Individualizing Instruction for Students With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities in China: Teachers' Perceptions and Practices.

Huang et al. (2023) interviewed 24 Chinese special-ed teachers and looked at their lesson plans.

The kids had intellectual or developmental disabilities and were in elementary self-contained classes.

The team wanted to know how much the teachers really tailor lessons to each child.

Every teacher said, "Yes, I individualize," but the plans told a different story.

Most lessons were whole-group with small surface tweaks like giving easier worksheets.

Teachers said individualizing is hard, takes too much time, and they lack training.

Subramaniam et al. (2023) watched K-2 special-ed rooms and saw the same thing: only 61 % of math time was real teaching, the rest was crowd control.

Chung et al. (2019) looked at U.S. high-school inclusion classes and found students with IDD got teacher attention only 10 % of the time.

The two studies seem opposite—one shows no tailoring in China, the other shows minimal contact in U.S. inclusion—but both point to low-quality engagement for the same kids.

Sturm et al. (2024) add that Ontario places more students with developmental disability in separate rooms, echoing the structural barriers these teachers face.

If teachers say they individualize but really teach to the middle, kids with IDD miss key skills.

You can fix this without big money: give teachers a simple daily data sheet, pick one target skill per student, and use 2-minute probes.

Start small—one kid, one lesson, one adaptation—and build from there.