The Dangerous Politics of Difference: How Systems Produce Marginalization

• In Event: An International Symposium on the Practice of Inclusive Education: From Teachers to Systems

Abstract

Objectives
In this paper, we examine how systems construct and maintain notions of worthiness and in doing so support sifting and cataloguing. The collateral damage includes estrangement and marginality.
Theoretical Framework
Systemic improvement is predicated on deep understanding of sociocultural, historical as well as psychological perspectives. Human systems like organizations and institutions function as a result of specific practice that is organized into rituals, routines, and cycles of activity. Social reproduction can be said to be part of the cultural work of systems but systems have a dynamic of their own that is constantly negotiated and mediated. Smaller activity cycles influence how larger cycles operate and vice versa. The people within these activity arenas respond and act producing activity that accomplishes particular outcomes or goals. Thus, systems may be said to be reciprocal and responsive to the people, practices, and policies that exist within these activity arenas.
Power and privilege is accrued by some at cost to others. Funds of knowledge and talents that exist within communities accumulate lives of their own beyond individual lives, careers, and aspirations so that some ways of being, performing, achieving are valued while others are discarded. Systems are created formally and informally and regulate interactions and transactions to maintain order, stasis, and predictability. In doing so, some kinds of knowledge and knowledge development is rewarded while other forms of knowledge and knowing languish.
Methods
We have collected data from an educational system within the United States (US) in crisis. One of its students committed suicide due to bullying and harassment. Our work involved engaging adults and students alike in the aftermath of this tragedy to uncover with the people in the system how a pervasive and extensive atmosphere of harassment and bullying developed historically and persisted. We observed classrooms, interviewed students and adults, and led a series of learning seminars based on the data to deepen understanding and develop a strong systemic approach to changing the social conditions that exist in the school system.
Results
We report the results of the on-going work and theorize how notions of difference are layered like sediment, one on top of another, so that distinctions between and among students and adults used to hold systems accountable for outcomes of historically marginalized students may place the burden of reform on individuals rather than on the accumulation of power and privilege embedded with the structure of the educational system itself.
Significance of the study or work
Systems can be viewed as the site of cultural activity fraught with the complexities of informal and formal authority, challenged by social networks for change, and intersected by fractals of race, class, ability, language, spirituality, gender, and power. This work may shed light on how schools and school systems can design their systems to engage their participants in understanding how sets of seemingly small incidents accumulate over time to permit and perhaps encourage oppression. We hope to explore ways in which counter narratives and activity cycles can strengthen prevention and recast response to difference.

Authors

• Elizabeth B. Kozleski, The University of Kansas

• Alfredo J. Artiles, Ph.D., Arizona State University