Developing a Passion for Learning: An Interview With Dr. David Rose

: Your biography on the CAST website refers to you as a “developmental neuropsychologist and educator.” Which came first? Did neuropsychology lead you into education or were you an educator first, who then became interested in neuropsychology? How did these two worlds collide for you?

: I was an educator first (and last!). As the dutiful son of a very hard-working minister, my first experience as a teacher was during high school when I was “volunteered” as an assistant Sunday School teacher. I don’t believe there is any evidence that I was any good at it and I doubt if any lives were saved. During college, I volunteered each year as a teacher/counselor in an afterschool program for immigrant children hosted by the East End Settlement House in Cambridge, Massachusetts (it still exists!). That experience, plus my parent’s vocations (my mother was a superb first grade teacher) bent me along the path toward education.

The Reed teacher education program that you describe seems a lot like some of the alternative route to licensure programs that are popular today, albeit with mixed results and not without some controversy. Any thoughts?

It might perhaps be noted that the Reed MAT program was apparently well suited for me: with a strong background in the learning sciences, but not in typical content areas (like English or History), I was able to focus my preparation on WHAT to teach rather than HOW to teach. That certainly seemed right at the time but in retrospect it would be fair to say that I knew a lot more about teaching rats and pigeons than human adolescents. The science of learning and the science of teaching are not completely overlapping and I would hope that modern programs provided a better background in the science of teaching than I ever got. On the positive side, I had great mentoring in how to build relationships with my students, something that would provide the emotional basis for all of my teaching later. The biggest benefit of the MAT program, however, came from meeting the lovely Ruth Walker—a fellow apprentice teacher of English. A year later we were married. This past summer we celebrated our 50th anniversary.

You voice some pretty strong language denouncing racism you encountered within a school system many years ago. Considering the tone of the diversity narrative today, are you optimistic about how our educational system views minority students and diverse learners, especially those with disabilities?

I would say that the racism and ableism continue but with less virulence and explicitness. And I think there has been progress. But justifying that view would take too long an answer here I think.

As a person who is clearly an academic at heart, how is it that you were not pulled into the more traditional path of academe through the professoriate.

Before completing my doctorate, I was offered a wonderful full-time position at Tuft’s Department of Child Study. While I had not envisioned an academic career, that offer was too exciting to pass up, and it gave me an opportunity to explore an academic career. After a few years, I found that it was not “immediate” or “intimate” enough: I could only affect the students I most cared about through intermediaries. The students at Tufts, the intermediaries, were all very capable and well resourced. They were going to do fine whether I showed up or not. I found myself longing for a more direct relationship with the students I most wanted to help. After 5 years, I took a leave of absence from Tufts to explore whether a more clinical path would provide the right balance. That led to neuropsychology.

What was it that led you into working with individuals with disabilities, especially those with learning challenges such as learning disabilities? Many leaders in the field can point to an early association with someone, often a family member or friend with a disability, that set them down their professional pathway. Was it like that for you?

: Actually, there was no specific family or friend that focused my attention and effort on people with disabilities. Instead, my experience as a teacher, at every level I taught, taught me how diverse my children were. What was disturbing was that schools were much better prepared and designed for some of them than for others. The kids for whom schools were least prepared suffered the most (those with traditional physical, sensory, or intellectual disabilities) but many others were canaries in the mine: their “learning disabilities” signaled that there was not enough “oxygen” in schools. Over time, and especially during the work at CAST, I began to focus on the disabilities of schools rather than students, and especially on the role of practices that disabled and handicapped those children that were most vulnerable.

There is a lot of information available about your accomplishments over the past 35 years with CAST, but not much before that. Who was the pre-CAST David Rose?

: The pre-CAST David Rose would have been diagnosed (even by myself) as ADHD and would have been completely invisible on the Web (had it been invented then) for lack of productivity. I knew I wanted to work in education, and specifically in teaching the most vulnerable children, but I couldn’t find or maintain a single focus. As a result, I meandered along a distractible pathway that only makes sense in reverse. That pathway included stops along the way as a teacher (noted previously), as an academic researcher (my thesis title was Dentate Gyrus Granule Cells and Cognitive Development: Explorations in the Substrates of Behavioral Change!), as a university assistant professor (Tufts Department of Child Study), as a clinical psychologist, as a child neuropsychologist, and finally as the director of The Medical and Educational Evaluation Clinic at a local children’s hospital. After all that meandering, CAST saved me from a life of ruin—it was just right for people with ADHD because it changed all the time. I did keep one steady job for 35 years—teaching at Harvard—because, well, I always wanted to be a teacher.

Who had the most influential impact on your career? Who did you call for help, guidance, or to affirm your ideas, theories, and conclusions over the years?

: By far the biggest impact on my career came from three remarkable friends and colleagues I first met at North Shore Children’s Hospital: Anne Meyer, Skip Stahl, and Grace Meo. All three of them were senior clinicians with a great deal of experience—much more than me—in teaching and evaluating students with a wide variety of learning and emotional disabilities. Together, the four of us (and one other clinician named Linda Mensing who left the country) grew restless with the relative impotence of our own recommendations. We thought our neuropsychological evaluations were as good as anybody’s but in the final analysis our recommendations seemed neither powerful nor transformative enough. Our visits to schools confirmed our low opinion: Mostly what kids got from our evaluations were new labels. But for many children, those new labels only led to minor improvements in their overall prospects or experiences in school.

You are now retired from your responsibilities at CAST. How is that going for you? Is there anything that you would have liked to accomplish that didn’t get done?

: I have said many times that I am now in the early stages of failing to retire. The issues that lured me to education, and to disability, still loom as both important and unfinished. I find myself being drawn back into several projects—a book about emotional development and an emerging interest in applying UDL to aging and dementia. The latter interest needs no explanation, especially on days when I struggle to remember what day it actually is. I wish we had reached a point where UDL was so ubiquitous that it was essentially invisible.

Other than the inception and successful creation of CAST itself and your many awards, what is it that you are most proud professionally?

: I am most proud that CAST has survived the transition to new leadership (the founders are now retired)—and that it is a hearty organization with a future. I am also proud that my courses at Harvard have also survived the transition—now taught by Jose Blackorby and Lis Hartmann (two wonderful colleagues who have notably improved the course, and made it a more innovative example of UDL in practice). I was also informed that Harvard will be incorporating UDL into a foundational course for all incoming Master’s students, another healthy sign.

Expanding the scope of our discussion now, and looking especially to things that matter most, what has been the most important event, policy, or technology innovation during your professional career that has had the greatest impact on the community of individuals with disabilities? Conversely, what has been the greatest disappointment?

: All of the founders of CAST, including me, used to think that policy work was for losers, losers who couldn’t teach. Over time, we all came to see what a powerful lever policy work could actually be. Policy work is not enough, of course, but I still see that IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and its revisions, the formulation of NIMAS (National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard) and the concept of print disabilities, and the inclusion of UDL in the Higher Education Act all had positive impact that lingers today.

: Looking back, not necessarily at your own career, but at the accomplishments in the field of special education technology and all the related innovations for individuals with disabilities, are you satisfied with the progress that has been made? Do you see a positive trend line for more innovations in the future?

: Of course, the proper response is something like: Compared to what? Nonetheless, there seems little doubt that there has been very positive progress. When I think of other large-scale movements around equity or injustice, it seems that the progress in special education and especially special education technology matches up very well (think about the comparative pace of progress in civil rights around race or gender inequities, etc.)

As you know, Intervention in School and Clinic is a research-to-practice publication designed to provide teachers and clinicians with strategies for implementing research outcomes directly into their classrooms and clinics. Has the field done a good job in implementing what we have learned about teaching and learning with technology? How do we improve that aspect of what we do?

: Change is hard. Everyone knows that. Changing implementation is harder still. Everyone knows that. The hardest thing in medicine wasn’t to teach doctors that washing their hands between patients is important, the hardest thing has been to get them to actually wash their hands. I think the UDL principles seem germane here. To change implementation, we have to do three things, not one. First, provide the knowledge needed. Second, provide the strategies needed. Third provide the motivation needed. The last one is the hardest, and by far the most important.

What would you have to say to someone who wants to follow in your footsteps?

: Don’t.

: You are clearly joking here, we hope! Are there still pioneering paths such as you have taken available for bright young educators and learning psychologists today?

: It will come as no surprise—from a UDL perspective—that I don’t think it is a good idea for anyone to try to follow someone else’s path. Everyone’s optimal path will be different. The important thing is not to follow a path but to discover/develop a passion for learning in some domain that will motivate you to bushwhack a path of your own, even through very uncertain terrain. Developing (and nurturing) that passion is not only important for you, but for your students. That is because what students most need to see in their teacher is their passion for learning—whether it is neuroscience, art, music, oceanography, history, or teaching itself. That will encourage and sustain them in finding their own path to expert learning.