Examining Productions of Difference: Inclusion Discourses and Practices for English Learners and Students With Disabilities

• In Event: Implementation and Effects of Standards-Based Reform: A Five-Year, Five-State Study of the Multiple Levels and Dimensions of Ambitious Instructional Reforms

Abstract

Despite important historical differences in policy regarding the education of students with disabilities (SWDs) and English Learners (ELs), both student groups are included in federally mandated accountability reporting, which has accelerated the growth of inclusionary practices. Inclusionary practices are based on the premise that all children are entitled to be educated in the same, challenging, standards-based learning environment (Opretti et al., 2014). Though the inclusion term is derived from the special education field, in practice it is increasingly being applied to all marginalized students who have experienced segregated access to core education (Bagliere et al., 2011), including ELs. This paper seeks to understand the historical evolution of the concept of inclusion in federal and state policies for both ELs and SWDs to contextualize contemporary state, district, and school level discourses and practices of inclusion across a five-state sample.

We use policy discourse analysis (Allan, 2012) to examine federal and state legislation and identify discourses of inclusion as they apply to ELs and SWDs. We juxtapose these dominant discourses relative to contemporary discourses and practices of inclusion identified in interview data collected between 2016 and 2019 in Massachusetts, California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. We created a tiered (state, district, school) profile for each state summarizing recursive trends across interviewees in each tier.

Our preliminary analysis suggests three ways in which inclusion for ELs and SWDs is informed: messaging, capacity and information, and structures. Discourses of inclusion for SWDs have been premised on a history of legal compliance, with inclusionary practices conceived of as positive interventions necessary for student success. For ELs, discourses of inclusion have been closely tied to calls to frame language diversity as an asset, where solutions are framed as benefiting the collective. For both student groups, these discourses have been messaged through case law mandates and compliance policies. Our interviews suggest that the size of a district and their student composition greatly affect conceptualizations of inclusion. Lastly, our data points to structures such as school organization, segregation of students, as well as district and social structures as influential in the determination of what inclusion entails and the practices that support it.

At a time when the concept of “inclusion” is increasingly used to describe approaches to working with both ELs and SWDs, our study contributes a historical policy context in which to understand the emergence of this trend. Findings from our study also suggest that the operationalization of inclusion and inclusionary practices are informed by various factors that states, districts, and schools should consider if they are to create environments with clear inclusion goals and practices.

Allan, E. J. (2012). Policy discourses, gender, and education: Constructing women's status. NY: Routledge.

Baglieri, S., Bejoian, L. M., Broderick, A. A., Connor, D. J., & Valle, J. (2011). [Re] Claiming. Teachers College Record, 113(10), 2122-2154.

Opertti, R., Walker, Z., & Zhang, Y. (2014) Inclusive education: From targeting groups and schools to achieving quality education as the core of EFA. In L. Florian (Ed.), The Sage Handbook of Special Education (pp. 149-170). London: Sage.

Authors

• Erica Saldivar Garcia, New York University

• Katie Pak, The School District of Philadelphia

• Shira Haderlein, Mathematica

• Nelson Flores, University of Pennsylvania