Leveraging Improvement Science to Advance Inclusive Practices

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 8:00 am Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Criticality, Justice, and Liberation in Improvement Science (Table 1)

Abstract

Over the past decade, there have been a number of program and policy initiatives with the aim of improving family engagement and collaboration in schools. Nonetheless, despite the proliferation of such efforts, actualization of equitable collaborative family-school partnerships remains elusive. The issue is exacerbated in minoritized communities where deficit-based perceptions of involvement and engagement are culturally incongruent and pay little, if any, attention to the systemic nature of inequality embedded in routine school processes that ignore students' identity and intersectionality. While the challenge of collaborative family-school partnership persists, the impact is perhaps the greatest for children with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) and their families. Students with intellectual and developmental disabilities have historically been excluded from the general education classroom (Aniscow, 2020).

Our paper draws on an existing research-practice partnership (Farrell et al., 2022) with a fully inclusive charter school, where 75% of the student body identify as Latinx. Our aim is to challenge dominant narratives about minoritized families, particularly those that present misconceptions about families as uncaring or disinvested in their child’s success (Burke et al., 2021). We build on earlier research with parents from minoritized communities that suggest parents do not engage in the IEP process or parent teacher conferences for various reasons such as work constraints, language barriers, or childcare (Author, 2022). We draw on two approaches to support our collaborative design efforts: Community Cultural Wealth (CCW, Yosso, 2005) and improvement science (Bryk et al., 2015; Hinnant-Crawford, 2020). CCW as a framework is an alternative to standard notions of cultural capital (Yosso, 2005), concentrating on the typically unrecognized wealth of abilities, skills and cultural knowledge of minoritized communities. CCW serves as a bridge between families and schools, fostering improved relationships and systems. Our research aimed to meaningfully partner with schools to collaboratively design portfolios and artifacts used as part of student-led conferences and IEPs to advance learning outcomes for children.

Our core activity structure was the plan, do, study, act (PDSA) cycle (Bryk et al., 2015). Through these cycles, teachers used scientific thinking to plan and implement routine activities, assess and evaluate the degree to which their planned/implemented routine helped them achieve their goal related to increased family engagement and student self-assessment, as well as make decisions about necessary adaptations or adjustments to implement in subsequent PDSA cycles. Teachers implemented practices that were co-constructed collectively, developing a generalizable standard protocol to share within and across school sites, where other teachers and partners can make concrete adaptations based on local context (e.g., specific student needs, nuanced family engagement strategies, organizational structures). Students used technology to create portfolios that were used to lead conversations with families during parent conferences and, eventually IEPs. This practice allowed students to connect with their parents and school personnel in ways that were disruptive to the often-rigid nature of school conferences. Students openly expressed themselves, inspiring the adults to work towards equitable collaboration and partnership (Ishimaru et al., 2019).

Authors

• Maritza Lozano, California State University - Fullerton

• Rosalinda Larios, California State University - Fullerton