AERA 2024 Abstracts

Published in ConnectED Newsletter - Volume 7 - Issue 3 - March 2024

“Preparing educators to teach for democracy: Inquiry, active learning, culturally responsive, antiracist/anti-oppressive, humanizing practice”

This session shares the practices and pedagogies of a public university’s early childhood teacher education program that serves predominantly low-income women from a range of “minoritized” backgrounds who work in (and stay in) the historically underserved, culturally/linguistically/racially diverse communities of NYC.  The presenters - instructors in and graduates of the program who represent the racial/linguistic backgrounds of the students – share different aspects of how the program supports teacher candidates to obtain a master’s degree, state certification, and consequently serve their communities.  Program pedagogies include: learning through inquiry and active experiences; incorporating children’s and families’ strengths and funds of knowledge as well as communities’ assets in teaching; modeling care, respect and understanding of bias, racism, and equity issues; multi-layered supports to support progress toward goals. 

“‘I was that student’: The untapped potential of paraprofessionals to enact DisCrit”

Paraprofessionals represent an undervalued reservoir of in-service educators of color with experience in schools, often in special education settings, and in communities with the highest need. The purpose of this research is to explore the mindsets of paraprofessionals who are, or have professional goals, to become credentialed teachers in diverse urban settings to identify best practices for alternative pathways to teacher certification. This research will expand access for Black and Brown teacher candidates and build their capacity to provide equitable instruction for students with multiple marginalized identities.

“Disrupting inequitable practices in special education: Privileging voices of students with high-incidence disability classifications”

Black and other minoritized students have long been overrepresented in the high-incidence disability classifications including Learning Disability, Emotional Disturbance, Intellectual Impairment, and Speech and Language Impairment. Inappropriate special education placement denies students access to the general education curriculum and limits their postschool opportunities and outcomes. Using DisCrit, this study foregrounds the voices of minoritized middle school students receiving special education services under high-incidence classifications. DisCrit allowed for an investigation of how student’s intersecting marginalized identities impacted their experiences as special education students.

“‘I just call myself Hallway Jay’: Seeking safety at the general-special education divide”

While a robust body of research documents the overrepresentation of Black and other minoritized students in special education, few studies center these student’s lived experiences. This grounded theory study uses Education Journey Mapping and a DisCrit lens to explore the experiences of Jason, a Black, middle school student labeled with a Speech and Language Impairment as he negotiated his special education placement.

“Teacher education students’ racial biases: Interpersonal attributions and disciplinary decisions for Black girls’ classroom behavior” 

Black girls overwhelmingly experience excessive discipline in schools, contributing to the growing achievement gap. This study examined 915 teacher education students’ (TES’) interpersonal attributions of classroom behaviors of elementary-age Black and White girls, using vignettes to analyze the impacts of student race on TES’ attributions and consequent discipline decisions. Findings indicate that TES attribute more internal loci of control and controllability to the behaviors of Black girls. Statistically significant differences also surfaced in TES referring White girls to school psychologists and to ignore their classroom misbehavior more frequently than Black girls. Incorporating explicit, anti-racism classroom management into teacher education curricula could address TES’ racially biased attributions of student behaviors and create more equitable and safe educational spaces for Black students.

“Who benefits from bilingual/multilingual teaching and teacher education? Whose interests are centered?”

In this Division K invited session, participants will explore the benefits of Bilingual/Multilingual teaching and learning with an equity as justice lens. These scholars with a range of critical perspectives and methodological approaches discuss how centering the interests of marginalized students benefits all students.

“Intersecting immigration and education: Immigrant-origin students, families and educators in New York State”

This session examines the dimensions, possibilities, and lessons learned in working to critically amplify what immigration means in connection to schooling contexts. The papers engage with interactions and data from surveys and focus groups with immigrant students, families and their educators from a five-year state-funded project. A set of grounding principles anchor the project as a way to better understand the experiences of immigrant communities and researching with immigrant communities in schools. The papers highlight how immigration policy and educational practices are intertwined in ways that shape teaching and learning at the elementary level and beyond. They also address the complexities of designing and sustaining an ethical ethos in Participatory Action Research (PAR) within the confines of an institutionalized partnership.

“Building and sustaining una escuela bilingüe: Pillars as anchors of practice”

Entre Mundos Elementary School (pseudonym) was founded in 2013 as a public community school in an urban east coast city. This session will share how the founders developed, reflected upon, revised and enacted the four pillars that anchor the school’s approach and philosophy. These pillars are: 1) Bilingüismo, biliteracidad y multiculturalismo; 2) Las familias son partners, leaders and advocates; 3) Investigaciones and hands-on learning; and 4) Partnerships with universities, organizations y la comunidad. This study looks holistically within a bilingual school in a manner that can serve as a model for how to start and sustain a program that is anchored in an approach that centers bilingual students, families, and communities.

Navigating scholarship on Palestine: Resisting suppression of marginalized narratives in the academy” (co-presented with Lilly Padia, Erikson Institute)

As support for Palestinian rights continues to grow in the United States, so too have efforts to silence this discourse. In this paper, we employ critical autoethnography to examine the obstacles we have faced as faculty engaged in research as well as advocacy around Palestinian issues - specifically disability in Palestine. We describe how we have navigated the politics of higher education to access and learn from Palestinian stories, and to present our work on this politically charged topic. We leverage our personal and scholarly identities to engage with a controversial subject and to push back against resistance to the inclusion of marginalized voices in the academy.