What Can Teachers Do to Better Support Students With Disabilities?

• In Event: Co-Constructing Systemic Support for Sustaining Humanizing and Inclusive Computer Science Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives:
Approximately 7.2 million children with disabilities attend public K-12 schools (NCES, 2022) and most of these learners are in general education classrooms. Given the proliferation of K-12 CS education, students with disabilities must be included in the discourse around increasing access to K-12 CS education. However, the little existing data showcases that students with disabilities are not included in K-12 CS education to the same extent as their peers, especially when disaggregating this data by disability categorization (Fancseli & Israel, 2021). Who decides whether students with disabilities are included in K-12 CS education? What knowledge, skills, and mindsets do teachers need to have in order to meaningfully include students with disabilities in K-12 CS education? What is the role of preservice CS teacher preparation in developing these knowledge, skills, and mindsets?

Perspective:
Meaningfully including students with disabilities requires advocacy, accessible materials, equity-focused mindsets, and knowledge of how to implement effective instructional practices (Israel, 2021). These approaches include Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and High Leverage Practices (HLPs). Alongside pedagogical approaches common within K-12 CS education, preservice teachers should be exposed to these frameworks. However, it is important to consider how to scaffold these practices, especially when considering that most students in CS teacher preparation programs are new to both CS education and inclusive practices such as UDL and HLPs. Thus, it is important to consider cogntive load (Sweller, 2011) and scaffold learning of both CS and inclusive instructional practices.


Methods/Data:
Our work takes place at a large public University with a CS teacher preparation program. This program includes a CS pedagogy course that includes modules addressing both UDL and HLPs. Students iteratively design lesson plans in which they apply the pedagogical practices. They also submit pedagogy reflections and engage in online discussions about these pedagogical practices. Data sources include the lesson plans, reflections, and discussions.

Results/Findings:
Our experience indicates that students in our CS teacher preparation program that are new to both CS education and to inclusive practices often struggle with applying UDL and HLPs in their lesson plans. The iterative nature of the lesson planning assignment allows for feedback and refinement in application of UDL and HLPs.

Scholarly Significance: Assignments that require teachers to apply new knowledge in multiple domains can be challenging. It is important to scaffold new CS education learning and support new teachers in applying equity-focused instructional strategies, receive feedback, and reflect on their practice. Thus, there must be a balance between scaffolding new CS learning, opportunities to apply that knowledge within lesson plans, and reflect on feedback.

Conference theme:
This research centers CS teacher preparation on approaches hat disrupt current approaches that exclude students with disabilities and examines ways of reflecting the lived experiences of students with disabilities within this context.

Author

• Maya Israel, University of Florida
  Presenting Author