Closing the Educational Achievement Gap for Students With Learning Disabilities

Florence Nyemba , Ph.D., is an adjunct professor at the University of People where she instructs graduate level courses in the Master of Education (M.ED) program. She is a social justice advocate and has done extensive research in global education and educational inequalities among minority populations. She broadly focuses on promoting educational equity for minority, immigrants, children, and vulnerable youths. Dr. Nyemba has experience in qualitative methodologies, participatory action research and culturally relevant pedagogies. Rufaro Audrey Chitiyo holds a Ph.D. in Exceptional Learning. She specialized in Young Children and Families and her research areas of interest include child abuse and neglect and other types of family violence that affect young children. She is also interested in how individuals bounce back from adversity and how professionals take care of themselves in order to thrive personally and professionally. Rufaro is currently an assistant professor of human development in the School of Human Ecology at Tennessee Technological University. She teaches family violence across the lifespan, cultural competence, research methods, middle childhood and adolescent development, developing professional resilience, social policy for children and families, family stress management, advanced applications of counseling techniques, and normative and catastrophic issues in families.