Katharine Beals

Katharine Beals has a PhD in linguistics and is an adjunct professor in the Autism Program at the Drexel University School of Education, where she designed two of the program’s five courses. She also teaches courses on autism at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She specializes in language and literacy acquisition in autism, language technologies for autistic individuals, educational challenges for students with autism, and the problems with Facilitated Communication as an intervention in autism. She is the designer of the SentenceWeaver, a comprehensive linguistic software curriculum for language-impaired students with autism, a contributor at FacilitatedCommunication.org, and also an autism parent. Her publications on education and autism include pieces in the Atlantic, Education News, Nonpartisan Education Review, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.