"It's Hard to Take School Seriously When It's Not Taken Seriously at Home": Dismantling Pathologizing Stories About Families

• In Event: Toward Inclusive and Equitable Education: Disrupting Deficit-Based Positioning of Families and Students Labeled With Dis/abilities

Abstract

Purpose

In pursuit of inclusive and equitable educational systems, it is crucial to understand the nature of teacher-parent relationships, specifically educators’ perspectives toward and engagements with the students of color labeled with dis/abilities and their families. The purpose of this research project was to: (a) examine the teacher discourse about students of color labeled with dis/abilities and their families; and (b) identify ways in which educators conceptualized parent involvement in schooling, especially families of students of color labeled with dis/abilities.

Theoretical Framework

This research project was informed by the cultural-historical activity (Engeström, 1999) and decolonial (Mignolo, 2011) theories which provide epistemic tools to critically examine educators’ stories and question educators’ taken-for-granted assumptions toward students of color labeled with dis/abilities and their families. The decolonial theory reminds us that stories are not value free. They reflect the hegemony of the dominant group, and, thus, produces ignorance in regard to the Other (Maldonado-Torres, 2007). Cultural-historical activity theory emphasizes the importance of history to situate what is perceived as “different” within systems of social interactions, culture, and language to understand the degree to which systems create or pathologize access and for whom (Artiles & Kozleski, 2007).

Methods and Data Sources

The educators’ stories were collected as a part of the larger project aimed at understanding the roles school professionals play in designing inclusive communities. Two phenomenological individual interviews, twelve hours of classroom observations, and four individual video-recall interviews were conducted with each of five special and four general education teachers from one of the U.S. elementary public schools. A ground theory approach was employed to analyze collected data.

Results

The iterative data analysis revealed that a dominant teacher discourse about students of color labeled with dis/abilities and their parents/caregivers was deficit oriented. Educators believed that students’ observed challenges with academics and behavior were due to lack of parent involvement in child’s education. In this way, educators negatively objectified the “Other”, reinforced the “us/them” binary, and removed a responsibility to support those students and shifted it solely on the parents.

Scholarly Significance

Teachers are powerful actors in policy making and their position within the school system can be the most influential in advancing the rights of families and students who have been labeled as being “different” (Waitoller & Kozleski, 2013). By knowing how teachers situate themselves and appropriate their knowledge and practices when engaging with the families of students of color labeled with dis/abilities provides opportunities to identify narratives that might pathologize students and families. This paper disrupts educators’ deficit-based conceptualizations and seeks to (re)frame the teacher discourse and cultural practices to embrace and celebrate the cultural capital of students and families who have been historically marginalized in the U.S.

Author

• Inna Stepaniuk, Simon Fraser University