, fostering a culture of respect, empathy, and collaboration.
Addressing the Needs of Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Incorporating education for neuroatypical learners into the broader educational mission enriches the learning environment for all students. It underscores the importance of diversity, compassion, and adaptability in education – essential for fostering a more humane, equitable, and sustainable future. Through these inclusive practices, education can embody its role as a transformative force, empowering every student to navigate the world’s complexities with confidence, compassion, and competence.
Teaching children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) effectively requires a nuanced understanding of the condition and its impact on learning and development. Cognitive neuroscience research has shed light on various strategies that can significantly enhance the educational experience for autistic children. These strategies are rooted in understanding the unique neurological profile of individuals with ASD, including differences in brain structure and function that affect processing, attention, and social interaction. Here are key insights and recommendations for teaching autistic children based on cognitive neuroscience research:
1. Structured and Predictable Learning Environments
Children with ASD often thrive in structured environments where routines are predictable. Research in cognition and emotion supports the creation of learning spaces that minimize sensory overload and provide precise, consistent schedules and expectations. This predictability can reduce anxiety and help children with ASD focus better on learning tasks.[36]
2. Visual Support and Schedules
Visual supports, such as picture schedules, visual task analyses, and organizational aids, are particularly beneficial for children with autism. Research indicates that many individuals with ASD are visual learners, and visual supports can help them understand and process information, transition between activities, and develop independence in completing tasks.[37]
3. Individualized Instruction Tailored to the Child’s Strengths and Needs
Research highlights the importance of personalized instruction, capitalizing on the child’s strengths while addressing specific learning needs. Autistic and children with ASD often have uneven skill development, with particular strengths in areas such as detail-focused processing. Educators should use these strengths as a foundation for learning while providing targeted support in areas of difficulty.[38]
4. Social Skills Training
Social communication challenges are a core aspect of ASD. Neuroscience research suggests incorporating social skills training into the curriculum to help autistic children develop essential social and communication skills. This can include explicit teaching of social norms, practice understanding emotions and facial expressions, and opportunities for social interaction in structured settings.[39]
5. Use of Technology and Assistive Devices
Technology can play a crucial role in supporting the education of autistic children. Cognitive neuroscience research supports using computer-based and other technological interventions to enhance learning, communication, and social skills. For example, tablet applications for social storytelling or emotion recognition can be practical tools.[40]
6. Sensory Integration Activities
Many children with ASD have sensory processing differences, which can impact their learning and attention. Incorporating sensory integration activities into the teaching plan can help manage sensory sensitivities. This might include activities that address specific sensory preferences or aversions, reducing sensory-related distractions and discomfort.[41]
7. Positive Reinforcement and Behavioral Supports
Positive reinforcement techniques effectively promote desired behaviors and learning outcomes in children with ASD. Cognitive neuroscience research supports using specific, positive feedback and rewards to encourage progress and engagement. Behavioral supports, including clear expectations and consequences, can also help manage challenging behaviors constructively.[42]
8. Collaborative Team Approach
A collaborative approach involving teachers, parents, therapists, and children is crucial for effective education. Cognitive neuroscience underscores the importance of a multidisciplinary team in developing and implementing educational plans that address the holistic needs of autistic children.[43]
9. Engaging Families
Engaging families in the educational process is also critical. Parents and caregivers of students with learning differences should be viewed as educational partners, contributing valuable insights into their child's needs and strengths. Effective communication between home and school can facilitate consistency in approaches and strategies, further supporting the student's learning and development.
Research provides a wealth of insights into the effective education of children with ASD. Structured environments, visual supports, individualized instruction, social skills training, technology use, sensory integration activities, positive reinforcement, and a collaborative team approach are all evidence-based strategies that can enhance learning and development for autistic children. By understanding and applying these strategies, educators can create supportive, practical educational experiences that cater to the unique needs of complex learners and children with ASD.[44]
Addressing the Needs of Students with Dyslexia
Reading is foundational in education. As the eminent Harvard scholar Jeanne Chall once noted, children first learn to read and then read to learn the rest of their lives.[45] A uniquely human capability, there is no gene for reading. Literacy is an epigenetic achievement of the human brain. As a species, we began reading some 3,500 years ago – first, a few members of the human family could read – usually individuals with specialized roles in economic, ritual, and religious functions. Today, literacy is a normative ideal all over the world. Reading changes the brain and the world.[46]
Students with dyslexia face unique challenges in reading. Effectively educating dyslexic students requires understanding their unique learning needs and challenges. Maryanne Wolf has examined the neurological underpinnings of reading, language, and related phenomena in Mind, Brain, and Education, focusing on the challenges and opportunities of teaching dyslexic students (Ibid.)
Emerging cognitive neuroscience research provides valuable insights into the best practices for teaching dyslexic children. These practices focus on structured literacy programs, multisensory learning, early intervention, and individualized instruction strategies. Here is a summary of the significant findings and recommendations from the relevant research:
1. Structured Literacy Programs
Implementing evidence-based reading programs emphasizing phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies is a point of departure. These programs are most effective when structured, sequential, and multisensory, allowing students to engage with learning material through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic modalities. Research suggests that structured literacy programs can be highly beneficial for dyslexic students. These programs are explicit, systematic, and sequential in teaching phonics, spelling, and reading skills. They focus on language components, including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and structure. Cognitive neuroscience is increasingly focusing on programs to improve the reading skills of dyslexic students by engaging specific brain areas involved in reading.[47]
2. Early Intervention
Research emphasizes the importance of early intervention for children with dyslexia. Early identification and support can significantly improve reading and language skills. Neuroplasticity during the early years is an optimal time for intervention to remediate dyslexia. Early screening and assessment followed by targeted intervention can help mitigate the challenges associated with dyslexia.[48]
3. Multisensory Learning
Multisensory learning approaches, which involve teaching using visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile methods simultaneously, are efficient for dyslexic learners. This approach helps create more neural connections related to language and reading in the brain, enhancing memory and learning processes. Students can better understand and retain the material taught by engaging multiple senses.[49]
4. Individualized Instruction Strategies
Given the variability in the severity and nature of dyslexia among individuals, personalized instruction strategies are crucial. Research suggests tailoring educational approaches to fit the specific needs of each dyslexic student. This may include adjusting the pace of instruction, providing additional practice and support for developing phonemic awareness, and using technology and tools to aid dyslexic learners.[50]
5. Continuous Feedback and Support
Providing continuous feedback and support is essential for the learning and confidence of dyslexic students. Positive reinforcement helps in motivating students and in reinforcing their learning progress. Research findings suggest feedback loops enhance learning by actively engaging the brain’s reward system, thus improving motivation and engagement.[51]
6. Professional Development for Educators
Educators should receive ongoing training on the latest research and best practices for teaching dyslexic students. Understanding the neurological underpinnings of dyslexia can equip teachers with the knowledge and skills to implement effective teaching strategies tailored to the needs of dyslexic learners. Additionally, accommodations such as extended time on tests, the use of text-to-speech technology, and the provision of written materials in alternative formats can significantly enhance the learning experience and academic success of dyslexic students.[52]
Concluding Thoughts
The world faces multiple threats – pandemics, environmental cataclysms, and forced migrations. In the words of Stefania Giannini, “We have an education crisis that mirrors a wider global crisis, one that is social, moral, and environmental” (Giannini, 2022). Schools worldwide face the challenge of teaching and learning an ethic of care for a planet facing unprecedented challenges.
Schools worldwide must be at the forefront of preparing the next generation to engage in problematic times and catastrophic contexts. The COVID-19 pandemic was a canary in the coal mine, illustrating our profound global interdependence and exposing the disproportionate vulnerabilities of poor and marginalized people everywhere. This crisis has also exposed the susceptibility of reliable science information to political manipulation, the fragility of public commitment to collective goods, and the role that education must play in cultivating informed publics worldwide, committed to tackling growing inequities in learning opportunities.
People of good faith worldwide share in the ethos and eidos, animating Pope Francis’ global compact for education. Indeed, broad sectors of society hold deeply aspirational notions of schooling with access and quality for all children and youth to flourish. However, that aspiration remains an elusive mirage for millions, above all, students with physical disabilities and complete neuroatypical learners.
The preponderance of the scholarly evidence suggests that while progress in education has been laudable and teachers and parents are in many cases making extraordinary efforts to innovate in engaging all students, and new technologies open up significant new avenues for teaching and learning, current education systems are inadequate to meet the defining social, moral and environmental crises of the day.
In short, following Pope Francis’s call for a radical new global education compact, we must re-double our efforts to build new levers to improve access to quality education and scale up innovative teaching and learning solutions for all students, above all, the most vulnerable, including children with physical disabilities and complex learners. The education global compact is built on virtues, ethics, morals, civics, a sense of purpose (see Suárez-Orozco, 2022), and bold humanistic ideals (Giannini, 2022). We must ground it on the lessons extrapolated from innovative early childhood education programs worldwide (Rinaldi, 2022; Udwin, 2022). We must focus on purposive programs in education for the era of climate change (Ramanathan et al., 2022; Iyengar et al., 2022.). We must mind the tools from the new science of Mind, Brain, and Education (Lipina, Katzir; Wolf; all 2020) and the promise and challenges new technologies afford to reach and engage children who currently have little or no opportunities to learn. In conclusion, we turn to the wise and loving world of the Holy Father, Pope Francis, in his call for a global compact on education:
We commit ourselves personally and in common:
- First, to make human persons in their value and dignity the centre of every educational programme, both formal and informal, in order to foster their distinctiveness, beauty and uniqueness, and their capacity for relationship with others and with the world around them, while at the same time teaching them to reject lifestyles that encourage the spread of the throwaway culture.
- Second, to listen to the voices of children and young people to whom we pass on values and knowledge, in order to build together a future of justice, peace and a dignified life for every person.
- Third, to encourage the full participation of girls and young women in education.
- Fourth, to see in the family the first and essential place of education.
- Fifth, to educate and be educated on the need for acceptance and in particular openness to the most vulnerable and marginalized.
- Sixth, to be committed to finding new ways of understanding the economy, politics, growth and progress that can truly stand at the service of the human person and the entire human family, within the context of an integral ecology.
- Seventh, to safeguard and cultivate our common home, protecting it from the exploitation of its resources, and to adopt a more sober lifestyle marked by the use of renewable energy sources and respect for the natural and human environment, in accordance with the principles of subsidiarity, solidarity and a circular economy.
Finally, dear brothers and sisters, we want to commit ourselves courageously to developing an educational plan within our respective countries, investing our best energies and introducing creative and transformative processes in cooperation with civil society. In this, our point of reference should be the social doctrine that, inspired by the revealed word of God and Christian humanism, provides a solid basis and a vital resource for discerning the paths to follow in the present emergency.
The goal of this educational investment, grounded in a network of humane and open relationships, is to ensure that everyone has access to a quality education consonant with the dignity of the human person and our common vocation to fraternity. It is time to look to the future with courage and hope. May we be sustained by the conviction that education bears within itself a seed of hope: the hope of peace and justice; the hope of beauty and goodness; the hope of social harmony.
Let us not forget, brothers and sisters, that great changes are not produced from behind desks or in offices. No. There is an “architecture” of peace to which various institutions and individuals in society all contribute, each according to its own area of expertise, without excluding anyone (cf. Fratelli Tutti, 231). In this way, we must move forward, all of us together, each as we are, but always looking ahead to the building of a civilization of harmony and unity, in which there will be no room for the terrible pandemic of the throw-away culture.
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[1] In this Chapter we approach education as formal schooling but also as the entire range of opportunities to learn that include early childhood education settings (Rinaldi; Udwin, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022), as well as informal and out-of-school educational opportunities in informal settings.
[2] See The World’s Women 2015: Trends and Statistics by United Nations Statistics Division https://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/chapter3/chapter3.html
[3] Ibid.
[4] LeVine, R.A., LeVine, S., Schnell-Anzola, B., Rowe, M.L., & Dexter, E. (2012). Literacy and mothering: How women’s schooling changes the lives of the world’s children. Oxford University Press.
[5] UNICEF. (2004). The state of the world’s children 2004: Girls, education and development. United Nations Children’s Fund. https://www.unicef.org/reports/state-worlds-children-2004
[6] Education is linked to the fortunes of both nations and individuals. Quality education is literally life-enhancing and is connected to health and wellness outcomes. Darwin briefly noted the nexus between education – especially the education of women, and human improvement. He wrote in the margins of the evolution notebooks, “Educate all classes. Improve the women (double influence) and mankind must improve.” Double the influence surely relates to the fact that educated mothers improve the life changes of their children thus commencing self-propelling virtuous cycle. Two centuries later Robert Levine and his colleagues at Harvard studied young mothers and their children’s health in four countries and found that girls’ schooling was good for children's health. See, LeVine, R.A., LeVine, S., Schnell-Anzola, B., Rowe, M. L., & Dexter, E. (2012). Literacy and mothering: How women’s schooling changes the lives of the world’s children. Oxford University Press. Subsequent empirical studies have confirmed the Levine findings. A large-scale Lancet study of educational attainment and its effect on child mortality in 175 countries shows that education saves lives, “Of 8.2 million fewer deaths in children younger than 5 years between 1970 and 2009, we estimated that 4.2 million (51.2%) could be attributed to increased educational attainment in women of reproductive age.” See Gakidou, E., Cowling, K., Lozano, R., & Murray, C.J.L. (2010). Increased educational attainment and its effect on child mortality in 175 countries between 1970 and 2009: A systematic analysis. The Lancet, 376(9745), 959-974. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61257-3
[7] Dewey, J. (1897). My pedagogic creed. The School Journal, 54(3), 77-80. In a note sympatico to Durkheim’s views on education and society, Dewey writes, “education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction” (Ibid.)
[8] William James working in the Anglo-Saxon pragmatist tradition thought deeply about education, teachers, and pupils. He conducted field research on memory and learning and investigated consciousness. Considered the father of American psychology, James’ empirical work led him to privilege the child’s own incipient capabilities and resources as a point of entry into all authentic teaching and learning in that sense alininging his thinking to the Dewey’s learning by doing approach to education. James famously noted, “We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.” See, James, W. (1907). Pragmatism: A new name for some old ways of thinking. Longmans, Green, and Co. p. 27. Education is surely what deeply connects us all.
[9] Dewey’s “learning by doing,” became rooted as experimental schools strived to become hand-on, project based, democratic learning communities. Corinne Seeds, building on her mentor’s teachings, was instrumental in turning the UCLA Lab School into an iconic constructivist, research-based experimental school where children-as-citizens took active roles in the course of their own learning. In Europe, Loris Malaguzzi (see Rinaldi, in Suárez-Orozco, 2022) built a series of early childhood education programs in Northern Italy inspired in part by Dewey’s ideas. The Reggio Emilia pre-schools, in turn, came to deeply influence the thinking of the eminent American cognitive and educational psychologist, Jerome Brunner, and many of his students.
[10] Mann, Twelfth annual report, 84. Mann speaks of universal public education in which people across lines of class attend school together. Yet, he remained largely silent about the racial segregation of public schools. See: P., “Horace Mann and Colored Schools,” The Liberator, December 24, 1847. It should be noted that Mann was not oblivious to issues of race and discrimination. He advocated for the abolition of the slave trade while Secretary of the Board of Education in Massachusetts and later, while a member of the U.S. Congress, spoke out against slavery more generally. See for example, Horace Mann’s February 23, 1849 speech, “Slavery and the Slave Trade” in Horace Mann, Slavery: Letters and Speeches (Boston: BB Mussey & Company, 1853).
[11] Mann, Twelfth annual report, 86.
[12] Mann, Twelfth annual report, 86.
[13] See, Lagemann, Ellen, https://bit.ly/3snnDUx
[14] Increasingly education research turned to efficiencies, returns to investments, and theories of forever growth. Algorithmic metrics delineated pathways from teacher “inputs” to student “outcomes.” In a particularly vulgar reductive move, economists constructed complex research experiments such as paying poor children to do their homework to calculate precisely how extrinsic motivational variables (cash for homework) lead to different learning outcomes. The first principle that “every dollar invested in education” shall deliver results in the currency of better skills, better jobs, and better income became an agreed upon shared cognitive schema globally. Arguably no other idea has traveled as well, even across fiercely contested cultural and epistemic boundaries: from pre-school to college, the new mentalité announced that education was an investment paying in little and big ways.
[15] See https://coa.stanford.edu/publications for an extensive list of scientific studies that have established empirical associations between such psychological benefits and purpose in life.
[16] See, for example, Atul Gawande: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2014).
[17] Listening is at the heart of all teaching and learning. The Reggio Emilia Approach in early childhood education perhaps best captures the richness of listening in education: “The term “listening” is to be interpreted according to a plurality of meanings.
Listening as a metaphor for openness to listen and be listened to, with all the senses, sight, touch, smell, taste, orientation, not only with hearing.
Listening to the hundred, thousand languages and codes used by life to express itself and to communicate.
Listening to the connections that hold us together as living beings; being intimately convinced that we belong to a plural dimension.
Listening that requires a time of its own, of pauses, of silence, an inner time, and therefore listening to ourselves as regeneration, as care towards new questions about us and the others.
Listening as interest, as curiosity, as emotion.
Listening as an openness to the others, welcoming differences, the value of the point of view that is foreign to me.
Listening as an active verb, which interprets, welcomes, gives value and meaning.
Listening that doesn’t make answers but builds questions. Listening that is generated by doubt as awareness of the limit and suspension of judgment and prejudice.
Listening that asks for willingness to change, that gives value to the unknown, to the not yet known, to emptiness as an opportunity.
Listening that gives meaning and legitimacy to the person listened to” (Rinaldi, this volume).
[18] https://www.educationglobalcompact.org/en/the-invite-of-pope-francis/
[19] https://ourworldindata.org/literacy
[20] https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unicef-executive-director-henrietta-fore-remarks-press-conference-new-updated
[21] https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1088392
[22] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33426739/
[23] https://www.unesco.org/en/covid-19/education-response
[24] World Bank estimates that “Global extreme poverty is expected to rise in 2020 for the first time in over 20 years as the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic compounds the forces of conflict and climate change, which were already slowing poverty reduction progress...The COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to push an additional 88 million to 115 million people into extreme poverty this year, with the total rising to as many as 150 million by 2021, depending on the severity of the economic contraction. See “COVID-19 to Add as Many as 150 Million Extreme Poor by 2021” https://bit.ly/2Q30uZY
[25] http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-security-nutrition/en/
[26] https://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/education.shtml
[27] See, Sarrasin, J., Gagnon, S., Poliquin, J.-F., & Bélanger, C. (2022). Accessibility and universal design in schools: A scoping review. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 18(1), 1-15.
[28] See, Al-Mouh, N.A., Al-Khalifa, H.S., & Al-Khalifa, H.S. (2023). Impact of assistive technology on students with disabilities in educational settings: A systematic review. Assistive Technology, 35(2), 96-108.
[29] See, Hall, T., Vue, G., Koga, N., & Silva, S. (2024). Adapting curriculum for special education students. UW-Superior Online.
[30] See, Special issue on occupational therapy with neurodivergent people. The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 78(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2024.781001
[31] See, Brownell, M.T., Smith, S.J., Crockett, J.B., & Griffin, C.C. (2012). Inclusive instruction: Evidence-based practices for teaching students with disabilities. Guilford Press.
[32] See, Murphy, H., & Cole, S. (2024). Inclusion improves academic outcomes for students with disabilities. Association of American Universities. Retrieved from https://www.aau.edu/research-scholarship/featured-research-topics/inclusion-improves-academic-outcomes-students
[33] See, IRIS Center. (2024). Family engagement: Collaborating with families of students with disabilities. Vanderbilt University. https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/fam/
[34] Veldman, J., & Kelly, B. (2023). Promoting social inclusion in educational settings: Challenges and strategies for diverse learners. Educational Psychology Review, 35(2), 203-228. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-022-09634-1
[35] National Center for Learning Disabilities. (2023). Personalized learning: Meeting the needs of students with disabilities. Center for Parent Information and Resources. Retrieved from https://www.parentcenterhub.org
[36] Cachia, R.L., Anderson, A., & Moore, D.W. (2016). Mindfulness in individuals with autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review and narrative analysis. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 3(2), 165-178. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40489-016-0074-0
[37] Knight, V., Sartini, E., & Spriggs, A.D. (2015). Evaluating visual activity schedules as evidence-based practice for individuals with autism spectrum disorders. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 45(1), 157-178. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-014-2201-z
[38] Kasari, C., & Smith, T. (2013). Interventions in schools for children with autism spectrum disorder: Methods and recommendations. Autism, 17(3), 254-267. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361312470496
[39] Wing, L. (1979). Understanding and addressing social communication difficulties in autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 9(1), 11-29. SpringerLink. See also, Sasson, N.J., Morrison, K.E., Faso, D.J., Ackerman, R.A., DeBrabander, K.M., & Jones, D.R. (2020). Outcomes of real-world social interaction for autistic adults paired with autistic compared to typically developing partners. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Neuroscience News.
[40] Boucenna, S., Gaussier, P., Hafemeister, L., & Andry, P. (2014). Interactive technologies for autistic children: A review. Cognitive Computation, 6(1), 12-23. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-013-9245-9 See also, Tanner, K., Dixon, R., & Verenikina, I. (2010). Using modern technology to enhance learning of students with Autism Spectrum Disorders. ADECT 2019 Proceedings, 3(2), 45-67. https://open.library.okstate.edu
[41] Mallory, C., & Keehn, B. (2021). Implications of sensory processing and attentional differences associated with autism in academic settings: An integrative review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12, Article 695825. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.695825. See also, Weitlauf, A.S., Sathe, N., McPheeters, M.L., & Warren, Z.E. (2017). Interventions targeting sensory challenges in autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review. Pediatrics, 139(6), e20170347. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2017-0347
[42] Baltruschat, L., Hasselhorn, M., Tarbox, J., Dixon, D.R., Najdowski, A.C., Mullins, R.D., & Gould, E.R. (2011). Further analysis of the effects of positive reinforcement on working memory in children with autism. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 5(2), 855-863. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2010.09.015
[43] Dillenburger, K., & McKerr, L. (2014). Multidisciplinary teamwork in autism: Can one size fit all? The Australian Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 30(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1017/edp.2014.13
[44] Garbacz, S.A., McIntyre, L.L., & Santiago, R.T. (2016). Family engagement and parent-teacher relationships for students with autism spectrum disorders. School Psychology Quarterly, 31(4), 478-490. https://doi.org/10.1037/spq0000172
[45] Chall, J.S. (1967). Learning to read: The great debate. New York: McGraw-Hill.
[46] Wolf, M. (2022). Reader, come home: The reading brain in a digital world. HarperCollins.
[47] Spear-Swerling, L. (2018). Structured literacy and typical literacy practices: Understanding differences to create instructional opportunities. Teaching Exceptional Children, 50(3), 201-211. See also Kilpatrick, D.A. (2015). Essentials of assessing, preventing, and overcoming reading difficulties. John Wiley & Sons.
[48] Davis, N. & Norbury, C.F. (2021). Understanding the role of neuroplasticity in dyslexia: Early identification and intervention. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 62(5), 563-576. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13328. See also Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2009). Dyslexia: A new synergy between education and cognitive neuroscience. Science, 325(5938), 280-283. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1171999
[49] Eroğlu, G., Teber, S., Ertürk, K., Kırmızı, M., Ekici, B., Arman, F., Balcisoy, S., Özcan, Y.Z., & Çetin, M. (2022). A mobile app that uses neurofeedback and multi-sensory learning methods improves reading abilities in dyslexia: A pilot study. Applied Neuropsychology: Child, 11(3), 518-528. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622965.2021.1908897
[50] Snowling, M.J., & Hulme, C. (2012). Interventions for children’s language and literacy difficulties. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 47(1), 27-34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-6984.2011.00081.x
[51] Shaywitz, S.E., & Shaywitz, B.A. (2005). Dyslexia (Specific Reading Disability). Biological Psychiatry, 57(11), 1301-1309. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2005.01.043. See also, Swanson, H.L., & Hoskyn, M. (1998). Experimental Intervention Research on Students with Learning Disabilities: A Meta-Analysis of Treatment Outcomes. Review of Educational Research, 68(3), 277-321. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543068003277
[52] Moats, L.C. (2009). Knowledge foundations for teaching reading and spelling. Reading and Writing, 22(4), 379-399. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-009-9162-1. See also, Washburn, E.K., Binks-Cantrell, E.S., & Joshi, R.M. (2014). What do preservice teachers from the USA and the UK know about dyslexia? Dyslexia, 20(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1002/dys.1459