Expansive Learning in a Technical Assistance Partnership Focused on Literacy for Students With Disabilities

• In Event: Cultural-Historical Approaches to Study the Teaching and Learning of Students With Dis/Abilities

Abstract

This paper explores a partnership between a federally-funded technical assistance (TA) center and state education agency (SEA) in which the SEA invited center staff to join them as they convened a collective of school practitioners to identify and disseminate statewide promising practices for teaching students with disabilities, as a result of concerns with low reading achievement. Over time, center staff led a formative intervention (Engeström, 2011) with SEA administrators and collective participants. Broadly, the intervention contributed to expansive learning (Engeström, 2001) which re-mediated and expanded SEA and school practitioners’ notions of disability, as well as focus and features of promising practices. Herein, we primarily focus on intervention with and expansive learning of SEA administrators – co-authors of this paper – who engaged in collaborative innovation during and beyond the original partnership. At the heart of the intervention, TA center staff introduced and examined alongside administrators how notions of disability informed by Disability Studies in Education (DSE), as well as a cross-pollination (Author, 2016/2017) of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies (CSP; Paris & Alim, 2012) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL; Rose & Meyer, 2002) contributed to expansive learning when introduced into the collective’s activity system.

Drawing from CHAT, formative intervention, and expansive learning, we analyzed artifacts (i.e., notes, PowerPoint presentations, vignettes, and selected readings) first developed independently by SEA administrators, and then with TA center staff for four full-day professional learning sessions over one school year attended by 80 educators from throughout the state. We also conducted and analyzed three interviews each with three SEA administrators engaged in leading the collective. Finally, we analyzed planning documents and an online professional development module developed by SEA administrators informed by the formative intervention, but developed without facilitation of the TA center staff and to be rolled-out to educators statewide this year.

We found that, at first, notions of disability evidenced by administrators were both medically- and deficit-based: for example, resources they shared with educators during session one emphasized decoding and comprehension remediation, and the primary activity they facilitated at session two was brainstorming and sorting prescriptive and remediating practices; content and activities pointed to beliefs in static deficit-based learning and other characteristics inherent to students with particular disability labels. Relatedly, we detail partnership activities and artifacts introduced into each session, respectively: literacy as an emancipatory tool for historically marginalized students; DSE-based definitions of disability and related readings; UDL and CSP as curricular and instructional frameworks; and finally, a UDL/CSP cross-pollination and corresponding vignette.

The SEA administrators’ expansive learning was evidenced during their planning for sessions 3-4 and for a next phase of the collective that moved away from the original purpose toward understandings of disability reflective of Vgotsky’s understanding of an “incongruence between the individual’s psychological structure and the structure of cultural forms” (Bøttcher & Dammeyer, 2012, p. 433). SEA administrators continue to plan for engaging educators in examining cultural forms such as disabling functions of curriculum in local schools, and disruption through professional development efforts informed by DSE and the UDL/CSP cross-pollination (Author, 2016/2017).

Authors

• Kathleen King Thorius, Indiana University - IUPUI

• Barbara Novak, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

• Erin Faasuamalie, WI DPI

• Jayne Bischoff, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

• Maureen Negrelli Coomer, Indiana University - Indianapolis