Dive Brief:
- Researchers out of the University of Texas at Dallas believe they have found a way to help low-income students catch up academically to their higher-income peers.
- The team has published a paper in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience explaining the results of a study that found cognitive intervention sessions, such as group interactive exercises and written activities, helped students from lower-socioeconomic backgrounds and with lower pre-test scores achieve gains as high as wealthier peers.
- The study, which indicates students in poverty can overcome learning deficits, runs counter to a lot of research that says the brains of students from low-income backgrounds are developing slower than their peers.
Dive Insight:
Dr. Jacquelyn Gamino, who spearheaded the study, believes the cognitive intervention strategies could be deployed in middle and high schools throughout the United States. When describing the process of the interventions, Gamino told The Huffington Post: “We start by helping them focus on what’s most important by deleting what’s least important, we help them chunk information … get them to think at a higher level.”