An Alternative Model of Special Education

7/31/2019 An Alternative Model of Special Education

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attitudes, the interests, skills and knowledge—in

short the culture—current in groups to which they

are or seek to become a member’’ (Merton, Reader,

& Kendall, 1957). University programs seek to

socialize new credential candidates into the norms

and values of the program. Defining elements of socialization include shared professional values, a

specific technical language and a shared vocabulary

and preference for particular pedagogic practices.

Credential programs also socialize candidates for

the role of ‘teacher’—a role that has specific

expectations and relationships with others in an

educational setting. Traditional credential programs

expect difficulty in helping credential candidates

learn to teach differently from how they were

taught. Programs also expect candidates to struggle

with norms and values learned at the university

when they enter the reality of teaching in schools.What happens though, when programs are forced to

contend with credential candidates who come to

them with prior knowledge and workplace knowl-

edge already in place? Do university teacher

education programs have any hope of socializing

credential candidates into the role of ‘teacher’ in the

way programs anticipate?

This paper is an attempt to sort out a variation of

teacher socialization, one that reworks the chronol-

ogy of socializing forces. Traditionally, special

education credential programs in the USA reliedon students who enter teacher education with their

own experiences as students, but programs did not

have to contend with their experiences as teachers as

well. Credential programs could at least try to

socialize candidates to the values, skill and knowl-

edge about what it means to be a teacher before

people actually became teachers. In this paper, I will

explore the outcomes of California University’s2

attempt to socialize their moderate/severe3 special

education credential candidates into a particular

stance on teaching special education—that of

inclusion4 —while the candidates already hold

full-time teaching positions.

2. Conceptual framework

This paper proposes an alternative model of special

education teacher education socialization. The cre-dential candidates in this study not only have

preexisting beliefs developed from their own school-

ing experiences as students, but also have beliefs that

have been further clarified, supported, and challenged

through experiences as teachers prior to entering a

teacher education program. Those beliefs continue to

be clarified, supported and challenged during the

program, which complicates existing theories on

organizational socialization (as shown in Fig. 1).

In order to theorize about the possibilities of an

alternative path to workplace socialization, we mustunderstand (1) workplace socialization, (2) teacher

education in the context of socialization into

teaching and (3) the particularities of special

education socialization.

Literature on workplace socialization in these

different contexts will help explain how the mechanisms

used to socialize do not always lead to the intended

outcomes of socialization. In this case, a cohort of

fulltime teachers, who are also credential candidates in

a program that focuses on inclusion, undergo identical

socialization processes (like coursework and classroom

observations) but leave the program with full, selective

or rejected socialization about inclusive education. This

is due, in large part, to simultaneous and ongoing

socialization by the workplace and the university,

meaning that they do not experience a linear socializa-

tion process (as shown in Fig. 2).

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Prior

Beliefs

Workplace

Socialization

University

Socialization

Fig. 1. Traditional workplace socialization.

Prior Beliefs

WorkplaceSocialization

UniversitySocialization

Fig. 2. Alternative workplace socialization.

2This is a pseudonym for a Northern California university.3The disability category Moderate/Severe indicates the type of

disabilities experienced by students that a teacher is qualified to

teach. Moderate to Severe disabilities include: ‘‘autism, cognitive

impairment, deaf-blindness, emotional disturbance, and multiple

disabilities’’ (CTC, 2007).4ythe provision of services to students with disabilities, including

those with severe impairments, in the neighborhood school, in age-

appropriate general education classes, with the necessary support

services and supplementary aids (for the child and the teacher) both

( footnote continued )

to assure the child’s success—academic, behavioral and social—

and to prepare the child to participate as a full and contributing

member of society (Lipsky & Gartner, 1996).

K. Young / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 901–914902



2.1. Workplaces socialize for skills and knowledge

Workplaces socialize people into the ways of a

specific organization. Building on research about

organizational characteristics of work developed in

the 1950s and 1960s (Blau & Duncan, 1967; Blau &Scott, 1962; Gross, 1958; Merton, Reader, &

Kendall, 1957), Van Maanen and Schein (1979) laid

out a theory of organizational socialization. They

define it as ‘‘the process by which an individual

acquires the social knowledge and skills necessary to

assume an organizational role’’ (p. 211). Their theory

focuses on structural aspects of the organization that

precipitate the need for socialization, usually at

boundary passages: entry into or out of the

organization and lateral or vertical movement within

the organization. Individuals new to the organization

will respond to the socialization in one of three ways:they will accept the organizational rules at face value;

they will innovate and change the knowledge to

make it more efficient for themselves; or they will

reject it and redefine the values of the organization to

suit their personal needs.

Like other organizations, schools socialize new

teachers to the ways and values of the school. The

culture of a school encompasses norms and values

and routines shared by the school personnel that

lead to specific ways of working (Nias, 1989). New

teachers are socialized into a workplace whereteachers expect students to be sorted and divided

by a variety of categories—including age, ability,

race, and gender. Norms and values within a school

are influenced by broader institutional and societal

norms and values about children, education, dis-

ability, and many other ideas (Levine-Rasky, 1998).

Moves to disrupt these categories have been resisted

throughout the American educational history.5 The

school socialization process helps maintain these

categories. New teachers are also socialized into the

occupation of being a teacher in a particular school

with a particular way of thinking about children.

Novices often acquire the characteristics of teaching

by becoming like their veteran colleagues who often

hold a conservative view of student difference

(Menter, 1989; Waller, 1932).

Another explanation emerges from Lortie’s

(1975) work on teacher socialization; he documents

that new teachers bring a long history of experience

to their credential programs (see also Clandinin,

1986; Goodson, 1992; Knowles, 1992). Their

experience comes from having spent 12 years in

classrooms watching their teachers, gaining an

‘apprenticeship of observation.’ Kagan (1992) un-dertook a systematic literature review of learning-

to-teach literature and found across 27 empirical

studies information pertaining to the role of

preexisting beliefs. Each study documented the

‘‘stability and inflexibility’’ of prior beliefs and

documented the important role played by these

beliefs to filter the content of coursework.

Individual teachers also have an impact on their

own socialization as they interact with their work-

places, the university, professors and each other.

Lacey (1977), in The Socialization of Teachers,

observed three successive years of a 1-year educa-tion program in the United Kingdom. His findings

indicate that new teachers use social strategies to

comply, adjust or redefine the given situations.6

Instead of empty vessels accepting the program’s

values without question, Lacey shows how these

teachers take the concepts they are socialized into

and transform them in some way. Zeichner and

Tabachnick (1985) extend Lacey’s work by follow-

ing new teachers through credential programs into

schools and document how new teachers redefine

their workplaces. They found that workplaceculture is an important variable that determines, in

part, how new teachers will reinterpret the socializa-

tion process from their university program. Day

(1999) demonstrates how new teachers struggle to

match their personal visions of classrooms with

‘‘powerful socializing forces of school culture.’’

Olsen (2002) researched the experiences of student

teachers at four different universities. He found that

the teachers, whom he followed for 2 years, were

more likely to incorporate something learned in

their credential program if it already fit with their

personal understanding of teaching. Feiman-

Nemser (2001) indicates that new teachers must

combine their past understandings and experiences

with their own experiences in teacher education to

develop in this field.

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5For a more detailed look at schools as sorters of children and

resistance to change the system, see Bowles & Gintis, 1976;

Lacey, 1977; Lortie, 1975; Tyack, 1974; Waller, 1932; Winzer,

1993)

6Social strategies likely to be adopted are strategic redefinition,

strategic compliance or internalized adjustment. (These last two

strategies map onto Becker’s, (1961) situational adjustment.

Strategic compliance (p. 72) individual complies with authority’s

definition of the situation and the constraints of the situation but

retains private constraints about them. Internalized adjustment

(p. 72) individual complies with constraints.)

K. Young / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 901–914 903



Structures embedded in the context of teaching

and personal agency help explain differential

socialization outcomes of credential candidates.

Some are more influenced by their workplaces while

others fall back on their personal experiences to

guide them in their development as new teachers.When skills and knowledge learned at California

University are consistent with factors found in the

structures of teaching and personal experience, we

would expect more complete socialization. For

those credential candidates whose workplaces and

personal experiences differ from university sociali-

zation, we would expect modification or rejection of

that socialization.

2.2. Weak socialization in teacher education

Researchers have also studied work place socia-lization in the context of teacher education. Teacher

education is the main formal context where

credential candidates are socialized into teaching

and becoming a teacher. Johnston and Wetherill

(2002) identify three types of program-based socia-

lization: into the discipline—such as science, mathe-

matics, or special education; into the profession of

teaching; and into the specific schools in which new

teachers will work. They state that socialization into

the discipline might be weak because of the

routinized nature of taking classes and (implicitly)not valuing the knowledge learned at the university.

Zeichner and Gore (1990) explain that teachers are

socialized into the profession through their prior

experiences and beliefs, the nature and philosophy

of their teacher education program, and the culture

of the school at which they teach. Zeichner and

Gore contend that the default conditions of

socialization are apprenticeship and school culture,

not pre-service teacher education.

In the case of California University, the default

conditions, as expressed by Zeichner and Gore,

might trump any effects of teacher education

because those stronger socialization forces outside

of the program exist concurrently with internal

programmatic attempts to socialize to inclusion—

perhaps creating a washout effect of the university’s

processes—leading to outcomes that do not support

the idea of inclusion as the university had hoped.

2.3. Stronger socialization in special education?

Special education teacher education socialization

might be different than Lortie, Lacey and Zeichner

purport for general education teachers. The role of

the program’s socialization may be greater than in

general education settings because students did not

learn about special education through experiencing

it. The university program may be a place where

teacher education has more power to socialize itsnew recruits. Inclusion as a program philosophy

may be a case in point of how teachers can learn

new concepts in a credential program and incorpo-

rate those into their schools. Pugach (1992), in a

review of teacher socialization literature, argues that

special education has stronger socialization pro-

cesses than general education teacher education

programs. It has a strong foundation grounded in

laws and regulations that are backed by legal

authority rather than a foundation in a disciplinary

focus. This means that special education has a

strong technical language that might lead to out-comes of increased socialization to the field. Pugach

explains that pre-service special educators have an

‘‘absence of an apprenticeship’’ because they did not

spend 12 years in special education classrooms or, in

most cases, 12 years learning about inclusion. She

theorizes that a lack of prior apprenticeship might

allow special education credential programs to

focus on new pedagogy rather than spending time

dispelling old beliefs. Pugach’s theory applies to pre-

service special education credential candidates.

Given that the teachers in this study come to theircredential program already having experiences as

teachers—already having had time to adopt, adapt,

or reject beliefs about special education and students

receiving special education services—will their teach-

ing experience offset the programmatic processes? If

their workplace experiences are congruent with what

the university is teaching, will they embrace Califor-

nia University’s philosophy of inclusion?

This review of socialization in the general work-

place to that of special education teacher education

has shown the factors required to socialize people into

organizations. Organizations try to socialize indivi-

duals to acquire the values and attitudes, the interests,

skills and knowledge desired by the organization.

California University provides course work, profes-

sional expertise, classroom observations and student

teaching requirements to create knowledge about and

attitudes towards inclusion. Credential candidates

adapt, adopt, or reject the socialization process of

California University based on mediating factors like

their own schooling experiences and their current

workplace experience. Based on these mediating

factors, credential candidates will be completed or

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selectively socialized by the university, or may reject it

outright (as shown in Fig. 3).

In the special case of special teacher education at

California University, credential candidates con-

stantly renegotiate socialization from the university

because the processes and outcomes are continuous

and simultaneous for this group of teachers. The

findings from examining this alternate form of socialization will be discussed later in the paper.

3. Methods

This paper indicates findings from part of a larger

study of four pre-service special education teacher

preparation programs investigating attitudes of pre-

service special education teachers toward disability.

In particular, this paper will explore the outcomes

of California University’s attempt to socialize

moderate/severe credential candidates to the skills,knowledge and attitudes about including students

receiving special education services into general

education classrooms. This university program was

chosen over the other three programs for several

reasons: all credential candidates were in their last

semester of a 2-year credential program and all

credential candidates had already completed the

majority of coursework offered by their program.

Second, this program has an explicit focus on one

core concept—that of inclusion—as the dominant

philosophy of their program. Other programs in this

study had several themes, or no coherent theme,

that informed the coursework and provided less

clear or non-existent examples of institutional

socialization. Third, this program was the only

one where all credential candidates were also

teachers. In each of the other programs, some

people were traditional student teachers while

others were already in classrooms.

Though the sample size is small, this program

provides a version of the ‘‘critical case’’ of case

study, which is often used in theory building (Yin,

2003, p. 40). The theoretical work of this paper

explains these processes and outcomes for teachers

who are both credential candidates and full time

teachers in a program with a unified mission—

California University was the only program that fit

these parameters, and thus provides an excellent

example for theoretical exploration.

The pre-service teachers discussed in this paper

are all a part of a moderate/severe special educationteacher credential program in Northern California.

There are nine people in the program; I interviewed

seven of them in the fall of 2004. The two remaining

people chose not to be interviewed. All nine are

currently teaching on emergency credentials.

These teachers are not newcomers to the class-

room. Each of these teachers come to the program

having taught children with moderate/severe dis-

abilities from 6 months to more than 2 years and all

of them have been teaching or working as para-

professionals in classrooms for at least 3 years.7

They enter the program as fully functioning teachers

and having ideas of how well inclusion works in

their schools. Their ages range from 24 to 60. Five

are Caucasian American, one person is Asian

American and the other person refused to state

race. Six women and one man participated in the

interviews. Four of the teachers indicated that they

were inclusion teachers, one is an itinerant teacher,8

one is a special day class teacher,9 and one teacher

works in a county class at a public school site.10

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Outcomes of socialization at

California University

Complete socialization

Selective socialization

Rejected socialization

Mediatingfactors:

Prior experience

Workplaceexperience

Processes of socializationat California University

Course work

Observations

Student teaching

Fig. 3. Relationship of mediating factors to socialization processes and outcomes.

7Classroom teaching aides.8Itinerant means that she travels from school to school with

several students on her case load at each school.9Special day class (SDC) means that she has students in her

class all day long. Students in a special day setting spend more

than 60% of their time with the same teacher, separate from other

peers at their grade level.10County classes are a separate setting, usually separate

campuses from general schooling. In this case, the teacher’s

classroom resides on the property of a public school, but he

works for the county, not the district. The public school does not

have to share resources with county schools. In this case, the

teacher does interact with other teachers and students at the

school.




Though all of these teachers are finishing the

program at the same time, they bring unique

backgrounds and work experiences with them as

they attend classes, complete credential require-

ments and continue to teach.

Each candidate was interviewed at a time andplace of their choosing, using a semi-structured

interview protocol. The interview protocol, created

though an iterative process of consulting literature

and credential candidates in a pilot study, consisted

of questions designed to elicit conversation about

what credential students learned and hoped to learn

in their credential programs, about their childhood

experiences with people with disabilities, and about

who they teach now or will teach in the near future.

I did not ask people about inclusion, and instead

pursued a line of questioning about inclusion only if

raised by participants (see the Appendix for acopy of the interview protocol). Each interview

lasted 45–90 min, was digitally audio-taped and

transcribed. After the interview data had been

collected and transcribed, I used a grounded theory

approach, letting themes in the text ‘‘rise to the

surface’’ (Strauss, 1987). I created a coding glossary

based on socialization literature and codes that

emerged emically from the data for each theme

in order to differentiate among the themes (Mac-

Queen, McLellan, Kay, & Milstein, 1998). Using

NUDIST, a qualitative software program, I codedthe documents using the glossary and shared the

codes and glossary with colleagues to check for

reliability. The reliability rate was .85 across three

interviews. I applied a horizontal analysis (cross-

case analysis) to the data (Miles & Huberman, 1994)

using ‘constant comparative analysis’ (Glaser &

Strauss, 1967) to look for common patterns as well

as differences across data sources. This process was

undertaken iteratively and adjustments in the

coding process were made. Though differences

appeared, using this method an overwhelming

adherence to shared use of the term inclusion

emerged, as well as other factors related to

professional socialization. It was only upon further

analysis that inclusion split into several codes

indicating degrees of adherence to inclusion. The

recurrent theme of inclusion will be discussed in

Section 3.1.

3.1. The case of inclusion

California University’s moderate/severe special

education credential program takes roughly 2 years

to complete, and provides new teachers with a

preliminary credential to teach special education in

California.11 The program promotes inclusion, an

influence that affects coursework and practicum

experiences. Each semester, credential candidates

participate in student teaching practica. During thefirst year, candidates are placed in their own

classroom (if they are inclusion teachers) or travel

to an inclusion site once a week for their place-

ment.12 During the second year, credential candi-

dates are required to increase the amount of time

their students with disabilities spend included with

other students at the school. If a student only

spends 5 h a week with general education students at

the start of the school year, she then must spend 7 h

a week the following month, and more time the

month after that. It is up to the credential candidate

to negotiate access into general education settingsfor each student with whom she works. Candidates

use strategies like teaching disability awareness

classes at their schools, approaching teachers one-

on-one, and asking the principal to provide help

encouraging other teachers to let students with

disabilities into their class. The majority of instruc-

tion at California University provides examples of

students with disabilities in inclusive settings—

leaving candidates who work in other settings to

adapt the examples to their own work experiences.

Credential candidates become well versed in theuniversity expectations and must adhere to these

expectations to obtain their credentials.

California University’s commitment to the values

and practices associated with inclusion are evi-

denced in their program’s expectations and in

interviews I conducted with credential candidates.

In interviews I sought to find out what message

credential candidates felt they were receiving from

the faculty. I asked each candidate, ‘‘If I was a

prospective student at California University, and

asked you about the program, what would you tell

me?’’ Though the candidates spoke about their

program and their professors, the only topic that

everyone mentioned was inclusion, and many spoke

about it at length. In a content analysis of the

interview data, inclusion was discussed an average

of 18 times per interview. California University

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11As of the 2005–2006 school year, all credential programs may

only recommend preliminary credentials. This means new

teachers must participate in an induction process in their first

years of teaching to obtain a clear credential.12An inclusion site is an inclusion classroom at their school or

at another school.




wants to transmit knowledge and skills about

inclusion to their students. The university wants to

inculcate values and interest about inclusion too. In

short, they want to socialize the credential candi-

dates about inclusion.

The use of the word inclusion in this study denotestwo concepts: a philosophy and a placement

preference. The philosophy is the ‘‘commitment’’

and the placement is ‘‘in the school and classroom he

or she would otherwise attend.’’ Inclusion propo-

nents, like the professors in the moderate/severe

special education program at California University,

often advance the idea that inclusion is more than a

placement option; they posit that true inclusion

indicates that all children are equal members of the

classroom, satisfying one goal of public education,

that of preparing students for participation in a

democracy (Barton & Tomlinson, 1984; Gartner &Lipsky, 2002; Slee, 2001). Teacher talk of inclusion in

this paper uses both philosophy and placement

almost interchangeably. In fact the term has become

so reified that no explanation is given as to the

meaning of inclusion in these interviews. The degree

of ambiguity will become analytically important in

understanding different levels of socialization experi-

enced by credential candidates.

The candidates are aware of the processes (like

coursework and field placements) used to socialize

them into believing in and acting for inclusion, butthey have not necessarily adopted inclusion as the

program would have expected. The message is

filtered—selected, modified, and/or rejected—by

the student teachers. The students in the program

learn about inclusion in theory but adapt or change

the notion of inclusion to conform to their prior

beliefs and their current work settings. The out-

comes are not what the university would have

expected. The analysis in this paper will consist of

examples of outcomes typified by selective socializa-

tion, complete socialization and rejected socializa-

tion about inclusion by the credential teachers.

4. Findings

This section will highlight the different themes

induced from commentary about inclusion within the

interviews. This program uses the shared norms of

vocabulary as one way to socialize the credential

candidates about inclusion. The common parlance of

inclusion demonstrates the degree of shared language

used by teacher candidates; however, the candidates

orient to the notion of inclusion in a variety of ways.

For example, several participants speak of inclusion as

a constraint while others speak of it like a political or

religious cause. Though socialized about one way of

speaking about where students with disabilities should

be taught—that of inclusive settings—the participants

in this study question the legitimacy of that claim. Theyfilter claims made about inclusion through lens of prior

experiences and their current workplaces. This filtering

about inclusion shows varying degrees of socialization,

in part due to inherent weak socialization of teacher

education programs, but also due to participants’ own

schooling and current teaching assignments.

A quick perusal of the data would give the

impression of a strong message about inclusion,

both as a normative value that all children should

learn together, and as a preference for placing

children with disabilities in the same environment as

other students. This perception comes from theadvocacy of inclusion in coursework and in

practicum experiences. However, credential candi-

dates are also socialized by their workplace and

through prior experiences. They were mostly

educated in schools that did not include students

with disabilities in the mainstream classrooms and

all work at schools that do not include all students

in the general education classroom all of the time.

A credential candidate might be assigned as an

inclusion teacher, but all the schools that candidates

teach at also have pull-out programs andseparate classes for other disabled children at the

same school. This is important in understanding

how two inclusion teachers can have very different

beliefs about inclusion as evidenced in Section 4.1.

Credential candidates take university teachings

about inclusion and filter those ideas through their

own daily teaching experience—what they take away

from the process is a tension between their own

schooling experiences without children with disabil-

ities in their classes, their daily teaching where they

may be a part of an inclusion program or not, and the

university message that inclusion is not one of several

choices about where and how to educate children with

disabilities, but the only way and place to teach

children with disabilities. This tension results in three

different, and sometimes overlapping, socialization

outcomes for credential candidates—complete socia-

lization, selective socialization, or rejection of

California University’s socialization about inclusion.13

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13Lacey (1977, p. 132) calls this the ‘‘intersection of biography

and situation.’’




4.1. Almost complete socialization

Alice came to teaching from the business world.14

She spent years as a computer programmer than as

a consultant. She left her job for personal reasons

and slowly worked her way into the field of education. She worked as a paraprofessional with

an inclusion teacher. The person she worked for

encouraged her to go get a teaching credential and

assured her she would be a good teacher. Alice

entered California University after securing herself

a job as a middle-school inclusion teacher. She

found the philosophy of the program to align with

what she had learned as a paraprofessional. Alice’s

interview is peppered with many statements about

inclusion and her philosophical support of it. For

example, she said, ‘‘There’s really no other choice but

to be an inclusion teacher, I mean yes, there are otheroptionsy’’ (line 40), but for Alice there is not; she

changes the conversation to another topic at this

point in the interview. She only wants to be an

inclusion teacher. She admits: ‘‘My bias is very clear.

Yeah, that’s how I feel , very strongly about it’’ (line

52). She also divulged that her philosophical

alignment with the university program is part of a

larger social agenda she espouses, ‘‘it’s just that I

don’t like the idea of segregated anything’’ (line 54).

She later continues, ‘‘I just think anybody should be

in inclusion, soy

I will stand by that’’ (line 163).Alice’s personal views align closely with the

programmatic ones and she is willingly socialized

into accepting inclusion as a placement option to

educate students and as the dogma of the program

and for herself. At first she seems like the perfect

example of complete socialization; she shares the

professional values of inclusion, knows the language

and espouses inclusionary practices.

Alice might agree wholeheartedly with California

University about including all students in general

education classrooms, but her valuing of inclusion

extends only to the students in her immediate

control. Students who were in other classes or

treated differently in school were not a voiced

concern. Alice said:

that’s not uncommon to see, special day class

with an inclusion program. Um, seems to work

fine here, I mean they’re doing their thing, we do

our thing (line 159).

She sees children in the next classroom who spend

more than 60% of their school day away from their

peers but does not question that practice. Though

Alice believes in inclusion ideologically, she enacts

her beliefs of inclusion only for the students with

whom she works. This may be due to institutionalconstraints she must contend with, the strong force

of workplace socialization that makes differential

treatment of students acceptable, other forms of

socialization not brought out in the interview or a

combination of forces. Alice is the only credential

candidate in this study who comes close to complete

socialization by California University. It is very

difficult to be completely socialized to a new way of

believing when there are so many internal and

external factors influencing socialization about

inclusion as a place and as a philosophy.

4.2. Selective socialization

Though Alice aligns herself closely with the

university’s mission, other teachers felt the push of

inclusion as an unrealistic demand on their daily

teaching practice. The other teachers struggle more

with the reality of including all students in a general

education setting most or all of the time. This

section will illustrate the teachers’ struggles with a

lack of connection between university teachings and

that of their workplace, parental concerns, and thereality of teaching students with significant disabil-

ities. These factors inhibit complete socialization

about inclusion.

Loni is an inclusion teacher in a district who is

having trouble educating any of their students. She

laughs aloud and says:

they’re having trouble with the regular students

so I can kind of understand why they don’t have

a—(Laughs) a special ed program too much.

But this is more than just a passing point; herdistrict is undergoing a great institutional change

superseding her struggles as an inclusion teacher.

Loni says:

I don’t feel like my program is fully supported by

Lawndale15 and it’s kind of making me burned

out by it.

For Loni, teaching about inclusion is one of many

worries at her school, not the only one. Institutional

ARTICLE IN PRESS

14Selective information about participants has been changed in

order to protect their identities.

15School districts’ names and identifying information have

been changed to protect anonymity.




pressures that make her feel burned out outweigh

her concern about inclusion, even though she is the

inclusion teacher.

Sarah, a special day class teacher at an elementary

school, spoke most strongly about the disconnect

between theory and practice.

16

She understandswhat the university is asking of her, but also

understands that the reality of implementing inclu-

sion at her school is a different story. Sarah has had

experiences in a variety of settings from a summer

day camp to a residential treatment center for

children with emotional difficulties. She feels that

these diverse activities have given her lots of

strategies that work with all kinds of students.

Now she works in a segregated setting with

problematic paraprofessionals and a lack of support

from the administrators at her school. Sarah’s

discourse reveals the dichotomous nature of whatshe experiences on a day-to-day basis. She says that

the idea of inclusion ‘‘is ideologically sound but not

necessarily tied to the realities and the constraints

that the school has’’ (line 157). She acknowledges the

university’s push for inclusion, while at the same

time juxtaposes that with her day-to-day teaching

experiences:

they (the professors) are looking at a macro level

they’re looking at systems change; what can be

lost sight of when you look at a macro level (is) just the micro—the little places where it doesn’t

work (line 194).

Sarah indicates that she teaches at one of those

‘little places’ and things are not easy for her.

Perhaps the most poignant quote from Sarah refers

to the language used at her university versus that

used at her school site:

At California University I talk about the

‘individual who experiences autism’ and the

‘individual who provides support and assistanceto the individual who experiences autism.’ At

Fernleaf Unified, I have a class for ‘students with

severe handicap’ and I have ‘four aides to the

handicapped’(line 262).

The difference between ‘people first’ language and

the use of ‘handicap’ indicates the gulf between

language socialization at the school and at the

university and helps explain Sarah’s frustration with

inclusion. Sarah would like to have her students

included in general education classrooms but has

many organizational barriers that keep her from

completing her goals. Sarah’s frustration with twocompeting organizations forces her to break down

in the interview and cry.

Sarah is not the only one who indicates a

disconnect between the university mission and the

practicalities of every-day teaching. Other credential

candidates experience conflict between what the

university wants and the realities of their daily

teaching experiences. Jan, a teacher who works with

children at several different schools each week, talks

about a ‘‘balance’’ between inclusion for the sake of

social relationships and needing time with students

to work on life skills that she feels cannot take placein the general education classroom. Rodney would

like his students to be more included in the general

education setting but the placement of a county

class on district property hinders inclusion. Other

teachers do not have to include his students because

his students are not technically part of the district.

Therefore, only some teachers at Rodney’s school

are willing to include some students for discrete

times of the day.

Rodney also spoke about parental choice rather

than his own belief or that of his workplace asreasons to include disabled children with their

general education peers or not. When asked why

some of his students spend more time in general

education than others, he says, ‘‘because the parents

pushed ’’ for their children to be more included.

Sarah had parents who wanted her to make their

children ‘‘normal ’’ and thus include them in general

education. Loni worked with parents who did

not care where their child was educated but

struggled with how to teach their daughter how to

communicate. In this case, following parental

preferences is a major factor in the education and

placement of students with disabilities, regardless of

what California University teaches.

The last case of selective socialization has to do

with the students themselves. Several of the teachers

spoke about the degree of students’ disabilities as a

factor in embracing inclusion as a setting for some

children. Sarah, Loni, Jan, Rodney and Terry felt

there needed to be time to teach ‘‘ functional skills’’

to children with severe impairments. The general

education classroom does not have time set aside to

teach students how to brush their teeth, wash their

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16The word ‘strongly’ is used to indicate the emotion felt by

Sarah in the interview. She broke down into tears during the

interview as she struggled through explaining the university’s

expectations and her inability to push her school to embrace

inclusion too.




clothes or ride a bus. Many of these teachers feel

that those things need to be taught to their students

because they believe the students would not learn it

elsewhere. They also have concerns about increasing

academic standardization like scripted curricula in

general-education classrooms, making the environ-ment non-conducive to students with alternative

learning needs.

Institutional mismatch, parental concerns, and

differential priorities of teaching students with

significant disabilities in schools that are not

modified to accept these students impact credential

candidates’ socialization. Selective socialization

takes into account credential candidates’ own

schooling and current experiences as teachers as

filters for what is possible with students who have

disabilities in their workplaces. Most of the candi-

dates in this study, and I would posit in general, willfall into this category unless teacher education

programs implement more effective socialization

processes.

4.3. Rejected socialization

This last teacher, Terry, says she has learned a lot

about inclusion and how to talk to parents and

teachers about inclusion, but rejects the idea herself.

Terry has been assigned as an inclusion teacher but

has not adopted the identity of one at a high school,where 20% of the students have an Individualized

Education Plan (IEP). She has been a teacher at the

school for the past 2 years. Prior to teaching she was

a paraprofessional in special education for the past

5 years in a variety of settings. She worked one-on-

one with a student with autism and has several

paraprofessional experiences in special day classes.

Her first job with students with disabilities was as a

home health care aide during college. On some days

she worked at home and on other days she took the

child to school. Terry enjoyed being in school with

the girl and decided teaching might be for her.

Additionally, Terry has a brother with a learning

disability who went to school in special day classes.

When asked about how her brother liked the

separate settings, she said:

He didn’t actually start leaning until he was in an

enclosed special day class with a teacher who

knew what he needed to teach, you know, to be

able to learn.

Though Terry herself is assigned as an inclusion

teacher, she has misgivings about the position. Her

job is to support students with moderate/severe

disabilities in a general education high school

classroom. She would like to pull students out of

the general education setting more often. She is not

sure that all of their needs are provided for in that

setting. She worries that the social aspect of studentslearning to interact with each other overtakes the

other skills she wants her students to have.

Inclusion, for Terry, is a setting that does not meet

the needs of all students with disabilities, not an

ideological imperative for all students. Being an

inclusion teacher is an occupational assignment, not

a philosophical decision. In this case, it is clear that

Terry’s own schooling experiences, or more pre-

cisely, those of her brother, provide a much stronger

socializing force than either her job or her university

experience. Terry saw separate settings as beneficial

for her brother and thinks they would be beneficialfor her students as well. Terry has received the same

university education as her peers but has a very

different filter. Terry clarified her views on inclusion

long before entering her credential program and

rejects California University’s socialization. She

teaches students in an inclusive setting, but has

not embraced the identity of an inclusion teacher or

been effectively socialized by the university into the

philosophy of inclusion.

5. Limitations

Interpretive traditions of teacher socialization

acknowledge the role of structure and agency in

the process of socialization. New teachers make

sense of knowledge learned at the university

program, their prior knowledge and things learned

at their school sites. This study agrees with other

teacher socialization findings and highlights specific

examples of teachers filtering university teaching

about inclusion. It offers a starting point for

understanding programs with an explicit philosophy

and the limitations of a single program to change

school placement for children with moderate to

severe disabilities. It is also a starting point to

understanding the process of socialization where

credential candidates teach and learn to teach

simultaneously. The study design, however, is

limited due to a self-selection process of intervie-

wees. The sample is biased towards people who were

willing to talk about their experiences and beliefs.

The remaining two individuals who chose not to be

interviewed may have views that differ greatly from

the people interviewed. Threats to reliability were

ARTICLE IN PRESS




student placement limits being able to practice

inclusion as California University would like.

Experiences in their own schooling, with students

with disabilities, and with students’ parents also

influence the filtering process.

California University is trying to make a changein educational culture by teaching and advocating

for including all children in the general education

classroom, but if this small group of teachers

provides any indication of a larger phenomenon,

then their efforts at socializing credential candidates

are not enough. It is unclear how much the schools

at which credential candidates work align with a

philosophic belief about inclusion as part of

creating a better democracy, but, since all of the

schools have other locations like resource rooms

and special day classes where children can be

educated, it would appear that the schools in thissmall study—at least—see inclusion only as a

placement decision for educating children with

disabilities. Given the institutional context these

credential candidates work in, the simultaneous and

continuous forces of socialization from California

University, their schools, and their occupational

requirements, it is no wonder that most of them

only achieved selective or partial socialization about

inclusion.

We can use this small study as a guide post for

further inquiry into socialization processes of credential candidates who are simultaneously full-

time teachers. We need stronger indicators of the

necessary factors in aligning prior experiences with

workplace and university socialization in order to

move teacher education to the transformative

experience it hopes to be.

Appendix

A.1. Interview protocol

Can you start off by talking about what work you

do now? How has your experience working at X

helped you think about disability?

Background questions. This first set of questions is to

help me understand what your prior and current

experiences have been.

So why did you want to become a teacher?

Age?

Sped?

What would you say was your primary motiva-

tion or drive? Was there something PULLING you

into teaching, or other careers PUSHING you away

from it?

Do you know other individuals who were special

education teachers?How was disability treated at your high school,

elementary school?

Have you worked with people with disabilities

prior to your teacher training program?

If yes, for how long?

Tell me about an experience you remember.

Is there anyone in your family diagnosed with a

disability?

If yes, what is their relationship to you? What is

their disability?

TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAM

What were your perceptions of disability when you

started the program?

And how did you choose California University?

If I was a prospective student at CU, and asked

you about the program, what would you tell me?

Describe some professors who had the most

impact on how you think about disability.

Out of your whole program what lessons have

been the most important for you? The leastimportant?

What else would you have liked to learn about?

What was missing from your program?

How does your program address disability rights?

How does your program address disability

culture?

Definitions

Now I’d like to ask you about some words that are

really common in special education.

What do you think of when I say ‘‘disability’’?

What do you think of when I say ‘‘special

education’’?

What do you think of when I say ‘‘special needs?’’

What does the word handicap mean to you?

What does the word impairment mean to you?

VIEWS ON DISABILITY

Now I’d like to ask you about your future plans.

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