Asha Jitendra, professor in the Department of Educational Psychology’s special education program recently authored an article in CEHD Vision 20:20 about her work with schema-based instruction, which teaches students to focus on the underlying structure of math word problems.

“I became interested in looking for better ways to teach math problems because of my daughter, who suffered brain damage in early childhood which inhibited her development of language skills. Despite this delay in developing language, she showed great understanding of mathematical concepts at an early age…However, she continued to have a difficult time solving math word problems,” says Jitendra.