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- All Subjects: Special Education
- Creators: Artiles, Alfredo J.
Description
The purpose of this study was to answer the following question, How does one's conceptualizations of misbehavior account for the way classroom misbehavior is constructed, interpreted, and negotiated between teachers and students? The literature on school disciplinary inequities from 2000 to 2010 was systematically reviewed. Utilizing qualitative research methods, this study drew insights from sociocultural theory and symbolic interactionism to investigate discipline inequities in moment-to-moment interactions between students and teachers during classroom conflicts. Fieldwork lasted approximately one school year and involved five male students and their two respective teachers. Data collection procedures included surveys, face to face and stimulated recall interviews, and direct and video observations. Findings revealed misbehavior is a ubiquitous notion in classroom everyday life; it is also malleable and dependent on contextual factors. In addition, classroom disciplinary moments between teachers and students are greatly influenced by intra and interpersonal factors. The situated intricacies and sophistication of teachers' and students' interpretations of negotiated classroom disciplinary moments are also reported. This study also sheds new insights into the situated nature of misbehavior as it arises from teachers' and students' sense making of classroom disciplinary moments and the findings have implications for teachers, school administrators, policy makers, students, and parents/guardians.
ContributorsNeal, Rebecca (Author) / Artiles, Alfredo J. (Thesis advisor) / Howard, Tyrone (Committee member) / Mathur, Sarup R. (Committee member) / Swadener, Elizabeth B (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
One of the critical imperatives for the development of inclusive school systems is the capacity to nurture and develop teachers who have the skills, critical sensibilities, and the contextual awareness to provide quality educational access, participation, and outcomes for all students; however, research on teacher learning for inclusive education has not yet generated a robust body of knowledge to understand how teachers become inclusive teachers in institutions where exclusion is historical and ubiquitous. Drawing from socio-cultural theory, this study aimed to fill this gap through an examination of teacher learning for inclusive education in an urban professional learning school. In particular, I aimed to answer the following two questions: (a) What social discourses are present in a professional learning school for inclusive education?, and (b) How do teachers appropriate these social discourses in situated practice? I used analytical tools from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Grounded Theory to analyze entry and exit interviews with teacher residents, principals, site professors, and video-stimulated interviews with teacher residents, observations of classroom practices and thesis seminars, and school documents. I found two social discourses that I called discourses of professionalism, as they offered teachers a particular combination of tools, aiming to universalize certain tools for doing and thinking that signaled what it meant to be a professional teacher in the participating schools. These were the Total Quality Management like discourse (TQM-like) and the Inclusive Education-like discourse. The former was dominant in the schools, whereas the latter was dominant in the university Master's program. These discourses overlapped in teachers' classrooms practices, creating tensions. To understand how these tensions were resolved, this study introduced the concept of curating, a kind of heuristic development that pertains particularly to the work achieved in boundary practices in which individuals must claim multiple memberships by appropriating the discourses and their particular tool kits of more than one community of practice. This study provides recommendations for future research and the engineering of professional development efforts for inclusive education.
ContributorsWaitoller, Federico R. (Author) / Artiles, Alfredo J. (Thesis advisor) / Kozleski, Elizabeth B. (Committee member) / Gee, James P (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The critical-thinking skill of problem solving needs to be part of the curriculum for all students, including those with learning disabilities living in poverty; yet, too often this is not the case. Too often students in poverty and students with learning disabilities are provided a curriculum that is watered down, focused on the basics, and aimed at managing their behaviors instead of helping them learn to think critically about their world. Despite their challenges, these students can learn to problem solve. Educators need to help students make connections between the critical-thinking skills learned in school and the problem-solving skills needed for life. One solution might be to use literature with characters facing similar problems, hold grand conversations, and teach them a problem solving method. Together, these three parts have the potential to motivate and lead students to better thinking. This action research study explored whether literature with characters facing similar problems to the study's participants, grand conversations, and the I SOLVE problem solving method would help students with disabilities living in poverty in the Southwestern United States develop the problem-solving skills they need to understand and successfully navigate their world. Data were collected using a mixed methods approach. The Motivation to Read Profile, I SOLVE problem-solving survey, thought bubbles, student journals, transcripts from grand conversations, and researcher's journal were tools used. To understand fully how and to what extent literature and grand conversations helped students gain the critical thinking skill of problem solving, data were mixed in a convergence model. Results show the I SOLVE problem-solving method was an effective way to teach problem-solving steps. Scores on the problem-solving survey rose pre- to post-test. Grand conversations focused on literature with character's facing problems led to an increase in students' motivation to read, and this population of students were able to make aesthetic connections and interpretations to the texts read. From these findings implications for teachers are provided.
ContributorsWells, Sheila (Author) / Zambo, Debby (Thesis advisor) / Hansen, Cory (Committee member) / Davidson, Carter (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This study re-frames learning disabilities (LD) through the emotion-laden talk of four Latina/o students with LD. The research questions included: 1) What are the emotion-laden talk of Latina/o students about being labeled with LD? 2) What are Latina/o students' emotion-laden talk of the idea of LD? I identified master narratives, the "pre-existent sociocultural forms of interpretation. They are meant to delineate and confine the local interpretation strategies and agency constellations in individual subjects as well as in social institutions," (Bamberg, 2004, p. 287) within the following literatures to inform my research questions and conceptual framework: a) historiography and interdisciplinary literature on LD; b) policy (i.e., Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)), c) the academic and d) social and emotional dimensions of LD; and e) student voice research with students with LD. Interdisciplinary, critical ethnographic and qualitative research methods such as taking into account issues of power, etic and emic perspectives, in-depth interviewing, field notes were used. Total participants included: four students, three parents and three teachers. More specifically, descriptive coding, identification of emotion-laden talk, a thematic analysis, memoing and intersectional and cultural-historical developmental constructs were used to analyze students’ emotion-laden talk. Emotion-laden talk about being labeled with LD included the hegemony of smartness, disability microaggressions, on the trinity of LD: help + teachers + literacy troubles, on being bullied, embarrassment to ask for assistance from others and help as hope. The emotion-laden talk about the idea of LD included LD as double-edge sword, LDness as X, the meaning of LD as resource, trouble with information processing, speech, and silence, the salience of the intersection of disability, ethnicity and language and other markers of difference, struggles due to lack of understanding and LD myths. This study provides a discussion and implications for theory, research, policy, and practice.
ContributorsHernández-Saca, David Isaac (Author) / Artiles, Alfredo J. (Thesis advisor) / Connor, David J (Committee member) / Prior, Matthew T. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
The focal educational problem of practice in this dissertation is how one special education teacher mediated reading comprehension with a diverse group of students, including English learners (EL) with learning disabilities (LD). I selected this problem of practice because of the documented difficulty and complexity of effective teaching to provide integrated EL and LD support. There is a lack of reading comprehension research that centers on the interactive processes between teachers and students who are EL with LD (ELsWLD) and students with LD in small group contexts and intermediate grades. To answer the research questions, I used observational research methods. I examined one teacher’s practices with 5th-grade ELsWLD and LD students in reading small-group instruction in an elementary school in a major city in the southwestern region of the United States. Data analysis procedures included systematic analysis of video-based recordings and instructional transcripts to map student and teacher participation. The analysis centered on teacher mediation of student learning and how the teacher’s talk varied with students. Findings: (1) The teacher mediated reading comprehension through instructional routines for comprehension strategy and vocabulary instruction using independent reading and guided reading of text. (2) Student practice opportunities included integrative, elaborative, and metacognitive processes when reading for connections to text, questioning the text, prediction, and imaging. (3) Throughout, the teacher maintained an authoritative stance and a position as an expert through the overuse of questions for all students, and the question density (number, frequency) which limited student practice opportunities. (4) The teacher’s talk with students varied concerning with whom she used Accountable and Assertive Talk and produced uneven engagement as the teacher primarily used Dialogic Questions for students she viewed as stronger readers.
This research has potential implications for scholars and practitioners as it raises questions requiring teachers and researchers to consider the questions used in small-group comprehension discussions, how teachers ask questions, and the density of questions. Other implications include methods to map teacher talk and the use of a critical dis/ability literacy teaching stance.
ContributorsSalinas, Sarah M (Author) / Artiles, Alfredo J. (Thesis advisor) / Dorn, Sherman J. (Thesis advisor) / O’Connor, Brendan (Committee member) / Ferrell, Amy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Special education identification processes related to English language learners (ELs) in the United States have puzzled the field for decades. The phenomenon of referrals, the first step toward identification, is complex since it requires deciphering the root cause of students’ learning struggles—e.g., second language (L2) factors, the possibility of a learning disability (LD), or the combination of multiple other influences. To investigate the various influences contributing to learning difficulties, I centered this study on three potential sources, individual, institutional, and interpersonal. I aimed to answer, how did sociocultural influences mediate a teacher’s understanding of ELs’ competence? How did sociocultural influences mediate whether a teacher referred ELs to special education services? Using a cultural-historical theoretical approach, I sought deeper theoretical and empirical understandings into how institutional factors (e.g., tiered intervention contexts, policies), combined with other influences, mediated ELs’ referral decisions. I used a multiple parallel case study design following two fifth-grade ELs who faced the possibility of a referral. Interested in the interpersonal domain (e.g., interactions and communication among people), I zoomed in to a local process, student-teacher conferences to examine how classroom processes shaped teachers’ thoughts of students’ competence, and ultimately, referral decisions. I video-recorded teacher-student conference sessions over 14 weeks, and audio-recorded viewing sessions of the recorded conferences to understand teacher and student interpretations of learning competence. To understand how other dimensions (individual and institutional) contributed to teachers’ overall views about the student competence, I interviewed parents and school personnel, wrote observational field notes, and examined archival documents related to student learning over the entire fifth-grade year. I used inductive and iterative qualitative analytical approaches to craft the findings. My findings reaffirmed the complexity involved in finalizing ELs’ referral decisions. I found cultural factors intertwined with structural forces, driving students’ special education candidacies in divergent directions: one evaluated (LD); the other, retained. I also found the referral decisions were based on narrow understandings of learning and behaviors, lack of attention to students’ L2 needs, and faulty and overpowering structural forces which undermined teacher’s professional opinions about the referrals. These findings have implications for research, practice, and policy.
ContributorsAlvarado, Sarah Lopez (Author) / Artiles, Alfredo J. (Thesis advisor) / Graham, Steve (Committee member) / Martinez, Danny C. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
This mixed methods action research study explores the impact of a multilevel intervention on retention indicators of special education induction teachers and the leadership capacities of the special education induction coaches and coordinator. The purpose of this investigation was to understand the impact of developing and implementing an action research study on three different levels of participants the special education induction coaches, teachers and me. A theoretical framework based upon Bandura's (1977, 1982) work in Social Learning Theory, and in self and collective efficacy informs this study. The conceptual framework developed based upon the tenets of Authentic Leadership Theory and special education mentor programs inform the development of the intervention and data collection tools. Quantitative data included results collected from the Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ), Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ), and the Special Education Induction Teacher Questionnaire (SEITQ). The qualitative data included results collected from the SEITQ open-ended questions, Email Reflective Response (ERR), organic and structured focus groups, fieldnotes, and the Teachers' Final Letter. Findings include: a) I changed as a leader and a researcher, b) the special education induction coaches began to think and act as leaders, c) the special education induction teachers' retention indicators increased, d) by actively participating in the co-construction of the special education induction program, both the coaches and the teacher provided valuable insights as pertains to developing a program that supports special education induction teachers. Implications and next steps are discussed.
ContributorsImel, Breck (Author) / Wetzel, Keith (Thesis advisor) / Ewbank, Ann (Thesis advisor) / Davidson, Carter (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012