ByGeorge!

September 2007

GW Selective Excellence Grant Advances Doctoral Studies in Special Education


Maxine Freund and Carol Kochhar-Bryant are spearheading an initiative to boost GW’s special education training.

By Jamie L. Freedman

It’s an eye-opening statistic. Some 10-12 percent of school-age children have diagnosed disabilities requiring special education services, and it is estimated that as many as 25 percent are “at risk” of academic or social problems absent the provision of early intervention or related services.

GW’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development—a longtime leader in training special education professionals—is blazing new trails in this rapidly growing field, with the help of a selective excellence grant aimed at advancing doctoral studies in special education. Funded through a special endowment payout by the Board of Trustees, the multidisciplinary initiative will apply emerging knowledge in brain research to propel the understanding of child and adolescent development and improve learning outcomes.

“The main thrust of the project is to build bridges between the cognitive neuroscience community and the special education world,” explains Carol Kochhar-Bryant, professor of special education, who serves as co-principal investigator of the initiative along with Professor Maxine Freund. In recent years, cognitive neuroscientists have made great strides in understanding the brain as imaging tech­niques have grown increas­ingly sophisticated.

“We’re now learning, for example, that the brain does not stop developing until the age of 25, which has tremendous implications for understanding the thinking and behavior of adolescents and young adults,” says Kochhar-Bryant. “The more we understand about the developing brain, the better we can prepare our special educators to best intervene in assisting students who are atypical in their development.”

According to Kochhar-Bryant, the program will expand opportunities for interdisciplinary research through collaboration with a wide variety of partners, including the GW Medical Center, the Department of Psychology Cognitive Neuroscience Program, and the Center for Education and Human Development in Acquired Brain Injuries. “Together, faculty and doctoral students will explore applications of this new knowledge in education and related health and human service settings,” she says. “Our country is facing a vast and growing problem, and it’s our goal to learn as much as we can about how to better intervene to help our children learn and develop.”

Through the grant, the department will integrate a number of new themes into its special education curriculum, including brain research/ neuroscience, disability studies, and community partnerships. “We’re trying to ensure that our doctoral students leave here skilled in emerging neuroscience research and are increasingly adept at applying that knowledge in the educational world so they can lead the next generation of special education teachers,” says Freund. “Special education is both an area of national shortage and national significance for research and development of scholar-leaders. The call for improved research and leadership to best educate children with special learning needs places new expectations on doctoral degree granting institutions to address these national concerns.”

Freund says she’s energized by the magnitude of the project. “Both in a macro and micro sense, the funding affords our doctoral faculty in special education the chance to come together and work across disciplines in their specializations to probe new findings that impact the populations we train and the populations we serve.”

Through the special endowment funding, the department hopes to achieve ranking among the top 10 special education programs in the nation and to become a primary resource for education policy development. “The initiative is off to an excellent start,” says Kochhar-Bryant.

“Ten GW special education core faculty members, many of whom have worked at the University for decades, are pushing the project forward,” she states. “Six received mini grants this summer to focus on connections between neuroscience and their special education niche areas, and three of us went to a wonderful conference at Harvard in April, concentrating on learning in the brain. Education is at the crossroads of a number of disciplines, and we’re thrilled to have the chance to draw from many fields to be the best we can be.”

As the project continues to unfold, Freund says she’s excited about the road ahead. “We were honored and delighted to receive the grant, which will enable us to move into interesting new areas and position ourselves as a program of national excellence in special education,” she says. “The possibilities are incredibly vast. It’s a whole new world for us as special educators.”



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