IDEA provides essential guidance and legal support for students with disabilities, yet its conceptual and systemic framework tends to promote a focus on student deficits. Thus, teachers and IEP team members may have low expectations of students with disabilities and fail to encourage the development of their talents. Lisa DaVia Rubenstein, Charles Sandifer, and Robyn Spoon propose the adoption of a conceptual framework known as the axiom of brilliance, which assumes students are brilliant. To meet students’ needs in their areas of brilliance, they recommend that educators adopt a more holistic approach that purposefully identifies student strengths and uses that information to design appropriate learning experiences.
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