Teaching students with intellectual disabilities

Summary

This systematic review is primarily intended for teachers and other educational staff who are involved in teaching students with intellectual disabilities (ID) at primary or secondary levels. Its purpose is to highlight opportunities for supporting student participation and learning.

Teaching students with ID is multifaceted. In addition to promoting student learning in subjects and subject areas, teaching aims to improve the students’ autonomy and social skills, competences that are decisive for the ability to live a meaningful and participatory life. This is an aim of education in general, but highlighting this in education for students with ID is particularly important, as they often have fewer opportunities for active interaction with others. Historically, they have been excluded from many areas of society.

To enable students to grow into the role of active citizens, teaching must rest on a foundation of participation, one which not only includes students in its external forms, but also gives them the chance to contribute in the classroom in ways that are both visible and meaningful. Viewing participation as a fundamental principle rather than the ultimate goal creates the right conditions for both subject learning and the development of autonomy and social competence. The review’s results are based on 15 practice-based research studies of classroom teaching, focusing on the interaction and communication between teachers and students with ID. The questions are answered using the studies’ results and are formulated as follows:

1. What does student participation and learning look like in the studied teaching situations?
2. What opportunities and obstacles to student participation and learning emerge in the studied teaching situations?

Results of the review

The results chapter is divided into three sections. The first two show how the interaction and communication between teachers and students develops, with a particular focus on recurring patterns that arise. The students’ participation and learning become visible in how interaction unfolds in teaching situations. The third section provides concrete guidance on how teachers can manage interaction and communication in ways that promote active participation and learning among the students. This is done using a range of teaching strategies that become part of the teacher’s skillset for classroom management.

The studies in the review cover teaching in various subjects and subject areas, such as communication, reading, mathematics and crafts. All the participating students have an intellectual disability, ranging from mild to severe; some have additional disabilities.

Student participation and learning vary in different communication patterns

This section shows differences in communication patterns between teachers and students, and how these can be understood using the concepts vertical communication and horizontal communication. Vertical communication is characterised by the teacher guiding the conversation by asking questions with expected or given answers, while horizontal communication is based on reciprocity, with the teacher actively listening to and following up student initiatives. These communication patterns are visible in different contexts, with vertical communication particularly common in formal situations, typical of teaching where the teacher has a clear leadership role. Horizontal communication, however, is more frequent in informal contexts, such as during breaks or at lunchtime, where the roles between teacher and student are more equal. Student opportunities for active participation and developing their understanding in subjects and subject areas vary with the dominant communication pattern. Horizontal communication often provides more space for student initiative, dialogue and joint exploration, factors that promote active participation and deeper learning. In contrast, vertical communication tends to limit the student’s role to a more restricted participation, with reduced opportunities for active participation and deeper understanding.

However, it is important to emphasise that, essentially, communication in teaching situations is vertical – the teacher is responsible for conveying specific knowledge and thus leads the conversation in a certain direction. Still, for students to have the opportunity to actively participate and learn, this vertical communication needs to be characterised by responsiveness. The teacher must be attentive to student initiatives and feedback and adapt their guidance according to student needs and reactions. To deepen the understanding of communication patterns in the activities in which students and teachers participate, this review also highlights results from studies that analysed the functions fulfilled by various teaching activities. Some activities have a clear focus on knowledge development, while others are focused more on care and relationship-building. The balance between these has an impact on student opportunities for participation and learning. In particular, the integration of the knowledge and caring functions is what allows teaching to fulfil both the cognitive and emotional dimensions of learning. Accordingly, it is important that knowledge development and care-orientated aspects are not considered to be separate or contradictory, but rather mutually reinforcing parts of a holistic education.

Creating understanding in and about the conversation

The section highlights the importance of mutual understanding in classroom dialogue. It emphasises that teacher responsiveness – meaning the ability to perceive, interpret and understand what students are expressing – is crucial to creating conditions conducive to the students’ active participation and learning, particularly within the vertical patterns of communication that characterise teaching. Challenges arise when this mutuality is lacking, when the parties misunderstand each other or when one of them is not understood.

Here, a key aspect is how shared understanding is established in the conversation between teacher and student, which the review conceptualises as attuning. The concept highlights the importance of responsive and personalised communication, in which the teacher actively tries to connect with the student’s perspective. Attuning refers to the process in which participants in a conversation mutually adapt their verbal and non-verbal expressions in relation to each other to achieve a common understanding. This is like tuning a radio to the right frequency, where communication becomes clear and distinct when the participants are on the same wavelength.

Supporting student participation and learning

This section focuses on concrete ways in which teachers can boost the students’ active participation and learning as part of the vertical communication that characterises the teaching situation.

Adapting support to the student’s zone of development creates conditions for engagement and participation, which also enhances the student’s further learning. Targeting the student’s zone of development means a greater focus on the participation and learning that the learner is as yet unable to do independently, but which becomes possible with support from someone more experienced. Initially, this support is often extensive, but it gradually decreases as the student develops more independence. This type of support can both challenge and facilitate learning, such as through strategies like asking open-ended questions, simplifying and visualising content, modelling, providing time and space, and encouraging student initiative.

Overarching conclusion

This review aims to identify opportunities for supporting pupils with ID in the classroom in ways that enhance their participation and learning. The overarching conclusion of the review is that student participation and learning are shaped by how the interaction and communication between the teacher and student is shaped in practice – not solely by methodological choices or organisational frameworks. A balanced interplay of vertical and horizontal communication appears to be decisive, with the teacher’s responsiveness and teaching skills playing a central role. The character of the interaction, particularly the teacher’s communicative competence, provides the foundation for student participation and learning. The results actualise a professional challenge: teaching pupils with ID builds upon conscious and reflective practice, in which communication is not only regarded as a teaching tool, but rather as the fundamental structure on which student participation and knowledge development rest.

Utilising the results

The review offers teachers knowledge in the form of concepts, perspectives and strategies that can support them in analysing, understanding and, when needed, further developing their teaching. The results are generously illustrated with extracts from conversations between teachers and students in the studied situations, providing true insight into teaching students with ID. The end of each section of the results chapter has reflection questions that are linked to its content. These questions are intended to support teachers’ reflection on their teaching. They are suitable for discussing with colleagues, for example as part of joint planning or professional development. The questions focus on interaction and communication in the classroom, the dialogue between teacher and students, and are designed to be relevant regardless of the students’ age, level of intellectual disability, or the content of the teaching.

Selection of research

The review is a compilation of 15 research studies that were systematically selected after extensive searches in national and international research databases. Seven of the 15 studies were conducted in Sweden, six in the US, and one each in Ireland and New Zealand.

Project group

External researchers

From the institute