Professor profile

Don Deshler, professor of special education and director of the Center for Research on Learning

A great deal of attention is paid, and rightfully so, to children entering the education system to ensure they are ready to learn and have a good chance of success. What are teachers to do, though, if a student reaches adolescence and is lacking some of the basic skills necessary to succeed in school?

That question is at the heart of the research of Don Deshler, professor of special education and director of KU’s Center for Research on Learning. In a new KU YouTube video, Deshler discusses his research into helping adolescents succeed academically and the work of the center to help schools reach students who need help.

In order to help adolescents who are facing the “achievement gap,” it is first necessary to understand the students. Deshler’s research studies what is needed to help struggling adolescent learners and using that information to develop methods and practices that teachers and schools can use to help the students.

Deshler and researchers at the center have found that many students around the country reach middle school and high school lacking basic math, reading and thinking skills that are necessary to succeed as the curriculum becomes more demanding.

“As we’ve designed instructional programs for adolescents who are struggling in learning, we’ve had to keep foremost in mind that these are students who have encountered some failure,” Deshler said. “In many instances, they’re somewhat fragile, and we need to increase our chances as teachers in providing them with the kind of learning experiences that will increase the probability of their success.”

Recently, Deshler and his colleagues have shifted their focus from working with individual teachers and students to working with entire school staffs. He’s found that by taking a collaborative approach between the center and schools, they can be more effective.

“We recognize that those who are on the front lines have a very keen understanding of some of the challenges and problems and needs that students are facing, and that teachers and administrators are facing,” Deshler said. “What we find to be important is ‘let us come together as partners and share our varying perspectives and have conversations about the problems that are the most central and then co-construct some solutions and make certain that the solutions we come up with, that we are going to try make sense from both perspectives.”

Researchers at the center are also taking their findings to schools across the world. One of the foremost aspects of the center’s mission is sharing its work with others, Deshler said. The center recently developed an international professional development network to share the instructional strategies it develops with those who can use it the most.

More information about Deshler and the Center for Research on Learning is available at www.kucrl.org.