Educational Practices, Speech and Language Services and Policy for Multilingual Learners with Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Dear Colleagues,

The increasing mobility of populations, migration, and multilingualism worldwide have transformed educational systems, resulting in a growing number of multilingual children in today's classrooms. Alongside this shift, there is increasing recognition of the need for equitable educational identification, assessment, and support for multilingual learners with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). While multilingualism itself is not a risk factor for NDDs, children from linguistically diverse backgrounds continue to face significant barriers to accurate identification and appropriate educational and speech and language therapy services within school settings. Identification, assessment, and instructional practices remain major challenges across multilingual educational contexts. Assessment tools used in schools are frequently developed and validated in dominant languages, particularly English, limiting their applicability to linguistically diverse learners. Similarly, instructional and support practices are often designed around monolingual student populations and may not adequately address the language and learning needs of multilingual students with NDDs. These challenges are compounded by a shortage of multilingual educators and speech and language therapists, limited culturally responsive assessment and teaching resources, insufficient teacher preparation, and inadequate school-based intervention approaches.

This Special Issue aims to present and disseminate recent advances in the educational identification, assessment, and instructional support of multilingual learners with NDDs. Bringing together research from education, speech and language therapy, psychology, and related fields, we welcome contributions addressing culturally and linguistically responsive approaches to identification, assessment, instruction, inclusion, and service delivery across diverse educational systems.

Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Culturally and linguistically responsive identification and assessment of multilingual learners with NDDs (e.g., Autism Spectrum Disorder, Developmental Language Disorder, ADHD/attention-related disorders, learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities) across languages and educational systems.
• Challenges in identifying NDDs among multilingual students in schools.
• Adaptation, translation, and validation of educational assessment and screening tools for diverse linguistic learner groups.
• Assessment practices and educational decision-making by teachers, speech and language therapists, and other professionals for multilingual students with NDDs.
• Inclusive instructional and curricular approaches for multilingual learners with NDDs.
• Differentiated instruction and classroom accommodations for multilingual students with NDDs.
• Teacher and speech and language therapist knowledge, training, and professional competencies in multilingual special education.
• Collaboration among schools, families, speech and language therapists, and communities in multilingual educational settings.
• Collaborative models between speech and language therapists and classroom teachers in multilingual educational settings.
• International and cross-cultural comparisons of educational policies and practices for learners with NDDs.
• International and cross-cultural comparisons of policies and practices for learners with NDDs.

Dr. Ioanna Talli
Dr. Elena Theodorou
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• multilingual learners
• multilingual education
• neurodevelopmental disorders
• culturally and linguistically diverse populations
• early screening
• identification
• culturally responsive assessment
• inclusive education
• educational practices
• speech and language therapy
• school-based services
• evidence-based interventions