Technical Assistance as Cultural Work: Notes on Theory and Methods

1. Technical Assistance as Cultural Work: Notes on Theory and Methods Alfredo J. Artiles Arizona State University The University of Northern Colorado April 9 – 13, 2007

3. Professional Practice as Cultural Work • Provide the theoretical rationale and describe a set of artifacts created to mediate the work of SEA personnel to address disproportionality.

4. What is Disproportionate Representation? The over or under-identification of students in some racial/ethnic and/or language groups for services in special education • “extent to which membership in a given group affects the probability of being placed in a specific special education disability category” [or special education program] (adapted from Oswald et al., 1999, p. 198).

5. Why should we pay attention to disproportionality? The answer, as every parent of a child receiving special education services knows, is that in order to be eligible for the additional resources a child must be labeled as having a disability, a label that signals substandard performance. And while that label is intended to bring additional supports, it may also bring lowered expectations on the part of teachers, other children, and the identified student. When a child cannot learn without the additional supports, and when the supports improve outcomes for the child, that trade-off may well be worth making. But, because there is a trade-off, both the need and the benefit should be established before the label and the cost are imposed (Donovan & Cross, 2002, 3).

6. NCCRESt’s Vision Klingner, J., Artiles, A. J., Kozleski, E., Harry, B., Zion, S., Tate, W., Zamora-Durán, G., & Riley, D. (2005). Addressing the disproportionate representation of culturally and linguistically diverse students in special education through culturally responsive educational systems. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 13 (38). Available at http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v13n38/

7. Leadership Principal Investigators Alfredo J. Artiles, Arizona State University Beth Harry, University of Miami Janette Klingner, CU Boulder Elizabeth Kozleski, CU Denver William Tate, Washington University at St Louis Project Coordinator Shelley Zion, CU Denver Continuous Improvement Data Analysts David Gibson & Michael Knapp, VIMST Project Officer Grace Zamora Durán, OSEP, USDOE

8. What is NCCRESt doing? An Overview TA & D Center focused on equity, access, and participation in GENERAL education • Provides professional development and technical assistance to • close the achievement gap between students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and their peers, and • reduce inappropriate referrals to special education.

9. What is NCCRESt doing? An Overview

10. The NCCRESt ResponseAn Overview • Technical Assistance with SEAs (a) Enhance access to accurate data (b) support state-level planning for professional development, technical assistance, and information networks (c) promote annual continuous improvement cycles of reflection/planning/action/reflection (d) support SEAs’ efforts to enhance planning and implementation coherence.

11. TA Strategy • Build State Capacity to Provide TA and PD • Build skill sets at SEA Level • Work in teams that cut across SEA, Advocacy & District personnel • Identify districts that are improving and build strategies to support their work • Identify districts that are developing and build capacity

12. TA Delivery Model

13. NCCRESt State Partners Wisconsin Iowa Ohio Connecticut New Jersey Virginia North Carolina Tennessee Louisiana

14. Purpose • Provide the theoretical rationale and describe a TA model and a set of artifacts created to mediate the work of SEA personnel to address disproportionality.

15. Critique:Culture & Space in Disproportionality 1.) The focus of analysis is on physical dimensions of space (placement in special education programs). 2.) Culture is largely absent in this work and when included, it is either equated with student traits (i.e., ethnic or linguistic background) or located in individuals’ psyches (e.g., beliefs, learning styles) (Artiles, 2003). School cultures are ignored. 3.) The perspective of the analyst is invisible • Researchers’ assumptions about culture and space • Explanations of the problem that guide researchers’ meaning making processes or analytical decisions.

16. Critique: The Object of SEA work • SEA Perspective: Macro view of professional practice-- “The view from above.” • Legalistic view: Compliance and monitoring • State placement patterns, school district data, evidence from clusters of schools in cities or regions.

17. Critique:The object of SEA work “The view from above” • Traditional artifacts: Proportion tables (disability placement by ethnicity) • offer a limited understanding of the connections between technical, historical, and cultural factors • do not unveil the ideological and semiotic underpinnings of SEA professionals’ work. Examples include • interpretation of data and decision-making processes grounded in individual-based assumptions about disability and culture • use of information infrastructures without regard for the nature and premises of databases (e.g., categorical, cross-sectional, fossilized culture).

18. NCCREST Response Technical assistance as mediating structure • Create mediating contexts to support SEA personnel learning about disproportionality. • Based on cultural historical activity theory: Activity system is the unit of analysis.

19. Technical Assistance Activity as Mediating Structure Artifacts • GIS Maps • Databases • Discourse • Theoretical constructs on the cultural nature of learning Guiding Principles • Entire system is the unit of analysis (Expansive cycles) • Historicity vs. relativism • Contradictions & disruptions lead to growth (Engeström, 1999) Object • Outcomes • Culturally responsive educational system Subject Dispropor-tionality of minority students in special education SEA Team Rules Community Division of Labor SEA: General education, special education, and professional development groups. LEA: Administrators, students teachers/interns, families. 1. Commitment to all learners in the activity system. 2. Agreement to engage in technical, practical, and critical reflection and discourse about the role of culture in learning. 3. Commitment to view contradictions and disruptions as opportunities for growth. • Vertical • Horizontal • Dynamic/lateral

20. TA as Mediating StructureForging New Spaces 1. Physical space and its intersection with cultural practices • Artifact design: Material and psychological (Blanton et al., 1998). • Maps and databases; beliefs and assumptions • Culture: Historical, instrumental, situated 2. Social spaces and the production of conceived spaces • Discursive and cognitive practices

21. Artifact Design for Systemic Change: Toward a cartography of disproportionality Create new perceptual fields with visual representations “where space is used to represent a spatial dispersion that offers, when combined with discourse analysis, a system of possibility for new knowledge (Paulston, 1996, p. 4, emphasis in original).

22. Artifact Design for Systemic Change • Re-present placement evidence as embedded in grids of cultural, temporal, and spatial vectors. • Re-mediate the state leadership’s ways of analyzing and interpreting the problem with a new kind of evidence in the context of TA practices.

23. Artifact design for systemic change:GIS Maps & Databases 1. Physical space and its intersection with cultural practices • Multiple levels: Placement patterns at national, regional, state, and city levels • To witness the metamorphosis of disproportionality across levels enable SEA personnel to shift their analytic gaze from the view from above to local landscapes around a city • Multiple representation systems:Interface with databases • Colors, icons and areas; numbers, trends • Multipleperspectives • From a state overall status to the possibility to stand inside the map of a school

32. Artifact design for systemic change:GIS Maps & Databases • Child • Disability category by race (single, aggregated) • Student Achievement Data • School context and OTL • Teacher certification • School poverty level • Per Pupil Operating Revenue • Teachers Instructional Repertoires • Teacher:Student Ratios • Census Block Data • LRE by disability & race • Density of racial representation: State, city, school • Spatial distribution of placement across city regions • Measures: Multiple indices, types of denominator, cross-sectional, longitudinal

33. TA as Mediating StructureForging New Spaces 2. Social spaces and the production of conceived spaces • Discursive and cognitive practices • Examine assumptions about the intersection of race, class, ability, & culture in classrooms • Rubric Development for LEA Monitoring and Problem Solving • Discussion of Practitioner Briefs • Analysis of Leadership Academies • From personal experience to theoretical sense-making • Examination of personal and professional identities and how they mediate practice • Modeling Distributed Expertise • Network Development among states

34. b) Deepen teams’ understanding of the problem c) Identify features of good solutions d) Self-evaluation and setting the stage e) Develop an action plan a) Define the problem Cycles of Inquiry, Reflection, & Action

35. Emerging Outcomes • Use of NCCRESt materials • Development of Local Leadership Teams • Changes in approaches to determining disproportionality • Examination of Local Practices • Identification of NCCRESt as TA provider in State APRs • Deepening discussions of culturally responsive practices • Curriculum • Classroom Practice • Building Practice • Community Building

36. Collect data at multiple levels of the system Federal, state, & local Collect multiple kinds of data Qualitative & Quantitative Interdisciplinary Expertise Sampling Issues Comparative, within-group Make perspective visible Focus on disruptions, contradictions USE ACCESSIBILITY INCLUSIVITY SUSTAINABILITY Ascending to Practice from TheoryMethodological Considerations Changes in Referral & Placement Patterns

37. Technical Assistance as Cultural Work: Notes on Theory and Methods Alfredo J. Artiles Arizona State University The University of Northern Colorado October 6, 2005