Challenging Special Education Assessment Policy in Public Schools in Ontario, Canada

• In Event: International Scholarship and Perspectives on/for Educational Advocacy

Abstract

Purpose: Why do some students in Ontario’s public schools wait years to have their special education needs identified while others don’t wait all (Gallagher-Mckay & Kidder, 2014)? The purpose of the proposed paper is to present findings from research that examined how People for Education (P4E), a CBO in Ontario, Canada, has engaged in the struggle over special education assessment policy in Ontario and explain how its efforts are constrained by cultural discourses and the policy’s contexts.

Theoretical Perspective: The study views the social world, including policy, as discursively constructed. Thus, changing policy requires changing dominant policy discourses. Policy actors bring about discursive changes through argumentation (Fischer & Gottweis, 2012) including struggles over the meaning of policy. Policy meanings are mobilized through discourses. Discourses are theories of “how this bit of the social world works and ought to work” (Fulcher, 1999, p. 9). Different theories produce different ways of understanding a policy issue and different responses to it. Groups use discourses as both “tactic and theory” (Fulcher, 1999, p. 9). That is, they mobilize discourses that reflect their theories of how the social world works using a range of rhetorical strategies in their efforts to change policy. Importantly, the discourses and strategies available to groups are limited by broader cultural discourses (Fischer, 2003) and the policy’s social, political, economic, and historical contexts.

Methods & Data Sources: First, 65 texts produced by P4E, teacher unions, and the Ontario government or published in Canadian newspapers between 1996 and 2015 were analyzed using rhetorical analysis (Winton, 2013) to determine how P4E has attempted to influence the meaning of special education assessment policy. Rhetorical analysis involves establishing how the problem is defined and examining the rhetorical canons of invention, disposition, style, memory, and delivery (Leach, 2000). Next, academic articles, books and media reports were used to construct an historical narrative of the political, economic, cultural, and historical contexts of special education in Ontario. The narrative was then consulted to understand how P4E’s change efforts have been constrained by the policy’s contexts.

Findings: P4E constructs special education assessment policy as a set of practices that perpetuate inequity between students from different classes, regions, and abilities. P4E combines its own survey findings with others’ research to show that access to special education assessment wait times are a widespread and, at times, growing issue across the province. P4E’s research reports include quotes to demonstrate the differential impact on schools and promote feelings of anger, sympathy, and injustice. Contextual influences that have constrained P4E’s ability to influence special education assessment policy include: 1) neoliberalism, especially its emphasis on individualism and self-determination; 2) increased privatization of public education; 3) regional variation in access to psychologists; and 4) education funding.

Significance: The study offers new ways to think about how groups influence policy. Rather than focusing only on formal decision-makers, groups must engage in struggles over the meaning of policy. The findings highlight the importance of responding to cultural discourses and a policy’s context as part of actors’ change efforts.

Authors

• Sue Winton, York University

• Lauren Jervis, York University