Inside IES Research

Notes from NCER & NCSER

Leveraging Multiple Funding Sources to Train Special Education Researchers

Through different programs within the Department of Education, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act authorizes funding that can provide doctoral students with valuable training in special education research. These different funding mechanisms work independently or, in some cases, can be leveraged to work synergistically. The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) provides support for doctoral-level students The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) provides support for doctoral-level students through grant programs that are part of the Personnel Development to Improve Services and Results Program to help prepare future faculty, researchers, and administrators for leadership positions. Through this program, OSEP awards funds to institutions of higher education to provide doctoral students (OSEP Scholars) with advising, mentorship, and research experience. In exchange for service to the field following graduation, scholarships may cover such student expenses as tuition and fees, health insurance, books, supplies, and research-related expenses.

IES grants allow faculty to hire doctoral students on their NCSER-funded research projects, providing another potential avenue for these students to obtain research experience. Sometimes OSEP Scholars receive their research experience and mentorship through work on NCSER-funded research projects, as either their primary research focus or an additional research training opportunity. When this occurs, the benefits of both funding sources can provide students with opportunities to apply their training and knowledge in true research settings under the guidance of seasoned researchers.

In a new blog series, we will interview doctoral students who participate in both kinds of federally funded opportunities to better understand the unique contributions of each and how the two funding sources complement one another. We asked each doctoral student to tell us about their experience as an OSEP Scholar, their work on IES-funded grants, the synergy between their OSEP supports and NCSER grant work, and how they believe these experiences will help them achieve their career goals.

Matt Klein, Texas A&M University

Headshot of Matt Klein

I am in my third year as an OSEP Scholar, supported through the Research Interventions in Special Education (RISE) Scholars Network—a partnership among Texas A&M University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville to train future faculty in special education. This program has provided me with access to numerous learning experiences, including the opportunity to collaborate with high-caliber doctoral students, work with leading researchers at multiple institutions, and take research method courses that would otherwise not be available to me. The funding and tuition coverage that I receive as an OSEP Scholar has allowed me to focus on my studies and research without worrying about needing to take outside employment that may be unrelated to my training in education research.

I also work on an IES-funded meta-analysis project that looks at augmentative and alternative communication interventions for children with autism and/or intellectual disabilities. I love this project because I had worked as a teacher for children with autism. Currently, I code the data from the articles that are included in the analysis. This process has certainly been a learning experience, but it is so much fun because I read about interesting research that serves as inspiration for my own future work.

My work on the IES project and my experience as an OSEP Scholar inform one another. I began my doctoral program as a research assistant on the IES-funded project, and in my second year I became an OSEP Scholar. During my first year, I gained valuable research experience while working on the meta-analysis. This experience was crucial in my second year when, as an OSEP Scholar, I took a class on systematic review with intervention studies. My training as an OSEP Scholar has, in turn, given me the tools to lead a sub-project on the IES-funded meta-analysis.

Although I am still considering my future career goals, ideally, I would like to conduct research on interventions that can be used to support advocacy for play-based learning opportunities for children with disabilities. The research experience I receive as an OSEP Scholar and through IES-funded research will help build my knowledge base. The ongoing collaboration with other OSEP Scholars provides a natural forum for me to develop and refine research ideas as well as build a professional network for future collaborations even before I graduate.

Taydi Ray, Vanderbilt University

Headshot of Taydi Ray

I’m a first-year doctoral student, supported by an OSEP-funded training grant—Preparing Leaders to Unify Social, Behavioral, and Communication Interventions for Toddlers (Project PLUS-BC)—a cross-site collaboration between Vanderbilt University and the University of Washington to prepare scholars for leadership roles in early childhood special education with a focus on toddler language and social-emotional development. My short time as an OSEP Scholar has allowed me to visit our partner site, attend national conferences, and participate in a cross-site prenatal-to-three seminar. The training grant has also covered school-related expenses, such as tuition and a stipend I used to purchase a new computer. The project provides mentorship, training, and research opportunities with faculty from both universities. 

EMT en Español, an IES grant, introduced me to academia before I became an OSEP Scholar. This efficacy trial strives to improve language and school readiness skills for Spanish-speaking toddlers. I joined the research team in May 2022, primarily serving as an interventionist to deliver a naturalistic language intervention, Enhanced Milieu Teaching (EMT), and train caregivers to use the strategies, too. This project was an excellent introduction to special education research.

Although I continue to work on this project, as a current OSEP Scholar, my primary research efforts and training occur through another IES-funded project—Toddler Talk. Toddler Talk aims to improve language development in toddlers at high risk for persistent developmental language disorders and poor social and academic outcomes. I currently serve as a data collector for this project, which entails learning, administering, and scoring classroom-based assessments with teachers and toddlers. I have enjoyed this unique opportunity to engage in classroom research.

Before pursuing a doctoral degree, I worked as a bilingual speech-language pathologist (SLP) in schools. I would love to combine my background in speech pathology with my budding knowledge of special education research by serving as a faculty member in a communication disorders program. Ultimately, I hope to prepare future SLPs to confidently work with culturally and linguistically diverse children with disabilities and their families. I believe that my work on Project PLUS-BC, Toddler Talk, and EMT en Español will prepare me to be a well-rounded leader in special education.

Both OSEP and NCSER provide student scholars access to a variety of experiences that include training in research methodology and opportunities to apply this knowledge and build skills within current research projects. These opportunities can comprehensively prepare doctoral students to be future leaders who will contribute to meaningful research and teach the next generation of teachers, interventionists, and providers to use evidence-based practices to serve and support children with disabilities in their communities. Thank you to Matt and Taydi for sharing their experiences as OSEP Scholars working with research supported by NCSER. NCSER looks forward to seeing the future impact you will have in your field!

This blog was written by Shanna Bodenhamer, virtual student federal service intern at NCSER and doctoral candidate at Texas A&M University. Shanna is also an OSEP Scholar through RISE. Sarah Allen manages OSEP’s Personnel Development to Improve Services and Results Program.

Research and Development Partnerships Using AI to Support Students with Disabilities

A speach therapist uses a laptop to work with a student

It is undeniable that artificial intelligence (AI) is, sooner rather than later, going to impact the work of teaching and learning in special education. Given formal adoption of AI technologies by schools and districts and informal uses of ChatGPT and similar platforms by educators and students, the field of special education research needs to take seriously how advancements in AI can complement and potentially improve our work. But there are also ways that these advancements can go astray. With these technologies advancing so quickly, and with AI models being trained on populations that may not include individuals with disabilities, there is a real risk that AI will fail to improve—or worse, harm—learning experiences for students with disabilities. Therefore, there is a pressing need to ensure that voices from within the special education community are included in the development of these new technologies.

At NCSER, we are committed to investing in research on AI technologies in a way that privileges the expertise of the special education community, including researchers, educators, and students with disabilities and their families. Below, we highlight two NCSER-funded projects that demonstrate this commitment.

Using AI to support speech-language pathologists

In 2023, NCSER partnered with the National Science foundation to fund AI4ExceptionalEd, a new AI Institute that focuses on transforming education for children with speech and language disorders. Currently, there is a drastic shortage of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to identify and instruct students with speech and language needs. AI4ExceptionalEd brings together researchers from multiple disciplines including special education, communication disorders, learning sciences, linguistics, computer science, and AI from nine different universities across the United States to tackle pressing educational issues around the identification of students and the creation of specially designed, individualized instruction for students with speech and language disorders.

By bringing together AI researchers and education researchers, this interdisciplinary research partnership is setting the foundation for cutting-edge AI technologies to be created that solve real-world problems in our schools. A recent example of this is in the creation of flash cards for targeted intervention. It is common practice for an SLP to use flash cards that depict a noun or a verb in their interventions, but finding or creating the exact set of flash cards to target a specific learning objective for each child is very time consuming. Here is where AI comes into play. The Institute’s team of researchers is leveraging the power of AI to help SLPs identify optimal sets of flash cards to target the learning objectives of each learner while also creating the flash cards in real time. To do this effectively, the AI researchers are working hand-in-hand with speech and language researchers and SLPs in the iterative development process, ensuring that the final product is aligned with sound educational practices. This one AI solution can help SLPs optimize their practice and reduce time wasted in creating materials.

Adapting a popular math curriculum to support students with reading disabilities

Another example of how partnerships can strengthen cutting-edge research using AI to improve outcomes for students with disabilities is a 2021 grant to CAST to partner with Carnegie Learning to improve their widely used digital math curriculum, MATHia. The goal of this project is to develop and evaluate reading supports that can be embedded into the adaptive program to improve the math performance, particularly with word problems, of students with reading disabilities. CAST is known for its research and development in the area of universal design for learning (UDL) and technology supports for students with disabilities. Carnegie Learning is well known for their suite of curriculum products that apply cognitive science to instruction and learning. The researchers in this partnership also rely on a diverse team of special education researchers who have expertise in math and reading disabilities and an educator advisory council of teachers, special educators, and math/reading specialists.

It has taken this kind of partnership—and the inclusion of relevant stakeholders and experts—to conduct complex research applying generative AI (ChatGPT) and humans to revise word problems within MATHia to decrease reading challenges and support students in understanding the semantic and conceptual structure of a word problem. Rapid randomized control trials are being used to test these revised versions with over 116,000 students participating in the study. In 2022-2023 the research team demonstrated that humans can successfully revise word problems in ways that lead to improvements in student performance, including students with disabilities. The challenge is in trying to train generative AI to reproduce the kinds of revisions humans make. While generative AI has so far been unevenly successful in making revisions that similarly lead to improvements in student outcomes, the researchers are not ruling out the use of generative AI in revising word problems in MATHia.

The research team is now working with their expert consultants on a systematic reading and problem-solving approach as an alternative to revising word problems. Instead of text simplification, they will be testing the effect of adding instructional support within MATHia for some word problems.

The promise of AI

AI technologies may provide an opportunity to optimize education for all learners. With educators spending large amounts of their day planning and doing paperwork, AI technologies can be leveraged to drastically decrease the amount of time teachers need to spend on this administrative work, allowing more time for them to do what only they can—teach children. Developers and data scientists are invariably going to continue developing AI technologies, many with a specific focus on solutions to support students with disabilities. We would like to encourage special education researchers to exert their expertise in this development work, to partner with developers and interdisciplinary teams to apply AI to create innovative and novel solutions to improve outcomes for students with disabilities. For AI to lead to lasting advances in education spaces, it will be imperative that this development is inclusive of the special education field.

This blog was written by NCSER Commissioner, Nate Jones (Nathan.Jones@ed.gov) and NCSER program officers Britta Bresina (Britta.Bresina@ed.gov) and Sarah Brasiel (Sarah.Brasiel@ed.gov).

ED/IES SBIR Special Education Technology is Showcased at the White House Demo Day

On Tuesday, November 7, 2023, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy hosted a Demo Day of American Possibilities at the Showroom in Washington, DC.  The event featured 45 emerging technologies created by innovators through federal research and development programs across areas such as health, national security, AI, robotics, climate, microelectronics, and education. President Biden attended the event and met with several developers to learn about and see demonstrations of the innovations.

An IES-supported project by a Michigan-based Alchemie, the KASI Learning System (KASI), was invited to represent the U.S. Department of Education and its Small Business Innovation Research program, which IES administers.

KASI is an inclusive assistive technology that employs computer vision and multi-sensory augmented reality to support blind and low vision learners in using hand-held physical manipulatives to practice chemistry. A machine learning engine in KASI generates audio feedback and prompts to personalize the experience as learners progress. At the event, the project’s principal investigator and former high school chemistry educator, Julia Winter, demonstrated KASI to leaders in government and to attendees from the assistive technology field.

ED/IES SBIR supported the initial development for KASI through three awards. Based on these awards, Alchemie received funding from angel investors in Michigan, won a commercialization grant from the Michigan Emerging Technology Fund, and is establishing partnerships with publishers in K-12 and higher education. To extend KASI to more topics, Alchemie has won additional SBIR awards from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute of Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, and is currently a finalist in the 2024 Vital Prize Challenge competition. KASI has also recently been highlighted in Forbes and Crain’s Detroit Business.

 

 

Stay tuned for updates on KASI and other education technology projects through the ED/IES SBIR program on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.


About ED/IES SBIR: The Department of Education’s (ED) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, administered by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), funds entrepreneurial developers to create the next generation of technology products for learners, educators, and administrators. The program, known as ED/IES SBIR, emphasizes an iterative design and development process and pilot research to test the feasibility, usability, and promise of new products to improve outcomes. The program also focuses on planning for commercialization so that the products can reach schools and end-users and be sustained over time. Millions of students in thousands of schools around the country use technologies developed through ED/IES SBIR.

Edward Metz (Edward.Metz@ed.gov) is the Program Manager of the ED/IES SBIR program.

Laurie Hobbs (Laurie.Hobbs@ed.gov) is the Program Analyst of the ED/IES SBIR program.

Daily Report Cards to Enhance Individual Education Plans for Students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

In honor of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Awareness Month, we would like to share an interview with Dr. Gregory Fabiano, who has been investigating the enhancement of Individual Education Programs (IEPs) for children with ADHD using daily report cards (DRC). The DRC provides a way to provide feedback to students, parents, and teachers on behavioral and social IEP goals on a daily basis. In the interview below, Dr. Fabiano shares how ADHD impacts student outcomes and how linking the DRC to IEP goals can improve social and academic outcomes above and beyond what an IEP alone can do.

What do we already know about how ADHD impacts academic and social outcomes in children in elementary school? How does this motivate your own research?

Like all people, individuals with ADHD have areas of strengths and weaknesses. If you wanted to create a situation where a person with ADHD is more likely to demonstrate weaknesses, you would likely construct a situation like an academic classroom—long periods of time where individuals are asked to complete rote tasks, attend to lectures, and follow strict rules about where they should be, what they can say, and when they can say it. The situation is highly likely to exacerbate challenges with staying on task and being productive. Through our team’s work with so many children with ADHD, we have seen first-hand how hard their caregivers and teachers work to support them and the good they can do when they are successful. That is why we are motivated to develop approaches to help every child with ADHD who may struggle in school.

The DRC has been used with students with ADHD for a while now. What can you tell us of the history of this intervention?

The DRC has been around since the 1960s when it was used by scholars such as Jon Bailey and colleagues at the University at Kansas and then by Dan and Sue O’Leary and their graduate student Bill Pelham at Stony Brook University. Since that time, the DRC has been disseminated to schools. It has the advantage of being practical and easy to understand across caregivers, educators, and the child. Throughout its use over the past 50 years, it has always included the same active ingredients: (1) clearly specified behavioral goals with objective criteria for meeting goals (for example, completes assigned work within time given, has no more than three instances of interruptions during the science lesson); (2) provision of progress feedback throughout the day; (3) daily communication between the teacher, caregiver, and child by sending the report home; and (4) contingent rewards provided at home for goals achieved.

What does a DRC introduce to a child’s IEP that can improve academic and social outcomes relative to an IEP without a DRC? 

Research, including our own work, has suggested that IEPs for children with ADHD may under-represent social/behavioral goals and objectives. They are even less effective at providing specific, ongoing evidence-based interventions for a student with ADHD. When the DRC is linked to IEP goals and objectives on a daily basis, educators and others are better able to focus their own attention on the most important areas of need. Further, it is flexible enough to quickly add worthy goals that may not have been on the IEP.

We think that the DRC is especially important at the elementary school level, where school is a particularly formative educational experience. We emphasize positive daily goals and contingent rewards for meeting goals. And because the DRC is implemented just for the one day, students start with a clean slate at the onset of each school day.

What impact do you hope that your study of the DRC intervention will have on the field, and for students with ADHD and their IEPs in particular?

One of the sobering findings of our IES-funded study was that the comparison group, which included special education as usual, did not improve in the main outcomes assessed at the end of the year. This leads our team to believe that we need to do much more to support students with ADHD on a daily and ongoing basis, beyond simply drafting an IEP. Because most students with ADHD spend the majority of their day in general education settings, even if they have an IEP, the DRC serves as a bridge to promote continuity and consistency of behavioral support across school personnel and across school days.

Is there anything else you would like to share about your project? 

It is important to note that some children with ADHD progress through school and find their footing successfully in college and/or career. Yet, we know from long-term follow-up studies that the educational outcomes for many with ADHD are poor. These outcomes do not occur suddenly, but instead are caused by the accumulation of negative school experiences. It is important to acknowledge that establishing an IEP alone is unlikely to influence these negative outcomes. It is the everyday support and intervention received by the child with ADHD in the classroom that makes the difference. Caregivers, educators, and the child must work together daily to make progress, celebrate successes, and problem solve to address any continued areas of need. The DRC is one way to do this and we are hopeful the field will continue to develop innovative ways to support individuals with ADHD using a competency-building approach.

This blog was authored by Skyler Fesagaiga, a Virtual Student Federal Service intern for NCSER and graduate student at the University of California, San Diego. Jackie Buckley, NCSER program officer, manages this grant.

Improving Assessment Practices for Spanish-Speaking English Learners: An Interview with Dr. Jeannette Mancilla-Martinez

In recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month, we interviewed Dr. Jeannette Mancilla-Martinez, associate professor at Vanderbilt University, who recently received a new NCSER grant to explore the associations among language comprehension skills in both Spanish and English, the processes involved in English reading comprehension, and special education placement decisions for elementary school students from Spanish-speaking homes. She believes the results of the study have the potential to mitigate English reading comprehension difficulties, improve school-based assessment practices to better inform special education decisions, and reduce disproportionate special education representation for students from Spanish-speaking homes.

How did you become interested in a career in education research?

Headshot of Dr. Jeannette Mancilla-Martinez

My experience as an elementary school teacher in Southern California is what motivated me to pursue graduate studies. I taught five grade levels within a 3-year span in two very different elementary school contexts. Most students in the school commonly labeled as “diverse”—the same school I attended as a student—were of Mexican origin and from Spanish-speaking, low-income homes, whereas students in the other school actually represented a wide range of linguistic, socioeconomic, and racial/ethnic backgrounds.

I soon noticed a common thread across the two school contexts. The students who were English learners (ELs) tended to struggle with English language and reading development more than their English-proficient peers. This is not surprising given that EL students, by definition, are effectively still in the process of developing English proficiency. What I found disturbing were the discussions about routing ELs to special education services under the assumption of learning disabilities (LDs), which occurred far too frequently given the expected prevalence of LDs in this community of learners. Although ELs may benefit from additional services, I repeatedly found that many educators (including EL specialists and special education teachers) did not know how to determine whether ELs needed more time to develop English language and reading skills or had, in fact, a language-based disability.

I needed to learn more about typical and atypical language and reading development to help students, regardless of their language background, acquire the language and reading skills to thrive academically. What was supposed to be a 1-year stay to get a master’s degree to become a reading specialist turned into a life-changing, 6-year stay to get my PhD.

What has been the biggest challenge you have encountered and how did you overcome the challenge? 

Year after year, myths persist about linguistically diverse students in the United States. These include such misconceptions as assuming most linguistically diverse students are foreign-born or have limited English proficiency and, most troubling, that speaking a language other than English is a risk factor for low academic achievement. I have found that too many researchers, educators, and policymakers share these misconceptions about linguistically diverse learners.

This represents a significant challenge as the very people who have limited knowledge about linguistically diverse students are those in positions of power who can and do make high-stake decisions. These decisions influence the overall well-being and academic achievement of all students, including linguistically diverse students. I would love to say this challenge can be overcome, but I know that shifting away from the pervasive deficit mindset about this population will not be easy. For now, I continue to underscore the vast heterogeneity among linguistically diverse students in the United States, and I make clear in all my work that speaking a language other than English does not impede the ability to learn. This may sound obvious, but it is necessary for all to know.

In your area of research, what do you see as the greatest research needs or recommendations to address diversity, equity, and inclusion and to improve the relevance of education research for diverse communities of students and families?

We have a long way to go to ensure educational equity for historically underserved students and families. One area in need of attention is the common inequitable process for identifying—and reclassifying—ELs in U.S. schools. Typically, parents are required to complete a home language survey when they enroll their child in school. If parents report that a language other than English is used at home, the student is immediately flagged as potentially not having the academic English language skills necessary to access the curriculum in English and must take an English language proficiency assessment. The intent is to identify students who need academic English language support services.

The problem is that many ELs who receive EL services tend to face a cycle of watered-down instruction and low academic expectations. In fact, many ELs are never reclassified as English-proficient despite years of EL support and English-only instruction. In sharp contrast, if parents report English as the only language used in the home, the student is automatically assumed to have adequate academic English language skills; their academic English language proficiency is never assessed. If we had universal academic English language proficiency screeners, I hypothesize that a sizable proportion of the “English-only” school-age population would show language profiles similar to that of ELs. It seems clear to me that there is inequity in the EL identification process and that ELs are arguably held to a higher academic standard, without the accompanying rigorous academic English language instructional support.

What advice would you give to emerging scholars from underrepresented, minoritized groups that are pursuing a career in education research?

All emerging scholars must prioritize their research (from idea generation to grant writing to manuscript development) over other pulls on their time. However, emerging scholars from underrepresented, minoritized groups must be extra cautious to avoid overcommitting their time. It is almost a given that, precisely because they are from underrepresented, minoritized groups, there will be more service requests of all sorts for this subset of emerging scholars. Here is a typical example: A faculty member from an underrepresented, minoritized group tends to lead equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) efforts at the department, college, and/or university level. Yet, being a scholar from a historically underrepresented and minoritized background is not synonymous with being an EDI expert. I think people don’t quite understand that these unspoken expectations can create a real time and ethical dilemma for emerging scholars from underrepresented, minoritized groups that their peers from majority groups do not encounter.

This  interview blog was produced by Sarah Brasiel (Sarah.Brasiel@ed.gov), a program officer for the reading, writing, and language portfolio in the National Center for Special Education Research.