Mediating Shifts in Special Education Teachers' Figured World: An Approach Toward Inclusive Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: Toward Advocacy and Inclusion for In-Service Teachers

Abstract

We examine special educators’ professional identity emergence and shifts within a researcher-facilitated teacher learning community. We introduced tools to evoke and challenge inequities in educational systems and via which participants’ examined and planned instruction for students with dis/abilities. Initially, professional identity emerged as the performance of pathologizing and relatedly, remediating students. Over time, participants expressed tensions as they engaged tools to examine structural limitations and design of more universally accessible instruction; figured worlds shifted toward critical sense-making about how they were positioned by general education colleagues, structural barriers in schools, and procedural identity performance tied to investigating student assets. Findings indicate potential of purposefully designed artifacts to mediate special educators’ re-positioning and thus, development as (more) inclusive educators.

Authors

• Kathleen King Thorius, Indiana University - IUPUI

• Pat Rogan, Indiana University - Purdue University at Indianapolis