The Learning Differences Distinguished Lecture: Critical Issues in Learning

This event is part of the Distinguished Lecture series of the initiative on Learning Differences and the Future of Special Education at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. Our goal is to promote interdisciplinary conversations among scholars about learning research with students with disabilities. This will be an interactive event in which the speakers will share insights from their research and engage in conversation with each other to explore potential cross-pollinations.

Talk Title: Mechanisms for Accelerating Literacy Learning

Summary: The use, misuse, and usefulness of assessments in schools are a significant concern for educators, families, administrators, and policy-makers. I will introduce an innovative assessment designed to directly inform more equitable and socially just writing instruction, especially for students with dyslexia, developmental language disability, and written language disabilities. Identifying content of the writing assessment and associated instructional decisions involved careful attention to defining the goals of writing instruction, evidence-based practices, updated theory on how writing develops, and teasing apart practices that promote students climbing the social ladder versus practices that maintain power differences. I will discuss the results of three studies of this assessment and the opportunities for future research on consequences of instructional decisions, usability, implementation, and sustainability. This continued research needs perspectives that reach across professional silos.

Talk Title: Orienting to Student Sense Making and Access in Mathematics Education

Summary: Students with disabilities often do not experience meaningful and accessible mathematics instruction. In this talk, I begin by focusing specifically on students with mathematics disabilities (i.e., dyscalculia). These students have a neurological difference in how their brains process numerical information. Unlike most research which focuses on identifying deficits in these students’ speed or accuracy, I explore how mathematical tools and representations are not equally accessible. In my work I take an explicitly anti-deficit theoretical stance and document the understandings these students rely upon and the inaccessibility they encounter. I share findings from multiple case studies of students with dyscalculia to animate these findings. I discuss the ongoing challenges in translating this work to practice while navigating incommensurate epistemological and pedagogical frames within the mathematics education and special education communities. I offer some recommendations for bridging this divide which involve centering the expertise and sense making of students with disabilities and focusing on meaningful engagement with mathematics through accessible tools and practices.

The Learning Differences Initiative is hosting national scholars who work on questions of inclusive education to advance transformative visions for the field. The lecture series challenges our ideas and intentions for future learning, research, policy initiatives, and community partnerships. Lectures focus on (a) teaching, learning, and life beyond school; (b) policies, institutional alignment, and the workforce; (c) neuroscience, data, and technology; and (d) law, ethics, and cultural contexts for learning in diverse settings, cultures, and public spaces.

We hope the lecture series will offer meaningful, productive engagements of interdisciplinary scholars to advance creative and ambitious visions and research agendas.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Center for Education Research at Stanford (CERAS), 520 Galvez Mall, Stanford, United States