TU doctoral student researches special needs Education in the USA Insights into 35 schools in eight US states

With a focus on theory in practice, Lisa-Katharina Möhlen, binational joint doctoral student at TU Braunschweig and the University of Vienna, is spending six-month in the U.S. researching how lessons for pupils with particular needs are organized in the United States. She is comparing American guidelines, administrative practices, and teaching practices with those in Germany and Austria. Her research stay is made possible by a Fulbright scholarship and is carried out in collaboration with Adam Moore, Associate Professor of Special Education at the University of Rhode Island (URI).

Fulbright Fellow Lisa-Katharina Möhlen (left) spent a day at the Jamestown School Department, where Erica Dickson (right), Director of Student Services, welcomed her. Picture credits: Jamestown School Department/TU Braunschweig.

“Example of global partnership”

Möhlen met Adam Moore, an expert in special education teacher preparation, during his invited guest lectureship at TU Braunschweig in 2023. “It was wonderful to learn from Lisa about global practices that centre the needs of students with disabilities and start this extended collaborative partnership,” he said. “I’m humbled to mentor her during her Fulbright Fellowship.” Moore, a former special education teacher who has lived and taught in the Midwest and New England, said his own career has shown him first-hand how much variety there is to be found in how different communities approach special education. He is convinced that Möhlen’s journey across the USA will give her a comprehensive insight into the spectrum of special education programs – insights that can, in the long term, contribute to improving the educational opportunities of children worldwide.

Over the last year, Möhlen and Moore have collaborated on several projects examining global approaches to inclusion and supporting youth with disabilities, including a joint presentation to the Council for Exceptional Children in November 2024, funded by the DAAD project „Come in – go out“.

Danielle Dennis, dean of URI’s College of Education, said this next step will deepen the college’s established partnership with TU Braunschweig, which began three decades ago with URI’s College of Engineering. The partnership between URI and TU Braunschweig has since expanded to include other colleges, including the Feinstein College of Education. The College of Education and TU Braunschweig’s Institute for Educational Sciences also recently started a teacher exchange program funded by the German Academic Exchange Service. TU’s Vice President of Teacher Training and Professor of Education Katja Koch, who visited the URI campus in the fall of 2024, has been an integral part of expanding these reciprocal partnerships. Katja Koch, Vice President for Teacher Education at TU Braunschweig, visited the URI campus in fall 2024 and played a key role in expanding this collaboration: “I am very pleased about the intensive cooperation with URI and my colleagues at the Feinstein College of Education. I gained many great impressions from my visit there. In teacher education, we pursue the same goals and are concerned with the same research topics: ‘How do we design high-quality teacher education under conditions of increasingly heterogeneous learning requirements?'”

“Having Lisa Möhlen study with Dr. Moore is an example of how our global partnership with TU Braunschweig has evolved and grown over the last several years,” Dennis said. “URI’s Feinstein College of Education is expanding the scope and impact of this strategic partnership,” added URI Vice Provost for Global Initiatives Kristin Johnson. “This relationship offers exceptional global opportunities to students and researchers at both institutions.”

Covering American classrooms, coast to coast

Möhlen will be busy traveling between eight states spanning the country over the six-month Fulbright. In addition to Rhode Island, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Texas, Vermont, New York and Wisconsin are on the list to gain the most comprehensive impression possible of the various inclusive support programs in the USA. “I greatly appreciate the opportunity to collect international research experiences funded by Fulbright and the Doctoral School of Education, University of Vienna with travel expenses”, she emphasis.

She is looking forward to the opportunity to explore and compare the role of teachers as “policymakers on the ground” who facilitate learning environments that support every student: “I suspect that what happens in German and Austrian classrooms may look similar to what happens in America,” Möhlen said. “But still the administration, management, and organization of special education across our countries is very different.”

In addition to the school visits, Möhlen will discuss the German and Austrian systems in the area of special education with teacher training students, researchers and representatives from the fields of school policy and administration. In Texas, University of Texas Professor Jessica Reuter will host Möhlen as she visits schools around the greater Fort Worth area. “We are excited to support Lisa Möhlen in observing Texas schools during her Fulbright stay. The opportunity to learn about German and Austrian educational systems from her is equally appealing,” she said.

This June, Moore and Colleen Rossignol, the coordinator of Feinstein College of Education for global education and partnerships, will switch places with Möhlen. They are traveling to Germany to visit schools in Braunschweig and observe local special education practices. In preparation for this, a seminar for German and American students was co-designed by Moore, Möhlen, and Dr. Olga Fert from the Institute of Educational Psychology, which focuses on the social construction of disability in schools and society.

Adapted from a University of Rhode Island press release