The Center for Inclusive and Special Education

The Center for Inclusive and Special Education grew out of an initiative to improve the teachings of every student by focusing on learner-centered equitable practices with educators across the globe. Guided by values of respect, solidarity, innovation, transformation, kindness, and justice, the Center dedicates its research, scholarship, and collaboration to advancing equity, advocating for learning environments that promote different ways of knowing, learner-centered instruction, and creative, restorative problem solving.

The Center seeks to eradicate the inequities in education and stimulate learning ecologies that are safe, creative, trauma-sensitive, and inclusive. In doing so, the Center creates and supports coursework, research, and scholarship efforts that aim to address the achievement gap such as an arts integration for inclusion, dismantling the cradle-to-prison pipeline, strategies for restorative justice, assessment of bilingual students with a disability, the role of poverty in schooling, strategies for challenging times, and creating trauma-sensitive learning environments.

The Center hosts 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 (TLPI), 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. To advance the development of safe, supportive, trauma-sensitive environments, LIFTS works directly with school districts to help educators understand the dynamics of acute and chronic trauma, its adverse effects on learning, and how trauma-sensitive schools can benefit all children. In our work with a growing number of local and global school districts, we have witnessed remarkable outcomes such as fewer office referrals, fewer suspensions, stronger classroom communities, and better support networks for educators.

The Center is supported by Lesley University Graduate School of Education, the Oak Foundation, the Morgridge Family Foundation, and district partnerships.