The Stanford Accelerator for Learning is welcoming Christopher J. Lemons as the next faculty director of the initiative on Learning Differences and the Future of Special Education (LDI). LDI is focused on conducting high quality research that improves outcomes for people with disabilities and learning differences, collaborating with educators and researchers across disciplines including medicine, law, general education, neuroscience, and computer science.
A faculty affiliate of the Accelerator since 2022, Lemons studies reading and other academic interventions for learners with intellectual and developmental disabilities. He is a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) and co-director of Stanford’s Down Syndrome Research Center.
Formerly a special education teacher who worked in a preschool autism unit, an elementary resource and inclusion program, and a middle school life skills classroom, Lemons decided to become a researcher in order to support educators and have an even broader-scale impact on students.
“All my research is purely grounded in the classroom…the classroom is the most important thing,” he said. “I try to never forget being a teacher as a researcher.”
He also works directly with learners; this summer, he led a two-week post-secondary program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. “I think in our world, we often look at people with a disability and think that they're less than, or we need to fix them, or we need to improve something,” he said. “When you see the world through the eyes of young adults with Down syndrome or autism, you realize there's nothing to be fixed with them. There's something that needs to be fixed with our world. The joy and the ability to not give up, and try to help each other – those are things that really inspire me.”
Under his leadership, LDI will continue to build a community of faculty, students, and staff across Stanford committed to improving the lives of people with learning differences. Core projects include:
- Expanding the Para Pro Academy, which supports paraeducators by training them in evidence-based teaching practices, to include special ed and classroom teachers who work with paraeducators;
- Working with teachers to develop co-teaching models for inclusive education in Santa Clara Unified School District through LDI’s research practice learning partnership;
- Building on the Down Syndrome Research Center’s summer program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities to envision what a four-year, residential academic program at Stanford for these learners could look like;
- Bringing together tech developers, advocates, educators, researchers, and people with learning differences to explore how AI can equitably serve learners of all abilities.
Dan Schwartz, GSE dean and the Halper Family Faculty Director of the Accelerator, which includes five additional initiatives that address some of the biggest opportunities and challenges in education, is hopeful about the next era of the Accelerator’s work in learning differences, and looks forward to robust, cross-campus collaborations that exercise all of Stanford’s disciplinary strengths.
“The university is lucky to have a scholar of Chris’s stature leading these efforts,” he said. “His vision for the Learning Differences Initiative echoes the big ideas that underscore the Accelerator's theory of change. His understanding of inclusive design as a catalyst for better technology and stronger educational equity for all learners is inspired by decades of classroom experience, and rooted in science and research.”
“LDI is focused on improving the lives of people with disability,” said Lemons. “It’s super fun and joyful, spending your time thinking: can I wake up today and go to work and do one thing that improves the world for a person with a disability? And if I can do that, it was probably a day well spent.”
