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Guiding Principles in Teaching and Research

Chair of Developing and Evaluating School-Based Interventions for Students with Learning Disabilities

Our mission

Children and adolescents with learning difficulties are, nationally and internationally, by far the largest group with special educational needs. Whether they learn to read, write and calculate confidently largely determines their educational opportunities and participation: at school, in the transition to vocational training and work, and beyond. At the same time, their situation at school has changed fundamentally. Many of them now attend mainstream schools, many grow up multilingual, and a considerable number have substantial support needs that have never been formally identified.

As a chair at the Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation, we see our task in developing effective interventions for these learners, testing their effectiveness under real school conditions, and carrying this knowledge into teacher education and school practice.

Principles

  • Evidence orientation: Decisions about interventions should be based on the best available empirical evidence, not on tradition, conviction or educational fashions.
  • Practical relevance: Our research questions arise from everyday school practice. Interventions must prove themselves under the conditions of real classrooms.
  • Methodological rigour: We choose designs that fit the research question and report our results transparently, even when they do not match our expectations.
  • Openness: We publish in peer-reviewed journals, open access wherever possible, and present our findings for discussion nationally and internationally.

Research

Our research focuses on interventions in reading, writing and mathematics, as well as on assessment, multilingualism and the transition from school to vocational training and work. We understand our work as translational research: we consider an intervention proven only when it not only works but can also be implemented reliably by teachers in regular classrooms. Methodologically, we rely mainly on controlled single-case experimental designs, which allow intervention effects to be tested in small and heterogeneous groups. We complement these with group comparisons, meta-analyses, latent profile and transition analyses, and qualitative and mixed-methods approaches. Many of our studies are conducted in close cooperation with schools.

Teaching

We are responsible for the area of learning disabilities in the degree programme “Master of Education: Teacher Training for Special Educational Needs”. Most of our students will later teach in inclusive settings, often under considerably more difficult conditions than only a few years ago. The aim of our teaching is therefore a scientific mindset: teachers who look to current research for solutions to problems in their classrooms, examine findings critically and apply them to their learners. In our courses, students work with current research literature, including literature in English. For us, good teaching is inseparable from our own research: we teach the topics we research ourselves and involve students in ongoing projects through their Master’s theses.

Early-career researchers

We supervise doctoral and other qualification projects, involve early-career researchers in research projects and publications from an early stage, and give them access to our national and international networks.

International networks

The chair is firmly embedded in international research on learning disabilities. Prof. Dr. Matthias Grünke chairs the Publications Committee of the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities (IARLD) and Vice-President of Learning Disabilities Worldwide. In July 2027, the chair will host the annual conference of the IARLD in Cologne.

Members of the chair are involved in editing the following journals:

Knowledge transfer

Well-established knowledge about effective interventions should also reach practice beyond the university. Practice-oriented publications contribute to this, such as the volume Interventionen bei Lernstörungen (Lauth, Grünke & Brunstein, 2025), as do our cooperation with schools in our studies and the assessment centre for students with dyslexia.

Team

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