Education Commons^™

Equalizing Postsecondary Transition For At-Promise Youth Receiving Special Education Services: A Chance To Succeed, Karla R. Sanchez

Dissertations

Postsecondary transition can be difficult for At-Promise Youth Receiving Special Education Services (APYRSES). Special educators supporting postsecondary transition often manifest traditional and institutionalized forms of oppressive education while dismissing collective values and beliefs.

This qualitative case study examined the beliefs and attitudes shared by three special education teachers after being introduced to a justice-focused, humanizing intervention to facilitate postsecondary transition for APYRSES. The conceptualized intervention was grounded in liberatory educational frameworks and drew from critical, culturally affirming, sustaining, and humanizing theories that foster cultural reciprocity, self-determination skills, and antiracist social–emotional justice learning to afford opportunities for APYRSES to succeed. The …

Elementary Teacher Experiences With English Language Learners With Special Education Needs In New York, Colleen Ann Cahill

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative study aimed to understand teacher experiences working with English language learners (ELL) with or suspected of having a learning disability. This study also addressed the current problem of ELL students concurrently being under and over classified as needing special education services. This study explored the experiences of elementary school teachers in the state of New York. The participants were from different school districts within New York State. The participants all had experience teaching students who were designated ELL who were currently in the process of response to intervention (RTI) or had already been referred and classified as having …

Supporting English Language Learners With Disabilities In Special Education, Margaret Kramer

Master's Projects and Capstones

The number of English Language Learners, both appropriately and inappropriately, placed in Special Education has risen in the public education system. This requires Special Education classrooms to incorporate language acquisition opportunities into the child’s education, but the school systems are not currently prepared to provide this to the staff and students. There is a lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate curricula, limited collaboration between parents and teachers, and incomplete IEPs affecting students placed in Special Education and learning English as a second language. The purpose of the project is to address the needs of staff and families working with students …

The Heart Of K'E: Transforming Dine Special Education And Unsettling The Colonial Logics Of Disability, Sandra Yellowhorse

American Studies ETDs

This paper takes up the roles of ideology and spatiality as they impact Diné students and learners in understanding conceptions of normativity, neuro-diversity and bodily variance. I am concerned with how the movement and creation of Indigenous schools and their praxis still maintain and often times produce settler colonial ideologies of being, personhood, difference and ability. I illustrate the challenges that Diné planners and educators face in entrenching cultural knowledge and language into their educational initiatives, while some of the problematic manifestations and expressions of normativity present themselves through state polices, federal law and mainstream curriculum.

I focus on the …

Ways In Which Teachers Structure Reading Instruction For Bilingual Students With Disabilities: A Case Study Analysis, Nikki Phyllis Logan

Theses and Dissertations

In partial fulfillment of candidacy for Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, this research study uses a single case study design to answer the question, How do teachers structure reading instruction for bilingual students with disabilities in urban elementary settings? Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Theory and critical race theory guided the study design and data analysis of interviews, observations, and documents to determine that teachers of bilingual students with disabilities experience unique challenges. Findings of the study include the topics of disability blindfolding; disjointed delivery; improper instruction due to assessment and progress monitoring; spatial implications; definitions impact instruction; and teachers’ …