Using PDS as a Tool to Create Sustainable Inclusive Education Practices: A Roadmap for School-University Partnerships.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a roadmap of one way to use professional development school (PDS)-university relationships to create the foundations of sustainable inclusive education practices. This paper outlines PDS practices enacted the first year of a project that took place at a public elementary school that serves students in grades four to six. During the first year of the project, there were a total of 23 members of the PDS special education (SPED) sub-committee. The SPED sub-committee made conscious decisions to increase the number of students with disability labels in inclusive classrooms. Critical actions of the SPED sub-committee included: infusing a Disability Studies in Education (DSE) approach in professional development activities, and collaborating with administration to create structures that encourage students with disability labels moving from self-contained classrooms and into inclusive classrooms. NAPDS Nine Essentials Addressed: 1. A comprehensive mission that is broader in its outreach and scope than the mission of any partner and that furthers the education profession and its responsibility to advance equity within schools and, by potential extension, the broader community; 3. Ongoing and reciprocal professional development for all participants guided by need; 4. A shared commitment to innovative and reflective practice by all participants; 5. Engagement in and public sharing of the results of deliberate investigations of practice by respective participants; 7. A structure that allows all participants a forum for ongoing governance, reflection, and collaboration; 8. Work by college/university faculty and P–12 faculty in formal roles across institutional settings; and 9. Dedicated and shared resources and formal rewards and recognition structures. The purpose of this paper is to provide a roadmap of one way to use professional development school (PDS) relationships to create the foundations of sustainable inclusive education practices. Historically, PDS structures have been used to disseminate best practices in teacher education (Zenkov, Shiveley, & Clark, 2016). Attributed to John Dewey (c. 1894) at the University of Chicago, PDSs were first envisioned as lab schools that were sites for both teacher training and research through school-university partnerships (Colburn, 1993). Clinical practice opportunities within PDS have been cited as one aspect of teacher education that has the highest potential to positively impact student outcomes (National Research Council, 2010). Professional development school practices have been used to achieve a variety of outcomes (Snow, Flynn, Whisenand, & Mohr, 2016) including: encouraging reflective teaching practices, instilling more confidence in teacher candidates (Stairs, 2011), improving teacher candidate self-perception as professionals (Conaway & Mitchell, 2004), providing teacher candidates with more demonstrable teaching skills (Castle, Fox, & Fuhrman, 2009), improving the quality of formative assessments given by teacher candidates (Sandholtz & Wasserman, 2001), and improving the cooperating teacher’s instructional practices (Yendol-Silva & Dana, 2004). Professional development school experience is also reported to produce high-quality teachers (Neapolitan et al., 2008), result in higher K-12 student achievement (Heafner & Spooner, 2008; Klingner, Leftwich, van Garderen, & Hernandez, 2004), and improve the quality of university teacher education courses (Higgins, 2002). Though these are compelling outcomes of PDS practices, there is a significant gap in the literature related to how PDS can be used to create the foundations of sustainable inclusive education practices. The PDS research that does exist on inclusive education practices is minimal. Existing studies report that PDS can improve teacher candidate knowledge on how to support students with disability labels (Walmsley, Bufkin, Rule, & Lewis, 2007), enhance the professional growth of special educators (Voltz, 2001), and improve attitudes of teacher candidates toward inclusive education practices (Strieker, Gillis, & Guichun, 2013). Though not specifically PDS literature, Waitoller and Artiles (2013) call for more professional development that infuses an intersectional approach to understand difference and exclusion to improve inclusive education practices. Though these studies represent the emergence of ways to better support student with disabilities in schools though PDS research, the small number underscores the need to leverage PDS research to better support students with disability labels in inclusive settings. 1 Elder writes ‘‘students with disability labels’’ purposefully to acknowledge the socially constructed nature of disability and how such labels are subjective and placed on people who deviate from an imagined norm (Taylor, 2006). 22 School—University Partnerships Vol. 12, No. 1 This paper addresses this dearth of inclusive PDS research and provides one way in which to infuse a Disability Studies in Education (DSE) approach into this body of literature in order to create sustainable inclusive practices into schools. This article and the provided PDS outline are not intended to be prescriptive. The goal of this work is to clearly articulate the actions the special education (SPED) sub-committee took so that others wishing to engage similar processes have a PDS roadmap to increase the number of students with disability labels accessing inclusive classrooms. In order to address this gap in the literature, the following research questions undergirded this project: 1. How can PDS be used to responsibly and effectively increase the number of students with disability labels accessing inclusive classrooms? 2. How does the development and implementation of PDS trainings impact how faculty, staff, and administration are prepared (e.g., have increased capacity) to support students with disability labels in inclusive classrooms? 3. In what ways can PDS be used to improve inclusive education practices and positively impact educational outcomes for students with disability labels? Theoretical Framework This research is grounded in DSE. Disability Studies in Education scholars understand disability as a natural variation of the human condition (Baglieri, Valle, Connor, & Gallagher, 2010; Hehir 2002; Linton 2005, 2006; Shapiro 1999). When viewed through a DSE lens, disability is understood as a ‘‘social phenomenon’’ (Taylor, 2006, p. xiii ). In opposition to the traditional medical or deficit model of disability, DSE scholars do not locate disability within students with disability labels. Rather, they locate disability within related social, political, contextual, and environmental factors (Marks, 1997; Oliver, 1990). Through this perspective, students who carry disability labels become disabled when they encounter inaccessible spaces (e.g., unmodified school work, school buildings without ramps, untrained instructional assistants). Put simply, DSE provides a space where ‘‘constructions of disability are questioned and special education assumptions and practices are challenged’’ (Taylor, 2006, p. xix). Infusing a DSE perspective in this project placed the onus on faculty, staff, and administration to create a more inclusive campus, rather than on students in self-contained classrooms who would otherwise have to earn their way into inclusive classrooms.