According to Arrowsmith Young, her methodology is based on research into the principle of neuroplasticity, which suggests that the brain is dynamic and constantly rewiring itself.

[2] The program has been incorporated into other public and private schools in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand,[3] but has drawn skepticism and criticism from several cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists.

[6] Barbara Arrowsmith Young remains its director and owner as she does of a second, smaller branch in Peterborough, Ontario which opened in 2005.

[3] Both branches saw increasing numbers of students from outside Canada following Arrowsmith Young's 2012 speaking tour to New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom to promote her book The Woman Who Changed Her Brain.

The Eaton Arrowsmith School subsequently established further branches in British Columbia at Victoria in 2009 and White Rock in 2012.

[13] According to the Arrowsmith School's official website, the program can be used by children and adults with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and dysgraphia who have at least average intelligence, but it is not suitable for people who have an autism spectrum disorder or an acquired brain injury.

[2][5] In their 2015 audit of 15 remedial programs for specific learning difficulties for the New Zealand organization SPELD,[a] George Dawson and Stephanie D'Souza gave basic descriptions of the nineteen areas of cognitive processing which the Arrowsmith Program is intended to improve as well as descriptions of some of its remediation exercises.

[16] The deficit areas for which Dawson and D'Souza were able to provide basic descriptions of the Arrowsmith remedial exercises included: In their report, Dawson and D'Souza describe the remediation exercises for nine out of the nineteen areas as "vague", "not clear" or unspecified in Arrowsmith Young's book.

[16] These include: At the conclusion of the audit Dawson and D'Souza noted that evidence for the program's efficacy is documented via testimonials from some of the students and their parents and in several research reports, although none have been published in peer-reviewed academic journals.

The chapter also includes several brief case histories of children and adults who Doidge says were significantly helped by the program, although no quantifiable data is presented.

This has centered on the lack of scientific evidence used by the program to demonstrate its efficacy and on its underlying rationale which its critics say represents an oversimplification and misapplication of neuroscientific concepts.

[4] Coinciding with Barbara Arrowsmith Young's speaking tour of Australia in 2012, the Catholic Education Office in Sydney announced that it would begin a pilot study involving 20 learning disabled students in their last two years of high school who would be offered the Arrowsmith Program for two years beginning in 2013.

Dr Emma Burrows, a neuroscientist at the Florey Institute in Melbourne, and cognitive scientists Anne Castles and Max Coltheart at Macquarie University pointed out that the "evidence" supporting the program's claims of success was anecdotal rather than based on studies using randomized control trials and published in peer-reviewed academic journals.

[25] In Canada, neuroscientist Adele Diamond and cognitive psychologist Linda Siegel—both based at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver—have expressed concerns similar to those of Castles and Coltheart.

A portion of Siegel's highly critical commentary was removed by the documentary's producers prior to broadcast after Arrowsmith Young's lawyers threatened the CBC with a lawsuit for libel.