The Center for Inclusive and Special Education

The Center for Inclusive and Special Education is dedicated to supporting educators to build inclusive learning communities where all students are valued. The Center collaborates on projects that reconceptualizes education as a construct to create greater equity and social justice. The center was created with the goal of developing understandings and promoting the knowledge needed by educators to improve the teaching of all students especially students with exceptional learning needs.

The center seeks to create alliances among families, schools, and communities that will enhance learning and development for every child, adolescent, and adult. Through forums, coursework, research, and conferences, the center disseminates information to ensure an equitable education for all students. Examples of our research and development include an arts integration for inclusion, dismantling the school to prison pipeline, strategies for restorative justice, creating trauma sensitive learning environments, assessment of bilingual students with a disability, the role of poverty in schooling, and strategies for challenging times.

As part of our ongoing commitment to the development of safe, equitable and inclusive schools, the center continues to host the Lesley Institute for Trauma Sensitivity (LIFTS).  LIFTS provides a certificate in trauma and learning, executive coaching, best practice convenings, graduate research teams, and a virtual networking hub. In collaboration with the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, the center has developed tools that promote whole child teaching and whole school change. LIFTS partners with many districts throughout Massachusetts and is expanding our reach nationally and internationally.

The Center for Inclusive and Special Education and special projects are supported by Lesley University Graduate School of Education, the Oak Foundation, the Morgridge Family Foundation, the Van Otterlloo Family Foundation, and district partnerships.