Purpose: The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate how teachers in the United States understand and perceive developmental language disorder (DLD). This study used a survey to examine teachers' understanding of DLD and the impact of DLD at school to inform advocacy efforts within the discipline of communication sciences and…

This qualitative study investigates teachers' perspectives on anxiety among autistic learners with intellectual disabilities (ID) in special school settings. Research in this area remains limited, with existing studies often overlooking the distinct ways anxiety manifests and interacts with ID in this population. Semi-structured interviews with…

Schools conduct comprehensive psychoeducational evaluations to identify students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) and determine whether they qualify for special education services. This decision-making process is complex and research has documented many factors influencing SLD identification decisions. One such factor may be…

Aims: People with a learning disability are at increased risk of becoming homeless, but little is known about how learning disability is viewed by people accessing homeless services. This study aimed to obtain the views of people experiencing homelessness about learning disability, in the context of a project that was exploring how to increase…

In studies that assess perceptions of autistic people by non-autistic people, researchers often ask participants to review vignettes depicting fictional autistic characters. However, few studies have investigated whether non-autistic peers accurately identify these hypothetical individuals as being on the autism spectrum. Accurately ascribing…

General labels tend to obscure objective realities upon which disability rights are based and can deny individuals with disabilities their educational and civil rights. Undoubtedly, stigma can come from labels unnecessarily categorizing people into separate groups. However, stigma does not reside primarily in disability categories/terms but in…

The numerous stressors and strains of the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to growing numbers of college students experiencing disabilities and needing support. This practice brief explores the challenges faced by disability resource professionals (DRPs) during the pandemic in reaching and supporting students potentially needing accommodations, but…

Community mental health centers (CMHCs) offer invaluable, publicly-funded treatment for serious mental illness (SMI). Unfortunately, evidence-based psychological treatments are often not delivered at CMHCs, in part due to implementation barriers, such as limited time, high caseloads, and complex clinical presentations. Transdiagnostic treatments…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (2004) allows alternate pathways for school districts to identify and classify students with a specific learning disability (SLD). Response to Intervention (RtI) is one of the frameworks schools can use when eliminating the use of the discrepancy model. The premise of RtI posits that…

This study aims to classify subtypes of mathematics disability (MD) using a novel classification method, cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs), and examine whether domain-general skills, namely, linguistic, working memory, and spatial skills, were related to the identification of the subtypes. Participants were 454 children (246 boys; age: M ± SD =…

One prominent change in the amendment to the Special Education Law in the State of Israel (2018) concerns the dissolution of placement committees and their transformation into characterization and eligibility committees. These characterization and eligibility committees determine children's eligibility for special education, whereas parents decide…

Early childhood home visiting programs are well positioned to improve equity and reduce health disparities for families headed by caregivers with intellectual disabilities and other learning differences. Early identification of learning differences through screening may help home visiting staff tailor services and thus improve family engagement…

Even with increased efforts to close the academic gap by providing appropriate services to students with disabilities, there is still a gap in outcomes that requires identification of possible contributing factors. One often hypothesized mechanism for these continued disparities is the stigma associated with disability categorization or…

The identification of specific learning disabilities (SLD) remains fraught with controversy and uncertainty about professionals' capacity to appropriately identify special education eligibility. For students from linguistically minoritized backgrounds, the "exclusionary clause" prohibits the identification of learning difficulties…

Background: Many children experience delayed or missed identification of an intellectual disability diagnosis, meaning that key opportunities for early educational intervention may be lost. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were used to explore the views of teachers, parents, and clinicians (n = 22), about the use of the Child and Adolescent…