Increasing Equity for Multilingual Students With Disabilities Through Critical Sociocultural Pedagogical Practices

• In Event: 73.060 - Roundtable Session 31
  In Roundtable Session: 73.060-1 - Bilingual Students with Special Needs

Abstract

Objectives
Multilingual students are often over- and underrepresented in special education (Artiles, Rueda, Salazar, & Higareda, 2005), placed in restrictive environments (de Valenzuela, Copeland, Qi, & Park, 2006) and typically receive English-only instruction with limited language support (Zehler et al., 2003). Further, general education teachers are not generally prepared to work with students who are multilingual (Lucas, 2011) nor for multilingual students with disabilities, which creates serious issues of equity for multilingual students with disabilities as well as their teachers. Therefore, this critical examination of the literature provides valuable insight about the preparation of general education teachers who work with multilingual students with disabilities.

Conceptual Framework
Hoover (2012) argues that teachers can reduce unnecessary referrals of multilingual students to special education by integrating sociocultural practices (defined by the five standards of effective pedagogy created by the Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence, or CREDE) into their instructional work. Hoover’s argument is compelling and complemented by the work of Teemant, Leland, and Berghoff (2014) who developed and validated an additional measure for the Standards Performance Continuum (SPC) (Doherty, Hilberg, Epaloose, & Tharp, 2002), an observation tool intended to capture the CREDE Standards in practice. The additional standard in the SPC, “Critical Stance,” focuses on teachers “teaching to transform inequity.” Using this “Critical Stance” standard, Teemant and Hausman (2013) found that when teachers engaged in this stance, it strongly predicted multilingual students improvement in English proficiency. Drawing on this work, we used these collective standards as a conceptual tool to interrogate the existing research literature on preparing general education teachers to work with multilingual students with disabilities, because of its attention to critical sociocultural instructional practices and critical pedagogy (Wink, 2011).

Methods and Data Sources
Grant and Graue (1997) argue that critical literature reviews can provide useful insights into current and past educational research practices as well as provoke “new and different analyses, inspire new visions, [and] invigorate debate” (p. 1). Similarly, Lather (1999) describes ways a literature review can be a useful critique that interprets and unpacks a problem as well as situates it historically and methodologically. Along these lines, this critical literature review sought to answer the following research question: What roles do critical sociocultural instructional practices and critical pedagogy play in the preparation of general education teachers to work with multilingual students with disabilities?

Results
We found that the body of research on the topic of preparing general education teachers to work effectively with multilingual students with disabilities is small and that critical sociocultural instructional practices are rarely utilized and promoted. We found that existing, effective programs were worth highlighting as models, particularly where there is a demonstrated impact on positive outcomes for students.

Scholarly Significance
This review provided a necessary, comprehensive road map of the field, historically and as a guidepost to direct future preparation that promotes equity for multilingual students with disabilities and their teachers. Our work provides timely insight about how our field can increase equity and opportunities for multilingual students with disabilities.

Authors

• Renee Greenfield, University of Hartford

• Kara Mitchell Viesca, University of Colorado - Denver

• Anne Oppenheim Davidson, University of Colorado