Disability and Equity in Education Commons^™

Students With Mental Health Disabilities Suffer From Discrimination Across College Campuses, Abigail Nequa Napp

Capstones

Over the course of several months, we investigated and reported on how colleges and universities have been discriminating against students with mental health disabilities. We FOIA'd the Department of Education for a history of pending and resolved cases (from 2008 - November 2019) to uncover violations committed by colleges. In several instances, institutions discriminated and punished students instead of accommodating their mental health disabilities as required by law. We also reviewed recent lawsuits involving students against universities that focused on punitive leave of absence policies as well as wrongful death suits. This revealed further inefficiencies, deficiencies and tragedy in the …

Multilingual/Translanguaging: Narrative Writing Through Authentic Language, Lucia E. Brea

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

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 …

Reimagining The Flute Masterclass: Case Studies Exploring Artistry, Authority, And Embodiment, Sarah Carrier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work explores the flute masterclass as an aesthetic, ritualized, and historically reimagined cultural practice. Based on fieldwork that took place between 2017 and 2019 in the United States, in Italy, and on the social media platforms Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, I argue that the masterclass—an extension of the master/apprentice system that dominates learning in the classical music tradition—is characterized by embodied qualities of artistry and authority. These qualities are not inherent, but are perceived through subjective, social, familied, and affective bodies.

Chapter One outlines the main themes and the research design. Chapter Two is a case study that analyzes …

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 …

Eighteen Blind Library Users’ Experiences With Library Websites And Search Tools In U.S. Academic Libraries: A Qualitative Study, Adina Mulliken

Publications and Research

Telephone interviews were conducted with 18 blind academic library users around the U.S. about their experiences using their library and its website. The study uses the perspective that blind users’ insights are fundamental. A common theme was that navigating a webpage is time consuming on the first visit. Issues identified include the need for “databases” to be defined on the homepage, accessibly coded search boxes, logical heading structure, and several problems to be resolved on result pages. Variations in needs depending on users’ screen reader expertise were also raised. Suggestions for libraries to address these issues are offered.

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 …

Radical Solace And Young Adult Writing: Racialized Dis/Ability, Fan Fiction, And Feel(Ing)S In Composition, Jenn Polish

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Deficit-model pedagogies too often abound in our writing classrooms, in everything from punitive attendance policies to content selection and course design methodologies that inadvertently favor students whose bodies fit a white supremacist, ableist norm. I develop conceptions of fandom and consent-based pedagogical practices, and I argue that these can bring us closer to radical solace in our college writing classrooms, particularly when our classrooms are full of variously marginalized students. These students too often must endure deficit-model pedagogies that assume inexpert writing styles in both their written compositions and, indeed, in the very composition of their bodies. What happens, I …

Web Accessibility 101 Cuny Cs, Amy Wolfe

Open Educational Resources

Web Accessibility 101 CUNY CS

Direct URL: https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/1570928

This course covers digital web accessibility. The goal of web accessibility is to ensure that all people, including those with disabilities, have equal use and enjoyment of websites and web content.

Creating an accessible internet, so everyone is able to participate in the new public square is the responsibility of all who create digital content. Being able to access the web and participate in information sharing is truly a human right and must be taken into account when creating digital content and websites.

Learn web accessibility basics, WCAG (Web Content Accessibility …

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 …

You Get Tenure, What Do I Get?: Using Art To Interrogate A Researcher’S Dilemma, Gene Fellner

Publications and Research

White researcher-advocates whose explorations are situated in schools serving

predominantly African American students hope that their research will improve the

academic possibilities for those students and reverse systemic injustice. While racial

oppression continues as a central thread in the fabric of American educational institutions,

white scholars continue to benefit from their research. Through arts-based

methods, I explore this issue as it relates to my own research identity and question

whether, despite my goals, I am complicit with hegemonic practices that oppress

communities of colour within educational contexts.