Journal of Intelligence

This study explored how mathematics teachers in Chinese special schools provide instructional support to primary-aged students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). The types, characteristics, and classroom implementation processes of such support were identified to address a gap in the literature regarding subject-specific instructional practices in special education settings. A qualitative research design using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was employed. Five mathematics teachers from special schools in Shanghai participated in the study. Data were collected through 15 video-recorded classroom observations and five semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify key patterns of instructional support. The analysis revealed five core domains of instructional support for students with IDD: (1) comprehension facilitation through simplified explanations, real-life connections, and visual scaffolding; (2) responding to tasks involving prompts, modeling, and hand-over-hand support; (3) maintaining attention using individual and collective cues; (4) sustaining motivation through praise, encouragement, and second-chance opportunities; and (5) regulating behavior such as verbal restraint, physical proximity, and attention redirection. The findings contribute to a deeper understanding of effective instructional support tailored to students with IDD.

This study leverages longitudinal data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS, 2012–2020) to examine the association between teacher support and cognitive ability among children aged 10–16 living in economically disadvantaged rural areas of China. Employing a difference-in-differences (DID) framework, we found that exposure to the Rural Teacher Support Program (RTSP) is associated with an improvement of about 0.19 standard deviations in students’ cognitive abilities after accounting for individual-, family-, and county-level characteristics. Two key mechanisms appear to underlie this association, reflected in increased teacher quantity and enhanced student satisfaction with teachers. Heterogeneity analyses further show that these benefits are more pronounced among female students and those from low-income households, suggesting that teacher-centered institutional improvements may help mitigate developmental disparities. Overall, the longitudinal results indicate that better teacher-related environments are likely to support children’s cognitive development, which in turn may help reduce educational inequality in under-resourced areas.

Spatial cognition refers to the mental processing, perception, and interpretation of spatial information. It is often operationalized through self-assessments like sense of direction and mental rotation ability or field-based real-world tasks like pointing to a specific building and wayfinding; however, the former and latter entail unclear ecological validity and high participant burdens, respectively. Since the advent of smartphones, this repertoire has been extended substantially through the use of sensors or apps. This study used a large longitudinal experience sampling method (ESM) in two different countries (Canada and Australia, N = 217) and analyzed spatial cognition both conventionally (i.e., sense of direction and speeded mental rotation test) and through new techniques like self-rated and objectively assessed daily Google Maps usage, movement patterns throughout the 14-day assessment phase (using H3 tiles for geolocation), and a Point North task. The Point North task objectively assessed deviation from the celestial direction, North, by using smartphone compass sensors. In both countries, spatial orientation was found to be associated only with the Point North task, while no significant associations were found for daily Google Maps usage (subjectively and objectively measured) and moving distance throughout the assessment phase. Although further validation is required, the Point North task shows promise as an objective, ecologically valid, and easily employable smartphone-based measure for assessing spatial cognition in real-world contexts.