Surviving inclusion : a critical discourse analysis of a middle school co-teaching relationship

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, 2010.Since the passage of PL 94-142, also known as the Education of All Handicapped Children Act, in 1975, special and general educators have been urged to work together to improve the education of children with disabilities through increased access to the general education curriculum. Over the years, the evolution of a collaborative approach to educating students with disabilities has resulted in the increased implementation of co-teaching as a service delivery model and a significant change in the role of the special educator. Co-teaching in inclusive education has been a topic of interest in academic research for more than 10 years and much of the existing research has been limited to exploring programmatic conditions for success or failure in collaboration and co-teaching and developing models of exemplary co-teaching practice. Despite the prevalence of these models and the research evaluating their efficacy, implementation of effective co-teaching in inclusive classrooms, particularly secondary level remains largely elusive. In this dissertation, I use critical theory and critical discourse analysis to theorize my research, as it allows for the examination of aspects of co-teaching that go unnoticed in traditional models and evaluations of co-teaching. In looking at co-teaching through this critical lens, I hope to begin a conversation about the importance of considering discursive aspects of teacher practice as a way to complement current models of practicing and evaluating co-teaching practice. In conducting a study of this nature, I sought to explore the discursive aspects of co-teaching that were immanent in the co-teachers’ language and actions. Foucault’s critical theories on discourse, power, dominance, and construction of the subject formed the theoretical basis for this study. Derived significantly from Foucault’s conceptual work, Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis provided a complementary methodology to structure the majority of the analysis. Specifically, in the first phase of this study I studied their interactions at the local level of the classroom, the institutional level of the school district, and the societal level of governmental policy and legislation. The next phase of analysis extended on the first by exploring the patterns of dominance in the power relations between the two teachers. Finally, this study examined seven critical theoretical concepts that were prominent in the data- discourse, the institution, identity, inequality, ideology, agency, and historicity. Taken together, the three phases of analysis in this dissertation represent an in-depth examination of the co-teachers’ professional relationship from a critical discursive perspective unlike any other study of co-teaching currently published. The participants in this qualitative case study included a New York State certified special education teacher and a New York State certified secondary math teacher who were assigned as co-teachers for a class of students with and without special education needs. Data for this study came from field notes and a series of videotaped interviews and observations involving the co-teachers, which were subsequently transcribed and coded for analysis. Extensive qualitative coding was used to locate patterns and themes in the data. The three phases of critical analysis presented in this study revealed that what superficially appeared to be a successful inclusive co-teaching relationship was in fact a marginalizing and exclusive arrangement for the teachers and students alike. However, this marginalization was not a conscious attempt to exclude Val or the students with IEPs from the educational benefits of Keith’s general education math class. Rather, Val and Keith both resorted to traditional special education practices of segregation in an attempt to ensure their own survival as well as that of the students with IEPs in an educational environment that prioritized uniformity, high-stakes testing, and traditional conceptions of normalcy

Becoming foreign language teaching assistants: a case and action research study of a university course

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Rochester. Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, 2014.This dissertation examined how seven foreign language teaching assistants changed their pedagogical approaches to language teaching. The teaching assistants participated in a six-week course design to support them in understanding language teaching and reflective practice. The teacher for the course used a constructivist and collaborative approach to encourage the teaching assistants to use similar approaches in their own teaching. Data on how the teaching assistants’ thinking and practice changed came from reflective journals, teaching narratives, classroom observation notes, interview transcripts, and the researcher journal. Sociocultural theory, social constructivism, and second language theories of acquisition are used as lenses to analyze and interpret how the teaching assistants build on prior learning experiences to acquire new knowledge and skills. The study revealed that the foreign language teaching assistants face many challenges in becoming reflective university teachers. Most had little experience teaching, immigrating to a new country and higher education system challenged some, and several received little formal support from the department in which they were teaching. Therefore, the research supports recommendations for university foreign language departments to develop formal, structured systems to support their teaching assistants in becoming comfortable in their new situations and more reflective about what and how they teach

Re-politicizing higher education and research within neoliberal globalization.

This article shows how universities, like education and social services in general, are increasingly pressured to adopt neoliberal principles that encourage privatization, entrepreneurship, standardization, assessment, and accountability. The authors examine recent efforts in the United States to develop measurement and accountability systems that commodify higher education, and show how they reflect a neoliberal rationale that undermines the historical purposes of higher education, reduces faculty autonomy, and harms the common good. However, they propose ways in which assessment and accountability might be implemented in higher education so as to promote teaching and learning responsive to the interests of students, faculty, the university, and wider communities

Parents’ musical habitus and its effects on a child’s involvement in an elementary orchestra program

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Rochester. Warner School of Education, 2017.Since the implementation of the New York State Common Core Standards, two primary problems have arisen for elementary instrumental music teachers. First, instrumental music teachers’ time to work with students is diminishing. The demands of the rigorous curriculums developed to teach the Common Core Standards create a climate where English Language Arts and Math have precedence over all other subject areas. Music is a core subject in New York State but how it appears in the school day can vary from school district to school district. Second, students are assigned so much more homework causing parents to have reservations about engaging them in other activities but many still involve their children in music. These parents have a set of acquired dispositions of thought, behavior, and taste regarding music or a musical habitus (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992; Rimmer, 2006). This study identifies and explores the musical habitus of parents of students at a K-5 elementary school within a large economically diverse suburban school district in upstate New York. General music classes are part of each elementary school’s master schedule and families have the option to participate in an elementary band or orchestra program. Specifically, the author seeks to understand the musical habitus of parents whose children are participating in the elementary orchestra. The analytical and theoretical framework used by the author for this research is grounded in Bourdieu’s (1986, 1992) theory of capital, with a focus on his notion of habitus and Epstein’s (2010) theory of overlapping spheres of influence. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus has been extended into the arts in general and to music in particular to examine the way in which people’s individual histories, class origins, family backgrounds and educational opportunities interact to compose their ongoing relationship with the arts. Rimmer (2006) describes a musical habitus as an active, adaptive and generative action in sustaining musical meanings, and the structures in which they are embedded. Epstein’s work focuses on one part of Bourdieu’s concept of field by uniting home and school for the families involved. Understanding the level at which these three areas must interact will be a focus in the analysis of data. Together, they served as a lens to understand the musical habitus of the parents and why music is valued. This study challenges orchestra directors and administrators to understand why parents encourage and perpetuate their child’s participation in instrumental music when balancing the daily schedules of their students

Pre-service career and technical education teachers’ perceptions of their subject matter and learning to teach it : an action research study

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Rochester. Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, 2012.Our nation’s public schools have been given the task of preparing our students for success in college as well as future careers. Determining how to best prepare future teachers is not an easy task, and the current state of public education has had an impact on what it takes to be a successful teacher. Involving pre-service career and technical education (CTE) teachers in research on their student teaching experiences should help them in their student teaching and future teaching careers as well as aid CTE teacher educators in the preparation of future CTE teachers. With those goals in mind, the following two main research questions guided this study: 1. How do pre-service CTE teachers perceive CTE? 2. How can CTE teacher educators support pre-service CTE teachers in negotiating the differing messages regarding CTE? Four graduate business and marketing education students who completed their student teaching practicum experiences during the fall 2011 semester participated in this study. Using action research, the researcher employed written surveys, individual interviews, group discussions, participant reflection journals, and a researcher reflection journal to collect data. A grounded theory methodological approach guided qualitative analysis of the data to determine emerging themes that directly address the goals of the study and the research questions. Through interaction with the data three themes emerged that represent the perceptions of pre-service CTE teachers and what CTE teacher educators must understand to support pre-service CTE teachers: 1. Pre-service CTE teachers appreciate and advocate for CTE. 2. Pre-service CTE teachers lack understanding as to why others do not value CTE. 3. Pre-service CTE teachers are students first and teachers second. The concept of self-efficacy, as a part of social cognitive theory, serves as an ideal theoretical framework to analyze the findings because it contends that people are agents who have control over their behaviors and will act according to their best interests. Analyzing the data through this lens provides the opportunity to evaluate the impact of the study on the participants, the researcher, and other key stakeholders