COVID 19 disrupted the lifestyles of millions. One structure that has had to adapt to the dynamic regulations necessary to ensure the health and safety of American families is the education system. Many schools, from elementary to higher education institutes, have adjusted to an online learning-based or hybrid system. A particular faction of US children who face an additional challenge regarding the rapid change in classroom environment include special needs students.
Many children with cognitive difficulties are non-verbal, and thus require a specialized structure to ensure academic success. The work of Elizabeth Wakefield, who researches the effects of using hand gestures to enhance student learning, seems undoubtedly relevant to the challenges faced by special-ed students and their educators. Wakefield found that children who were exposed to a math lesson in which the educator physically drew attention to a particular mathematical function performed better when asked to repeat the function on their own than children who were exposed to the exclusively verbal condition. This suggests that non-verbal gestures improve retention in neurotypical students; one might wonder if and how this finding could be applied to disabled learners.
Professionals in the special-ed field seem well aware that non-verbal communication is often the best course of action for children with certain disabilities. According to educators interviewed for The Atlantic, the creative methods used for teaching include communication through body language and expression through some tangible action or motor behavior. That a large majority of all -- not just specialized learning -- has moved to an online platform has profoundly disrupted special needs classrooms. As educators, students, and their families continue to adapt to challenging and indefinite conditions, one is eager to discover what findings will contribute to the development of methods and systems that grant accessibility to all communities.
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