Disability and Equity in Education Commons^™

Unshackling Our Youth Through Love And Mutual Recognition: Notes From An Undergraduate Class On School Discipline Inspired By Ta-Nehisi Coates And Bell Hooks, Gene Fellner, Mark Comesañas, Tahjuan Ferrell

Publications and Research

This research essay challenges educators to embrace mutual recognition when interacting with students. Our data are the words of the young people who participated with us in one particular undergraduate class on school discipline at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, in the United States in the fall of 2022. Tahjuan, who had been our student in the 7th grade in 2011, co-taught the class with us. In writing this essay and in teaching the class, we were inspired by a short passage fromTa-Nehisi Coates about the shackling young people of color endure and another, by bell hooks, that proposes …

Defining Twice Exceptional Learners: A Study Of Self-Concept, Alyssa D. Landau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 2014, the first operational definition of twice exceptional (2e) learners was published in Gifted Child Quarterly to provide a clear and identifiable profile of the population (Reis, Baum, & Burke, 2014). The article defines 2e learners as, “students who demonstrate the potential for high achievement or creative productivity in one or more domains such as math, science, technology, the social arts, the visual, spatial, or performing arts or other areas of human productivity AND who manifest one or more disabilities as defined by federal or state eligibility criteria” (Reis et al., 2014, p. 222-223). Publishing an operational definition of …

Developing Inclusive Partnerships Between Home And School, Kristen Dumoulin

Open Educational Resources

Without question, families are the cornerstone of educational planning. They are the people who know and love their child the most, and over time they will be the most consistent member of the educational team.

Perspectives Of Students With Asd And Their Parents: What Does It Truly Mean To Be Included?, Keara M. Browne

Theses and Dissertations

Though there are a number of practices identified by researchers and other professionals as inclusive, the question remains about whether the students themselves truly feel included. There has been limited research surrounding specific experiences in inclusive classrooms that students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) perceive to be facilitators and barriers to being included in general education and co-teaching settings. The purpose of this study was to inform educational policies and school practices surrounding the inclusion of students with ASD in general education and co-teaching settings by analyzing the perceptions of students with ASD and their parents to determine what it …

Deserving To Belong: Complex Narratives Of Working And Learning In Self-Contained Spaces, Emily B. Clark

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Using the tools of narrative, discourse, and visual analysis, this study examines the sensemaking of educators and former students who work(ed) and learn(ed) in self-contained special education settings. In three individual interview sessions (and one final sensemaking session), I interviewed fourteen educators and nine former students who work(ed) and learn(ed)in different kinds of self-contained settings within the New York City public school system.This project is not about a specific school, as self-contained classrooms exist in different configurations and locations throughout the city and the country. To protect the participants, all names and references to specific schools and programs have been …

Academic Literacy For Deaf Postsecondary Students Through Integrated Reading And Writing Instruction, Sue Livingston

Publications and Research

Based on theoretical findings from the literature on the integration of reading and writing pedagogies used with hearing postsecondary students to advance academic literacy, this article offers a model of instruction for achieving academic literacy in developmental and freshman composition courses composed of deaf students. Academic literacy is viewed as the product of acts of composing in reading and writing which best transpire through reciprocal rather than separate reading and writing activities. Pedagogical practices based on theoretical findings and teacher experience are presented as a model of instruction, exemplified as artifacts in online supplementary materials and juxtaposed with practices used …

Promoting Inclusion In A "Struggling School": Supporting Co-Teachers Through Critical Appreciative-Inquiry Based Professional Development, Louis Olander

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the extent to which the beliefs and practices of teachers who work in a “struggling” school can be shifted towards inclusiveness through an action research based professional development program. The school was struggling in that it was charged with the education of children who are marginalized by a range of social forces while simultaneously accountable to institutional priorities. Broadly speaking, these institutional priorities preferred behaviorist punishment and technocratic approaches to meeting student needs, devaluing and decontextualizing students’ proficiencies as test scores and special education labels, in turn impeding inclusive change. Over the course of four months, an …

A Space To Learn, Amy R. Goods

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I explore what it means to different people, in different places throughout life’s spectrum to create a space to learn. This dissertation is a collection of work that I have written throughout my time at the CUNY Graduate Center. The chapters herein represent an arch of my learning over the past five years. The title, A Space to Learn, has multiple meanings. For one, writing this dissertation has provided me a space to explore and reflect on a variety of topics, ranging from memory loss, to teacher preparation programs, to eugenics and special education, to tracking and …

Caring Choices? Supporting And Dreaming With Students In New York City’S Stratifying High School Admissions System, Megan R. Moskop

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In New York City, all eighth graders attending public school must apply for high school. They have 400 schools from which to choose, and they must create a ranked list of twelve choices. They are then matched to one school. The results of this process play a large role in creating one of the most segregated and unequal school systems in the country. In “Caring choices? Supporting and dreaming with students in New York City’s stratifying high school admissions system,” I share an autoethnographic account that spans ten years of work as an activist educator striving both to support students …

Teaching For Whose America?: Corporate Education Reform And Students Labeled As Disabled, Barbara A. Hubert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Today’s education reform movement is funded heavily by a network of wealthy elite that often prize neoliberal and free-market interests. Within this network, Teach for America (TFA) is at the nexus of overlapping interests in an educational marketplace where corporate values become the norm for defining both progress and success. Students labeled as disabled and placed in special education have generally not been well-served by neoliberal, free-market reforms yet TFA overwhelmingly places corps members in urban special education classrooms. Because TFA has a large network of alumni that go on to lead schools, educational organizations and influence policy, this study …

Guilty By Association: A Critical Analysis Of How Imprisonment Affects The Children Of Those Behind Bars, Whitney Q. Hollins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As 2.2 million individuals in the United States are currently incarcerated and an additional 5 million are under some form of correctional surveillance, the push for prison reform has reached new heights. Intimately and inextricably connected to mass incarceration and the push for its reform (and in some cases abolition) are the children have been impacted by incarceration. About half of the individuals currently incarcerated are parents to at least one child under the age of 18. Current estimates suggest that 2.7 million children currently have an incarcerated parent and that 10 million children in the United States have experienced …

The Demon Of Hope: Race, Disability And The White Researcher’S Complicity With Injustice, Gene Fellner

Publications and Research

My ethical stance demands that my research mutually benefit all research

participants and that it should serve to reverse systemic policies of anti-blackness that

permeate the educational system in the United States. Through publications and similar

academic activities, however, my research advances my own career, but it is doubtful

that it significantly advances the trajectories of the students with whom I work. Indeed, it

could be argued that this imbalance in benefits advances the very system of white

dominance that I claim to contest. In this arts-based, auto-ethnographic study, I

document how, through the creation of pastel drawings and digital …

“Yo Soy Su Mama”: Latinx Mothers Raising Emergent Bilinguals Labeled As Dis/Abled, Maria Cioe Peña

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Parental involvement in the United States has been identified in both academic and mainstream literature as a defining marker in academic achievement. Yet most of the literature regarding parents and schools are written about them without including their voice or their stories. Through the use of ethnographic case studies, this dissertation presents the experiences of immigrant, monolingual Spanish-speaking Latinx women raising emergent bilingual children who are labeled as dis/abled. This research is guided by an intersectional framework and the following questions:

1. What are the mothering experiences of Spanish-speaking Latinx mothers of emergent bilingual children labeled dis/abled?

2. What values, …

Effect Of X-Word Grammar And Traditional Grammar Instruction On Grammatical Accuracy, Sue Livingston, Andi Toce, Cyndi Casey, Fernando Montoya, Bonny R. Hart, Carmela O'Flaherty

Publications and Research

This study first briefly describes an instructional approach to teaching grammar known as X-Word Grammar and then compares its effectiveness in assisting students in achieving grammatical accuracy with traditionally taught grammar. Two groups of L2 pre-college students were taught using curricula and practice procedures in two different grammar texts over a three-month period of time for 20% of their class time. Essays written at three different times were analyzed for the correct and incorrect use of sentence patterns and verb constructs. Results demonstrated that improvement (writing with less error) was larger in both categories for the X-Word Grammar group and …

Narrating School, Narrative Self: Identity, Agency And The Hidden Curriculum Of (Hetero)Normativity, Mikela Bjork

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes sober women’s narratives of their schooling experiences to reflect on how educators and policy makers can improve the schooling experiences for othered students.. Inspired by the self-reflective and agentic pedagogy found within the figured world of Alcoholics Anonymous, I focused on the narratives of women in Alcoholics Anonymous, ages 18-85, as they narrated their schooling stories from pre-Kindergarten up to the last grade they completed. What the data of this qualitative research project reveals is that, despite the detrimental culture of denial at home and school, the participants, through the radical act of self-reflexivity and personal narrative, …

Adopting Universal Design In Libraries: Collaborating For Student Success, Stefanie Havelka, Rebecca Arzola

Publications and Research

Faculty grapple with resources such as skill (experience with accessible features and devices), time (teaching students how to navigate software and devices in the library), and expense (software, hardware, eBooks, databases). This presentation will provide an overview of accessible features in library research databases, computer technology, mobile devices, and apps. The presenters will report on their collaboration with Lehman College’s Access and Technology Center (ATC) and Student Disability Services to share how to better approach issues and challenges in order to more successfully support students’ access needs. We will also consider the following questions:

• As librarians and faculty, how can …

Suggested Practices For Teaching Developmental Writing To Postsecondary Students Who Are Deaf, Sue Livingston

Publications and Research

A LaGuardia Community College course in developmental writing for deaf students features small class size and teachers fluent in American Sign Language. Teaching practices include reading of model essays on topics of interest to deaf students, peer feedback on the first two drafts of writing assignments, and student "reading aloud" of essays in English-like sign language.

Effectiveness Compared: Asl Interpretation Vs. Transliteration, Sue Livingston, Bonnie Singer, Theodore Abramson

Publications and Research

Two kinds of interpretation are currently used to make the spoken language accessible to deaf students in regular college programs; namely, ASL Interpretation and Transliteration. To test the effectiveness of each kind, 43 students from several colleges of the City University of New York were divided into two groups by their preference for one or the other kind, and the groups divided according to level of education. Matched groups then received a narrative presentation and a lecture presentation, interpreted either one way or the other by experienced certified interpreters, and then answered questions on the material so received. The results …

How To Read Aloud To Deaf Children And Young Adults, Sue Livingston, Maureen Collins

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Comprehension Strategies Of Two Deaf Readers, Sue Livingston

Publications and Research

Strategies for reading comprehension used by two deaf college students as they discussed assigned readings with their teacher and classmates are here shown in examples categorized, tallied, and compared. Both were active users of strategies, and their pattern of strategy use was similar: interpreting, questioning, paraphrasing, and integrating were the strategies most used. The student reader who preferred expressing and receiving English-like sign manifested a higher proportion of inaccurate interpretations and paraphrases than did the student reader who preferred receiving and expressing American Sign Language (ASL), primarily because the former was unfamiliar with written linguistic cues and conventions of narrative …

Revision Strategies Of Deaf Student Writers, Sue Livingston

Publications and Research

Deaf high school students at different schools shared second drafts of their own narratives via an electronic bulletin board after conferencing with their respective teachers. This article characterizes the kinds of questions teachers asked during the conferences and the kinds of revisions the students made between first and second drafts. Results indicate that teachers most often ask questions that require student to provide more information; yet these questions do not affect revision as much as questions which require students to rephrase specific language. Students typically either added or substituted words or phrases that showed both similarities to and differences from …

Deaf Students Responding To The Writing Of Their Peers, Sue Livingston

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

An Alternative View Of Education For Deaf Children: Part Ii, Lil Brannon, Sue Livingston

Publications and Research

How might deaf children acquire one of the primary goals of education literacy in English? This article suggests that literacy in English as well as knowledge of the English language can be acquired concomitantly through developmental reading and writing activities that reflect principles of first language acquisition if students bring to these activities relatable experiences which they have already linguistically represented. Such activities engage students in reading and writing where content and context support them in their attempts to actively understand and convey meaning in English. The end product of, rather than the prerequisite for, this meaningful reading and writing …

An Alternative View Of Education For Deaf Children: Part I, Sue Livingston

Publications and Research

Quigley and Kretschmer (1982) asserted that the primary goal of education for deaf children should be literacy in English. This article presents an alternative view that there be two primary goals: (a) thinking and learning through the development of meaning-making and meaning-sharing capacities and (b) the acquisition of literacy in English. In this article, the first of these goals is viewed as the more fundamental since it facilitates the acquisition of knowledge while it simultaneously serves as the prerequisite for the acquisition of literacy in English. Because neither direct language instruction nor the exclusive use of English in sign will …

Levels Of Development In The Language Of Deaf Children: Asl Grammatical Processes, Signed English Structures, Semantic Features, Sue Livingston

Publications and Research

This study describes the spontaneous sign language of six deaf children (6 to 16 years old) of hearing parents, who were exposed to Signed English when after the age of six they first attended a school for the deaf. Samples of their language taken at three times over a 15-month period were searched for processes and structures representative or not representative of Signed English. The nature of their developing semantics was described as the systematic acquisition of features of meaning in signs from selected lexical categories (kinship terms, negation, time expression, wh-questions, descriptive terms, and prepositions/conjunctions).

Processes not representative of …