Funneling, Buffering, and Rejecting: How Instructional Coaches Mediate Special Education Policy

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Nine
  In Roundtable Session: Talking Teachers: Analyzing Motivations and Crises (Table 5)

Abstract

This study examines how special education instructional coaches (SEIC) at two elementary schools informed special education policy enactment. Leveraging theoretical and methodological aspects of the comparative case study (CCS) approach, this work asks how and why SEICs—-a position constituting a policy in and of itself-- subjectively enacted their roles. I then examine how these enactments shape policy-driven aspects of special education teachers’ work. I find that differences in role structure between schools influenced how SEICs took up their work. These separate enactments then variably impacted who addressed aspects of school-based special education policy and how these policies were enacted in practice.

Author

• Helen Rose Miesner, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
  Presenting Author