Future-Making Systemic Design to Address Racialization of School Discipline

• In Event: Expanding Universal Design for Learning With Justice-Based Approaches

Abstract

Purpose
Overrepresentation of students of color with and without disabilities in exclusionary school discipline (e.g., suspension) is a historically accumulating debt at the intersection of racism, ableism, and other forms of oppression (Ladson-Billings, 2006; Annamma et al., 2022). Given the ever-changing local dynamics, de-contextualized equity remedies may have limited impacts in disrupting obdurate educational inequities (Artiles, 2019). To develop localized solutions, Learning Lab, a community-driven systemic design intervention, was implemented at an urban Middle School in the 2021-2022 academic year. This study investigated how school stakeholders designed a culturally sustaining and universal design for learning (UDL) support system to address racial disproportionality in school discipline.

Theoretical framework
Educational researchers and practitioners have enriched the UDL paradigm by cross-pollinating with anti-racist and culturally sustaining pedagogies to achieve justice in the opportunity to learn (Fritzgerald, 2020; Waitoller & Thorius, 2016). The paradigmatic expansion emphasizes honoring and leveraging students’ intersectional identities and cultural assets to fulfill cultural recognition, recruit students’ interests through increased authenticity of learning, and minimize stereotype threats (Waitoller & Thorius, 2016). Learning Lab aims to empower local stakeholders by amplifying their experiential knowledge and political imaginations for designing locally meaningful solutions (Bal, 2011; Bal et al., 2018). In Learning Lab, school stakeholders examine systemic challenges and develop new solutions for the systemic transformation.

Methods and Data
Two school administrators, four general and special education teachers, two parents of color, and one support staff of color participated in the systemic design process. Members had eight sessions, which began in November 2021 and ended in May 2022. Data sources were video-recorded Lab sessions and artifacts (e.g., behavioral response plans). To analyze data, this study used two coding cycles. In the first coding cycle, I conducted inductive coding with multiple methods (e.g., process coding, in vivo coding) (Saldaña, 2016). I used a pattern coding strategy in the second coding round to thematically categorize the coded data (Miles et al., 2014).

Findings
School internal data disaggregated by race and disability categories, local history of racial integration (e.g., busing policy), and residential patterns by race and household income were used to develop Lab members’ historicized, intersectional, and spatial lenses. With a situated understanding, Lab members collectively interrogated systemic challenges embedded in existing tools, rules, roles, and practices. Members employed the existing behavioral response plan and members’ experiential narratives as mediating artifacts to facilitate epistemic inquiry into the systemic breakdowns. Deficit-oriented ideologies, punitive school culture, broken relationships with families and communities, and lack of preventive support were identified as systemic challenges. Members utilized culturally sustaining UDL-informed design artifacts (e.g., guiding questions) and their cultural assets and expertise to collaboratively develop a culturally sustaining, inclusive new support system. The new system focused on (1) preventive and restorative support strategies; (2) organizing a culturally responsive and inclusive learning environment; (3) family and community engagement; (4) expanded support for students of color and students with disabilities.

Significance
Learning Lab can be a future-making activity to materialize transformative conceptual frameworks such as Culturally sustaining UDL into designing schoolwide inclusive support infrastructure.

Author

• Dosun Ko, Santa Clara University
  Presenting Author