Q&A: Kathy Ewoldt is committed to improving outcomes for students with learning disabilities

JUNE 5, 2025 — Kathy Ewoldt, assistant professor of special education in UTSA’s College of Education and Human Development, is a lifelong learner. A special education researcher for more than eight years, Ewoldt’s work has focused on improving the academic outcomes of students with learning disabilities and English learners.  

Her work has been published in Teaching Exceptional Children, Dyslexia, Learning Disabilities: A Multi-Disciplinary Journal and The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching. She is also the co-author of the book “Service Animals in Schools: Legal, Educational, Administrative, and Handling Aspects.” 

UTSA Today spoke with Ewoldt to learn about her work with students with learning disabilities and what’s next in the field of special education.

What drew you to the field of special education? 

KE: I chose special education because everyone can learn, and I enjoy the dynamic and responsive nature of teaching: we are learners in the process. We learn what works and what does not for individual students — a beautifully complex puzzle where every component matters. Educators become like detectives, determining effectiveness and tailoring adjustments as needed. We develop our skillsets with a wide variety of evidence-based practices that can be tweaked, intensified, or abandoned to try a completely different practice.

Meeting students where they are and helping them grow in ways that are meaningful to them is both challenging and inspiring. I especially enjoy the ‘aha’ moments — when understanding clicks into place.

“Meeting students where they are and helping them grow in ways that are meaningful to them is both challenging and inspiring.”

Kathy Ewoldt

In what ways can educators improve academic outcomes for diverse learners in higher education? 

KE: Improving academic outcomes for diverse learners in higher education requires a nuanced understanding of both instructional design and learner variability. As students transition from child and adolescent ways of learning to adult learning needs, learning overlaps and also shifts from content delivery to facilitating self-directed, meaningful learning experiences. This begins with clearly identifying the essential learning outcomes and then designing instruction that is both accessible and flexible.

A deep understanding of the core components enables us to tailor instruction in ways that remove barriers and support students in achieving the intended learning outcomes. Some interventions for adolescents are also effective for adults. For example, for students with processing or language difficulties, modelling and using visuals are evidence-based practices for elementary and secondary students that can also be utilized in higher education.

Tell me about your latest research teaching paragraph writing skills to students with learning disabilities and to English learners? 

KE: My paragraph writing intervention applies reverse engineering design principles into teaching small groups of students how to write informative paragraphs. More than just “Begin with the end in mind (Covey, 1989)”, reverse engineering adds learning the function and the importance of the whole, for each deconstructed step in a process. It involves asking not only, “What is the previous step in this process”, but also adding “Why is this step important to my overall goal?”

It also incorporates using a graphic organizer to help reduce the cognitive load, which is an evidenced-based practice used for students with learning disabilities. My graphic organizers have a structured labeling system that has evolved from text-based visual cues to color- or shape-based cues. I’ve implemented it with different groups of students in 3rd through 8th grades and with a variety of different challenges to learning. In the latest iteration, nine to 11-year-old students had dyslexia and/or ADHD, but were monolingual learners. We found that students can make drastic improvements in their writing proficiency in as little as four to five lessons, which is much quicker than typical strategies that can take weeks of training and intervention.

What are you working on now? 

KE: As I continue to refine reverse-engineered instruction, I am also collaborating on interdisciplinary projects with professors at UTSA and other institutions. These projects include adapting a vocabulary intervention for secondary multilingual learners, developing a meanings-based screen reader that increases computer programing accessibility for students who are blind and mentoring emerging scholars who are investigating the intersection of special education and English language acquisition.

What is an important development in your field that’s not getting enough attention?  

KE: I'm not sure that nobody is talking about it, but one emerging issue that I feel warrants more attention is equipping students with disabilities for success with utilizing artificial intelligence (AI). AI holds immense potential! It can personalize learning and enhance accessibility, but equipping students to be evaluative is essential. As educators, we must ensure that students are independent, critical consumers capable of discerning quality, bias and relevance of AI outputs.

— Michelle Gaitan